Inking of Age--A 100-Word Novel

On her eighteenth birthday, she came home, found Ma in the kitchen, and rolled up her shirt. Ma, predictably, gasped.

“That’s permanent, you know. That ain’t gonna look good when you’re eighty.”

“Ma, nothin’ looks good when you’re eighty.”

Ma stared at daughter for a long moment and finally, with just enough movement to change the light reflecting off her bifocals, nodded. She found another glass, poured a half inch of wine into it from her own glass, and handed it to her daughter.

“Okay, then.”

Fuchsias--A 100-Word Novel

I want to say to her, "He's all wrong for you; you're breaking my heart." A mother knows things, and I know I'll be helping her sweep up the debris—again—when the whole thing implodes in a few weeks or months—or worse, a few years, when another big chunk of her life has disappeared forever.

Instead I tend my potted garden. I pinch the hips off the wilted fuchsias, as I've learned to do, so that the plant will put no more energy into something that is already dead.