Ramshackle Review

1991

by Jen Knox

Her hair was high and stiff, her body small and slight, and she wore press-on nails that made her helpless to an itch.  She could still pile lies then like neat blocks, hide behind them without regret.  The shade could dissolve her shadow but when nights grew longer, colder, she’d wake shivering.  It was twenty years ago, rubbing her hands, urging blood into numb fingertips, that I realized it was up to me to keep her warm. 

Jen Knox earned her MFA from Bennington's Writing Seminars. She works as a creative writing professor at San Antonio College. Jen is the author of Musical Chairs and To Begin Again. Some of her short stories and essays have been published or are forthcoming in Annalemma Magazine, Bananafish, Bartleby Snopes, Eclectic Flash, Flashquake, Foundling Review, The Houston Literary Journal, Metazen, Midwest Literary Magazine, Narrative Magazine, Short Story America, Slow Trains, SLAB, Superstition Review and elsewhere.  Visit her website.