WHAT YOU SHOULD HAVE DONE
gwendolyn joyce mintz
You rolled your pregnant self out of bed, the yelling waking you, the pounding pulling you to the kitchen, where your husband loomed over his son from another marriage, the two of them by the table where a plastic bag was spilling the loaf of bread and liter-bottle soda that the boy had gone to buy for his father who was angry that his son had put the two together because he hadn't wanted to carry two bags home and the bread slices were no longer the squares that his father was demanding they be returned to and though the boy was not dumb as your husband was saying – he simply looked afraid and small—you knew he couldn't do it ; placing your hands on your belly, you wondered what to do, if anything, though it only came to you later—watching your own son being led away, his angry hands, shackled-- the thing that you should have done.
Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz
http://www.unlikelystories.org/mintz0607.shtml
The Well and the Mine
Gin Phillips