How To Mend a Son's Broken Heart

by Meg Pokrass

Remind him about his first. The girl had moved in with your family like a feral cat because her grandmother was undergoing assisted suicide over at her house. Your son and she slept together for half a year in his single bed. Feral or not, it was amazing to see your son happy. Remind him how lost he felt after she later disappeared without a word, leaving strands of long blue hair on the furniture.

“Hey, you made it through that first one,” you say.

Remind him about the girlfriend with stretchy muscles, a genetic disease. How he’d pick her up and carry her around the house, made it fun. How he tried not to worry about her condition. How she taught him to cook. Remind him that she broke up with him over the phone. “She might not have lived,” you say. “And she taught you how to make great Spanish omelettes.” (Points: you have almost made him smile).

Tell him about the way you yourself recovered from being in love with your gay boyfriend, the one who got you pregnant and then denied it. How he felt like the perfect fit, your very best friend. Mention the abortion, how alone you were then. “But after that, I met your father.”

Tell him you have been through all of this too. Remind him about your recent divorce from his father after a twenty-five year marriage. Smile at him on Facetime. Remind him that everything gets better. Show him your new cat. Waggle her tail at him. Make him laugh.

Meg Pokrass is the author of First Law of Holes: New and Selected Stories (Dzanc Books, 2024) and eight previous collections. Her work has been selected for inclusion multiple times in The Best Small Fictions, Wigleaf Top 50, and her work has been published in Electric Literature, New England Review, Lit Hub, Waxwing, Hunger Mountain, Washington Square Review, Plume, Lit Hub and RATTLE. Meg is the Founding and Managing Editor of Best Microfiction.

Hear a reading of this work, and an interview with Meg Pokrass on pod-ette Episode 8: Kittenette.