First it was the chain stores. Dunkin’ Donuts bought out Sal’s. But that was happening to mom-and-pop stores across the country. Not ideal, but what do you expect nowadays? Then it was the people who swooped in and claimed to save the diner on the corner from closing. Now the only pierogies I can get are filled with avocado and salmon and some kind of berry I can’t pronounce.
Some point down the line, an awareness manifested that I was not a part of the American ideal, or rather, that something bigger believed that I was not a part of the American ideal.
She hits my foot from under the table. First it’s a mistake, then she beams up at me and does it again, on purpose this time. We both laugh. “What’s funny?” they ask. “Nothing,” we say. Her giggles sound more like squeaks. These moments with Jade follow a formula.
“What is Love?” asks every romantic hero ever. “Love is when you really feel it, you know?” answers every romantic hero’s best friend or mentor who has some authority of love or just guesses based upon some romantic thing they read or have seen. “What is Love?” asks me, and quite possibly most people in their teens. “
Set in the rural Bootheel of Missouri Sharp Objects drifts through its story like the gooey cherry pie its characters eat sticks to the roof of their mouths.
We go way back, film and I. In some ways there’s been some sort of relationship between me and the silver screen from way before I was even born. It wasn’t always positive.
My own personal, seemingly insurmountable dragon was metaphorical Grief, it was now a part of me, and I couldn’t imagine a world where I would be able to domesticate the vicious pain.
