Small Talk

by Gina Cardarelli

"How are you?" she asked with a smile every morning. The girl gave the standard answer, unwilling and unable to tell the truth. The young girl believed it was small talk on the woman’s part, and that she had no place burdening her with personal issues. The woman wishes she had detected it earlier. She wishes she had questioned her deeper, prodded further, done something. She wishes that she wasn’t standing among a black sea and shoveling loose dirt over a box right now.

6S

Gina Cardarelli is a freshman at St. John Fisher College.