“This holiday is for chumps,” he says, without looking up from his laptop as I arrive home.
I hide the tulips behind me, lift the trash open, let the dumb card with the love poem I wrote slide, crumpled, into this morning’s uneaten eggs.
“Yeah,” I agree. Like a chump.
Rachel Hapanowicz may be a hopeless romantic. Or she may just be a chump. Either way, she enjoys Valentine’s Day chocolates, as long as there’s no red fillings.
Last December our oldest daughter stormed in from her shift at the family market.
The tips were horrible, she stomped, unraveling her scarf.
Here’s a tip for you, her father said from the living room, withered and tied down by the oxygen tube in his nose. Don’t eat yellow snow.
Raised in Ohio, Rachel Hapanowicz has fared her fair share of December snowstorms. She currently teaches in Cincinnati.
My mother keeps secretly replacing my little sister’s dead goldfish.
My newly adopted sister keeps randomly telling strangers at the store, “My mommy died!” and “I’m going to the beach!” My mother–our mother–nods, tired.
Two things can be true: There is a dead goldfish. There is a replacement.
Rachel Hapanowicz is currently a teacher in Cincinnati public schools where she is an expert at making cool lingo very uncool to her students, being from Ohio, and finding the best karaoke spots in town.