Things You Do for Love

by Kristen Tsetsi

On New Year's Eve, when Dan told Jenny he knew the world would end, she said, "What, you think the hand of God is going to reach down and crumple the planet into a ball and toss it into a galactic recycling bin?" He said, "I don't know," and then he told her he was in love. When he lifted his hand to touch Jenny's face, she backed away, climbed off, muttered, "You never loved me," and then laughed. She snorted, bending with the spasms, each rack of her body making the ends of her long hair sweep the floor. "The last day of my life," she said between bursts, "and you tell me you don't love me." She dropped to the floor with a bounce and laughed harder, then said - when she saw the look on his face - "The dirty truth is, Dan, there's a body left over when somebody dies."

6S

Kristen Tsetsi, whose full catalog is here, is a Connecticut news writer and the author of Homefront, a literary novel exploring with raw and honest intimacy the effects of media and politics on a woman whose lover goes to war. (These six sentences are a paraphrased excerpt of the new novel she's working on, "The Year of Dan Palace.")