I left my apartment door ajar for her. Mom sat with her coat on, behind her newspaper, on the only piece of furniture in the barren living room. She wouldn’t look up. I stacked the last box of dishes by the exit. I hoped to bolt before Larry returned home.

Cynthia Chrisman, a semi-retired homeopath from Boston, is an emerging writer working on her first blended memoir. She is having another love affair: writing micro prose.