LISTEN
“Listen, little boy,” she started.
“I’m older than you. Remember,” Jack leaned back in his chair and laughed his trademark cocky laugh.
Charlie took a long drag out of her cigarette. Slowly she watched as she released the smoke back into the air. Jack watched her and waited for her to speak. The silence hung in the air like the smoke that was slowly dissipating.
“Listen, little boy.” She took another drag of the cigarette and blew the smoke out. “I don’t play games. There’s always a winner and there’s always a loser. And I sure as hell don’t chase anyone’s affection. Affection that isn’t given freely, fully, without condition, well that’s just a trophy. And like I said, I’m not that interested in games.” She pressed the cigarette into the ground, got up and walked away.
Jack called after her as she left, but she never looked back.
Jodie Baeyens is a professor at American Military University. She was deposited in Arizona from Manhattan, against her will, and now lives in a rural farming community writing poetry and drinking red wine. Her poetry has most recently been featured in Door is a Jar and in Peregrine’s Fall Journal. Follow her writing at WWW.Mylifeincoffeespoons.com or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/Mylifeincoffeespoons.
Flight of the dragonfly 