Amongst the Dresses
anne germanacos
She's too tall now to go amongst the dresses the way she used to, a small animal in a forest of pinks and blues, but she does anyway, sloughing off height by hunching. The dresses always smell the same, chemical and clean, and occasionally a mother's perfume. She's hardly eager for a dress, but still.
The phone in her mother's purse rings.
It's him, the new husband. His daughters (not her sisters) are wild. The phone changes her mother's look, makes lines appear. This isn't the mother she likes to see, but it's the one she's grown used to. This must be how the marriage is going.
Anne Germanacos' work has appeared recently in Quarterly West, Blackbird, Salamander, Fourteen Hills, Black Warrior Review, Florida Review, Chattahoochee Review, Agni (online), and many others. She lives in San Francisco and on Crete.