RECOMMENDED READING
Your Hearts, Your Scars. BY ADINA TALVE-GOODMAN BL Press | January 2023
You notice the man before he speaks to you—late forties, graying hair around his temples, eager, wandering eyes hoping to make contact with someone, anyone, who might listen. You see him, not out of the corner of your eye but because of this sense you’ve developed as a small woman moving about the world. You notice, glancing up occasionally from your book, that he’s moved tables a few times, quietly leaping closer to where you’ve been sitting for a few hours. Sometimes you think you read slower than most because you are always glancing up like a prairie dog, ready to run for your life. He’s made it over to the table closest to you and is staring, waiting for your upward glance 76
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because you seem like the type of woman who will listen. And you are. “It’s almost my birthday,” he says. “Just three weeks away.” Three weeks seems like a long time; three weeks doesn’t seem like almost. You smile and wish him a happy early birthday. You keep your book open; you glance back down; you have no idea which paragraph you were reading. If only you were a faster, stronger mammal, you think. “My wife’s birthday is one week after mine,” he says. “Happy early birthday to her, too. She died twelve years ago of heart failure.” You put your book down in your lap, closed but for one
finger on the page you haven’t finished reading. Twelve years ago you were eighteen, in heart failure, waiting for a transplant. For a moment, you think maybe this man can tell. You make eye contact; he leans forward. “I’m sorry,” you say. Then he starts telling you about his dead wife. “Our first date was at Red Lobster. We