The Price of a Story

By Brett Ann Stanciu

My former husband threatened, “I’ll snap your scrawny fingers if you write about me.”

That moonless night, he climbed a tree and peered into our daughters’ bedroom window.

I screamed into the darkness, “Stop scaring our children!”

I went in the house, shut the door. I wrote and sold my book. Spilled secrets about my drinking, his violence.

“Can happiness emerge from grief?” I posed.

Moved our daughters from that mouse-ridden, dirt-road cabin into town.

I bought a solid village house beneath a streetlight, with a reservoir view. I sleep outside on summer nights, dew drenching my eyelids. Alone, or not.