short fiction

the glass cold against her temple, she pored over the text, heavily weighed down slender white fingers with dry pages, flaking binding, yellowed, aging words. blue veins clenched in tightened, bare forearm; delicate bones tapping and retracting in long, exposed foot. laura's days were spent in study – she lounged in window seats and languored in deep grass. the library windows were cold and unwelcoming, only offering a view of all she missed, but the warm grass tickled and discounted the novels: discredited dickens and lambasted tennyson. perfect concentration she found nowhere, but everywhere dissatisfaction.
eyes scanning pages which fingers itched to turn, laura plowed through the greatest works of england and america while slowly aging, gradually losing the blush from her cheek and the fat of youth from her frame.
in the late afternoon, nanny would call her for tea and laura would slouch into the dining room, slump into one of the high-backed chairs, and, with deliberate, studied slowness, sip tea and spread her toast with jam to crunch languidly between teeth small and porcelain.

laura spent her time studying not only books, but people. she read emily post between eliot and proust. while walking in the town, she stopped to stare awkwardly at lovers walking together. laura spent a great deal of time alone. she missed home and mum and disliked the smallness of america after immense england. of course, everything in america was oversize and indelicate; not out of a sympathetic largeness, but due to a spiritual size lacking grandeur. they compensated poorly.