Men would pass her in the supermarket and change direction. They followed her — stopping when she stopped, loitering in her bergamot wake, feeling for warmth on the cabbage she had touched. It lasted for aisles. Then, they checked out, went home to their wives. Her life had been a series of men deciding to settle.

Charles Rafferty’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker and The Southern Review, and his stories have appeared in Sonora Review and Cortland Review. His most recent chapbook of poems is Appetites (Clemson University Press). Currently, he directs the MFA program at Albertus Magnus College.