Eleanor and Eros
an excerpt

The car stopped and, for Eleanor, the world took on a startling clarity. The leaves on the trees were crisp around the edges in a way they hadn’t been when she’d left the house. The lawn, tended faithfully every week by a lawn service, was a brilliant green, a solid wave of color, but she could make out each individual blade of grass, curving up toward the sun. This was a scene to be remembered, a memory to keep in her pocket and pull out to examine on cold, grey days when the sky threatened rain but nothing ever happened. Those days when she felt like time had stopped, trapping her like tar or amber, a forever twelve-year-old, with no future beyond another day of being twelve years old.