Jean was one of those women who believed in angels; wore crystals around her neck and cut her hair like Enya.
She was born in the south but bore no accent; lived her life in New England, cottages near coves and coastlines.
Two marriages, neither of them good; discovered she preferred the company of women but never fell in love.
Jean often thought of herself as a poet; writing in journals, listening to NPR, and watching loons on the water as she thought of abundant ways to describe them.
She almost always had a half-gallon of cookies n’ cream ice cream in her freezer; ate organic vegetables and brewed her own kombucha, Gala apple being her favorite flavor.
On Thursdays, Jean would volunteer at the food pantry; Mondays and Fridays she counted songbirds for three hours in the morning for the Avian Society.
Jean was diagnosed with diabetes at age thirty-eight; she walked two miles every day and ate a lot of sweet peppers.
Her garden boxes on the south side of her house grew cabbages, carrots, and cherry tomatoes; impatiens and snapdragons decorated the front of her house, hollies on the west side.
She lost her first tooth while eating an oatmeal cookie; lost her virginity on her wedding night, lost her only child during her second marriage.
Jean was one of those women who wore a dress once a year; most days she wore button down Oxfords and leather shoes.
She lost her mother to liver disease after being destroyed by alcohol; Jean’s brother was in prison, her sister joined a convent when she was twenty.
Her pet peeve was when people laugh at inappropriate times; she hates people who talk with their car windows down and root beer floats.
Jean is nobody’s best friend, always an acquaintance; she lives alone, lives alone, lives alone.
~
Jim Mentink’s publication history includes short fiction with Bending Genres, Pangyrus Literary Magazine, and forthcoming in the anthology, Dirigo Dreams. He was also a runner-up in the Eliza So ‘Finish Your Book’ fellowship and named an Honorable Mention in the Literary Taxidermy Short Story Contest. Additionally, he had the privilege of being invited to the Writers in Paradise conference in 2019, and was granted art residencies with Hewnoaks (2015) and Wildacres (2019)–all on the merit of his fiction. He is a current member of the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance.