Safe Love
by Lydia Davis
She was in love with her son's pediatrician. Alone out in the country -- could anyone blame her.
There was an element of grand passion in this love. It was also a safe thing. The man was on the other side of a barrier. Between him and her: the child on the examining table, the office itself, the staff, his wife, her husband, his stethoscope, his beard, her breasts, his glasses, her glasses, etc.
Many of these little prose pieces that Lydia Davis writes I would be inclined to call prose poems, but she insists that they are stories. And who am I to argue with Lydia Davis?
"Safe Love" is from her collection Break It Down.
by Lydia Davis
She was in love with her son's pediatrician. Alone out in the country -- could anyone blame her.
There was an element of grand passion in this love. It was also a safe thing. The man was on the other side of a barrier. Between him and her: the child on the examining table, the office itself, the staff, his wife, her husband, his stethoscope, his beard, her breasts, his glasses, her glasses, etc.
Many of these little prose pieces that Lydia Davis writes I would be inclined to call prose poems, but she insists that they are stories. And who am I to argue with Lydia Davis?
"Safe Love" is from her collection Break It Down.
