Still Falling for Her, and Now Is the Time for Us to Be Sweet

~
. . . I do not need a picture to
remind me of the look on my mom's
face, when she sang--extreme yearning,
a yearning out at the edge of what was
socially acceptable
on a ship like that . . .

From "Still Falling for Her," a poem by Sharon Olds, The New Yorker (December 5, 2011, pp. 54-55).
~
When it's too hard to get on from the past, the best thing you can do is stop thinking, stop trying. Get a hobby, a new cat. Addict yourself to whatever little thing you have found as your grind. Your drink, your pill, your loveseat naps. It can work. You grind into it. And then Eric Eicher enrolls in your poetry class, transfers in a week after the semester starts.

From "Now Is the Time for Us to Be Sweet," a short story by Molly Tolsky, The Collagist (Issue 29, December 2011).