Outskirts Press, INC.

Loneliness, what the old woman and the teenager have in common.

An old woman sits reading as she has done each evening for years since the death of her husband. The night is rainy, dark, but she Ignores the weather until she hears a plaintive knock at her door. Too plaintive to be a threat. A wet, red-headed , dirty teenager stands on her porch, the kind of street kid Alicia crosses the road to avoid on her occasional visits downtown. “Hello, Grandma,” the boy says. Alicia’s dead husband Fred, still lurking ghostlike in her life, offers advice. Don’t open the door. But she does. When it is all over, Alicia has learned what love is. So has Moon, and Fred smiles goodbye and fades away.