Fiction

Country Music Love

Jill Boettger

You are clearly preoccupied with love. See the way you siftthrough the lint from your purse, searching for the backing ofan earring. See the runway of broken leaves and bread crumbscollecting under the emergency brake in your car. Messy, messy.You wear your dirty denim jacket to the doctor’s office, youpush your nail beds back until they bleed. You fill your bathtubevery second evening, pour large goblets of red wine, sit onthe sill of the tub naked, holding the wine, waiting for thewater to cool. (You always run your baths too hot.) The daybegins with a whisper and all day you whisper to yourself. Nojazz, it hurts your head. No, you want a music that permitsthe swagger of your heart, its lazy eye, its unkempt hairdo.

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Jill Boettger

Jill Boettger writes poetry and nonfiction from her home in Calgary, where she lives with her husband and two kids. She teaches in the Department of English, Languages and Cultures at Mount Royal University and is a frequent contributor to Geist.

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