On "Growing Pains" by Alexai-Budziszewski (4954 words) ***

"Growing Pains" is one of the more complete stories from Galavis-Budziszewski's Painted Cities collection, and as such, it's also one of the stories that resonates more fully. It's about a kid whose grandmother comes to visit his mother and him. The mother fled the grandmother a decade earlier, and the fact that they can't get along is evident on this visit. But so too are the mother's griefs at chances blown. Her friend Birdy comes back for a visit a couple of years earlier, and the mother becomes irate over Birdy's constant teasing about the mother not moving to California when she had the chance (there was a man involved, the narrator's father). The narrator suffers from arthritis--growing pains--though just a kid; it's as if aging happens much more quickly here in the hood, for as we learn, the mother was once part of a street gang that, even though only a decade has passed, is now defunct. Read the story here at CrossConnect.

On "I Love to Dance at Weddings" by Alix Ohlin (3634 words) ***

Why do some people run through marriages like blenders and why do others hang on to marriages like, well, blenders, blender they let sit in the corner and gather dust? Not that the protagonists' marriage is like the latter in this piece, but I sense an aura of something not quite right but not quite unright either. These are two people who function, who get along, but who are also a bit annoyed at one another--or more specifically annoyed at a situations that are out of their control: the inability to find a job, the inability to keep mom from marrying (again) or to keep from participating in the ceremony. And then there are the lovebirds, and the woman who flits from husband to husband like a hummingbird exploring flowers. A study in contrasts. You can read it here at CrossConnect.

On "Bent and Blue" by C. J. Spataro (5798 words) ****

Here's a sad one for you, a sad love story, a sad story about growing up and about potential being squandered, about lost dreams, and then lost everything. This isn't a story told, for the most part, within the confines of what have become fiction techniques, and that is part of this story's power. There are only snatches of dialogue, only snatches of scenes. Most of it sounds like a long tale told--told, that is, by a young woman sitting right beside you. Here's my life and the life of my friend and a tale about our town that you'll find intriguing. You can't listen to her speak, since this is text, but you can read what she has to say--here, at CrossConnect.