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I’m sitting at a red light falling in love with the passenger in the next car. She’s cute and small and irrepressible, but mostly hidden by the headrest, and dark and coy and mysterious and of completely indeterminate age, and smart! When she turns her head just so, contemplating her driver, I can see enough, through the tinted glass and the relentless glare of the bird-stained windshield, to know she’s curious and contemplative. A brilliant browline crowns a clear and deepset eye of sparkling darkness. I feel you judging me. Love at one car distance is every bit as legitimate as love at a distance of one breath mingling with another, near enough for our tongues to snap like wit. I’ve had the skin-on-skin sort. The varsity variety. I’m not sure it was any better. I’ll catch her eye when I pass alongside, if this maddening gridlock doesn’t unhinge me. I want to tell her this traffic is the worst since cops invented red lights to raise ticket revenues, right? I know. Observations like that should win her heart unless my heart is lying. She’ll be mine to amuse and disappoint in a minute or a mile. But first, eliminate the other driver, who doesn’t deserve or appreciate her. How’s his traffic material? Green light, finally. As our cars pull even, her driver’s head blocks her from offering me her face. To pledge in my direction. With her eyes. That I am not alone in love. Her driver will concede our love is destiny, or regret it. He moves aside, I believe, in surrender; I see her; she is stunning. The most magnificent springer spaniel, dark of brow and bright of eye, purebred of champions clearly, this one, raised from greatness for greatness, vivacious and irrepressible, age approximately three.
Original Copyright © February 10, 2000
Revised Copyright © February 06, 2026
My stupid sister says she wants to be a Sudanese baby in Darfur so Daddy will love her. Now she’s gone AWOL. Mommy says when we find her this time, she’ll wish she was a motherless orphan. It’s just emotion talking; we’re famously emotional. Daddy’s famous for loving children in Darfur. The kids who disappear. He gets their pictures into the paper. He gets their names “out there.” He leaves the door to his office open, even on sick days, but we know not to disturb him when he’s working, which is always. Even with the interviewer, he was eating just enough to take his pills and with his other hand he was sending emails about missing children. He took over my room for his sick bed and most of my sister’s room for his files and folders. Do you see why I feel like a refugee? she said, last time she left. Daddy gets up early when he goes to bed at all. He says, Evil doesn’t sleep and neither can the truth, and someone who could leak the truth is always at a desk in another time zone. But he should sleep. He’s not getting better, even with our marrow. Me, I’d like a regular birthday with candles and presents. I want to change the world, too, but closer to home. I told the interviewer: Everyone can do something. If teaching Shakespeare is helpful, I’ll do that. See what he has to say about politics. What I should have said: If strongly-worded emails could stop kidnappings, I’d drop out of the eighth grade and save whole villages before lunch. Maybe my stupid sister’s gone to Africa this time. Daddy can get her picture in the paper. Mommy’s crying and I have to wonder why wouldn’t she be.
Original Copyright © January 15, 2007 as Daddy Loves Darfur
Revised Copyright © January 22, 2026 as Daddy Loves Sudanese Babies
Very Short Novels 