dreamszilla

Xueling takes her son Eliot home to Singapore, leaving Daddy back in Britain, and her feelings about motherhood come to a head when she runs into an ex. Image generated with OpenAI While strolling along the Singapore river towards Botero's Bird, Xueling is startled by a familiar figure. She stops, staring, as he saunters down the steps of UOB Plaza 1. It's been five years, and he's looking at his phone, but it's him: the swimmer's shoulders, the high forehead, the confident gait. He's striding towards her. He will see her if he looks up. Her feet harden into cement, her voice cowers in her throat. Of all the people to run into on her first trip home in five years. After so much has faded. After all this time. Before she can react, he glances up, right at her. He halts. Squints. And breaks into a smile. Quickening his pace, he says 'is it really you?' as he reaches her. She brushes away her fringe, but it remains stuck to her forehead. 'Hi. Yes, it...

Lisa is used to complying with her mother's expectations, until she meets Reilly, and things get more complicated. Image generated with OpenAI Nineteen years ago my mother - the former Miss Lenore Wilson of Laurel, Delaware - was the 1963 Miss Delmarva Poultry Princess, and this is what she has to say about being a beauty queen. No matter how flawless a woman might appear, Mother says, no matter how beautiful she might be, she's bound to have a run in her stocking, cellulite underneath her girdle, or some such imperfection you can always find if you look hard enough. Nowadays, Mother operates the New You! beauty parlor in the L-shaped attachment Daddy built onto the back of our house. Daddy is a volunteer firefighter and a Blue-Ribbon grower of laying hens, and he taught me the difference between the Virginia and the loblolly pine, both of which grow in the woods behind our chicken houses. But it's Mother's lessons on beauty and the fight against imperfection that ha...

A Romanian man looks back regretfully on his cruelty to his first wife and daughters. Image generated with OpenAI Early in the morning, Florea Ivașcu was already at the market, carefully arranging his goods on the stall and rubbing his hands with satisfaction as he waited for customers. He sold fruit and vegetables according to the season. At sixty-two, nothing kept him from being among the first market vendors to arrive and among the last to leave. All the produce he sold he bought from villagers who came into town to sell wholesale, then hurried back to their work in the countryside. Florea was not one of those farmers who worked their own land and sold what they themselves had grown. He simply bought at one price and sold by the kilo in order to make a little extra. Sometimes, when he ran out of stock, he would take his van through the villages, visiting certain growers to buy more produce. His world was there in the market, behind the stall, chatting with customers and other vendor...