Frances is staring at her plate

her eyes are going in and out of focus on a few stray peas, I wouldn’t be able

to tell except that her whole body is rocking forward and backward, forward and backward, she
…….is

a rowboat stranded in the middle of the ocean but moving, moving to a shore no one can see,
…….“Frances,”

Jill says, and Frances looks up, her eyes squint for a moment, and I know she’s placing her, yes,
…….you, “why don’t you go relieve yourself,”

Frances nods and says “I can manage, dear,” we stand and Jack and I clear the table, Frances is
…….walking with as straight a spine as she can manage to the

porch door, Jill throws down the forks and smiling broadly says, “over here,” her lips stretching
…….into a familiar crescent, but

they’re taut, her skin might pop off if she tries any harder, she walks over, she is twice Frances’s
…….size, she puts her arm around Frances’s shoulders, tucks

her hip under Frances’s hip and they sway together, side to side, doing a slow, strange little
…….dance, they tango, they waltz, they

glide across the room toward a toilet seat, Jill is almost carrying her and in that moment Frances
…….is entranced, Frances is

all hips and no bones, she thinks it is her wedding day, she is dancing with her husband, her dress
…….is silky waves upon her thighs, Frances could move

her hips in any dance and her husband loved her for it, he is holding her now, moving her gently,
…….he is strong and she is tender and all she must do is

move her hips, and this is where it all begins, she will later tilt her hips like a woman in love and
…….out will come Jack, I watch

her shrinking femurs, I try to hear this secret music of theirs and I know,

I know from every muscle straining that Frances is again in love and

she won’t remember it after she’s washed her hands.

Maya Wahrman is a bilingual case manager at the Latin American Legal Defense and Education Fund, serving Hedgepeth-Williams Middle School of the Arts in Trenton, New Jersey. She graduated from Princeton’s Department of History, with certificates in creative writing and near eastern Studies, and is now undertaking her master’s of social work at Rutgers University. Wahrman has had opinion pieces published in the History News Network and the English and Hebrew editions of Haaretz, and has had poetry published in various publications including Lilith Magazine, Fifth Wednesday Journal, The Copperfield Review, and the Jewish Currents poetry anthology Urge.