It was Sunday. Since Brad worked long hours during the week, Sunday was their date night, or to be precise, their date morning.
This was the routine: they’d start their day with coffee in bed, reading poetry to one another and sharing their dreams from the night before.
Then Brad and Nancy would walk to the café for crepes. Between bites, they’d laugh over each other’s whipped cream mustaches and sneak kisses across the table.
On the way home, they’d take the scenic route through the park, noticing the passage of seasons in the dots of wildflower, mushroom, or frost along the path.
More Sundays than not, they made it through coffee.
Nuzzled beside her, Brad often dozed off to the sound of her voice. While Nancy waited for him to wake up, she puttered outside: weeding, raking, organizing the shed, whatever.
Sometimes when she came in to wash up for their walk, she found Brad watching soccer, a plate of toast between his flannel legs.
Last Sunday, when she ran in from potting geraniums to grab a cold drink, Brad was gone, beside his syrupy plate, a love note informing her he’d joined the neighbor couple for a round of golf.
But it was Sunday. Sundays, Nancy always woke up hopeful.
Angeline Schellenberg is the author of the Manitoba Book Award-winning Tell Them It Was Mozart (Brick Books, 2016), four poetry chapbooks, and the KOBZAR Book Award-nominated Fields of Light and Stone (University of Alberta Press, 2020). Her microfiction has appeared recently in Grey Sparrow Journal, SoFloPoJo, and Exposition Review. Angeline hosts Speaking Crow, Winnipeg’s longest-running poetry open mic. She is training as an Ignatian spiritual director.
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