Lovers' Quarrel

She listens as he plays the piano in the living room downstairs — a peculiar tune, one she doesn't know. She gets out of bed and goes to join him, to finally say the thing.

The room is dark, the piano draped in red velvet. She hears it still, the odd tune.

She walks forward. He is there, on the sofa with pillow and blanket, asleep. She watches him, listening to the tune, but trying now to imagine it as it ought to be. The music stops. His eyes open.

"What are you doing?" she asks.

"Playing the piano," he answers.

"Lovers' Quarrel," was in the December, 2010 issue of Luna Station Quarterly (a themed issue of "drabbles").

Sandra Irwin holds an A.B. in English from Vassar College, a J.D. from the University of San Diego, and she is a 2009 graduate of the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California, where she received a full teaching fellowship. At USC Sandra concentrated in fiction and also studied poetry. Ten of her poems have appeared in recent months or are forthcoming in Cold Mountain Review, Shot Glass Journal, Avocet: A Journal of Nature Poems, and Indigo Rising Magazine.