I showed up at the agreed-upon time with the fixings for a birthday pizza picnic party: large pie, extra cheese; celebratory balloon; two-person chunk of supermarket cake (white icing, lemon cream) in a plastic clamshell. He was outside, waiting beside the picnic table. It was high spring and the cool air was hectic with mating calls—peepers and crickets and katydids. He was at work, second shift, first break. “What’s in your car?” I asked. I’d passed it on my way across the lot, stuffed to the ceiling with boxes and bags. Presents? “Oh,” he said. “Uh. I’m leaving you.”
Maria Robinson’s work has appeared in Rejection Letters, Catapult, New World Writing Quarterly, PANK, Bellevue Literary Review, and Cream City Review, among others. Find Maria at www.mariarobinson.com.