Fearful

Sarah Smith

Long ago, when I was just married, I saw a girl die. I saw it ­planned, I was there when it happened. I sat in the audience­ while she swallowed poison. Now she haunts me, a pathetic­ outmoded ghost, a cafe singer from the days of Toulouse-Lautrec, ­with her pleading eyes and her outstretched hand. I’ve put her ­into stories, I wrote a film script about her, back when I was a ­little famous; but no one reads me now, and still she won’t rest. She comes to visit me at midnights, and she sings to me.

It’s so dark, she quavers. I’m so afraid...

She of all people should understand why I did it, but she’s dead ­now, the dead never understand.

Maybe you will....

When the Red Storm Comes:

or, the History of a Young Lady's Awakening to her Nature

Sarah Smith

“Do you believe in vampires?” he said.

I snapped Dracula closed and pushed it under the tapestry bag containing my neglected cutwork. “Mr. Stoker writes amusingly,” I said. “I believe I don’t know you, sir.”

“What a shame,” he said, putting his hand on the cafe chair across from me. I looked up—and up; he was tall, blond; his uniform blazed crimson, a splash of blood against the green trees and decent New Hampshire brick of Market Square. The uniform was Austro-Hungarian; his rank I did not know, but clearly he was an officer.

“You should be better acquainted with vampires.”  He clicked heels and bowed.  “Count Ferenc Zohary.”

Touched by the Bomb

Sarah Smith

For the Ozawa family of Nagasaki
d. August 9, 1945

As you can probably tell, I used to live in Japan.

Seeing the Edge

Sarah Smith

For Justus
and with thanks to Bruce

Eireen didn’t come home.

Saturday, a week before Christmas, Jerry woke up to the sound track of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Eireen’s kid Travis was sitting on the edge of Jerry’s lumpy sofa-bed, shivering in his thin pajamas and watching the Saturday morning cartoons. Travis wiped his nose on his sleeve and turned his flat black eyes Jerry’s way. “Mama not here, Je’y.”

Fennario

Resa Nelson & Sarah Smith

When we marched down to Fennario
When we marched down to Fennario
Our Captain fell in love with a lady like a dove.
Her name it was called Pretty Peggy-O.