She stands at the shoreline, looks out at the bay, then back at me.

“Alice, come!” It’s the second time I’ve called. She turns, slowly, like an ocean liner coming about. Her head dips to sniff, and then she approaches. Slowly.

The letter, but not the spirit, of the law.

Marjie Alonso lives in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where she can be found walking and pleading with her beagle to drop that. Her work has appeared in Brevity, The Huffington Post, Cognoscenti, and elsewhere. Her substack can be found at piecesofstring.substack.com.