Pena Simion

“The time of dangling insects arrived. White houses with caterpillars dangling from the eaves. White stones in driveways. You can walk at night down the middle of the street and hear women talking on the telephone. Warmer weather produces voices in the dark. They are talking about their adolescent sons. How big, how fast. The sons are almost frightening. The quantities they eat. The way they loom in doorways. These are the days that are full of wormy bugs. They are in the grass, stuck to the siding, hanging in the hair, hanging from the trees and eaves, stuck to the window screens. The women talk long-distance to grandparents of growing boys. They share the Trimline phone, beamish old folks in hand-knit sweaters on fixed incomes.

What happens to them when the commercial ends?”
― Don DeLillo, White Noise

“In our part of the country, spring passes quickly. If you haven't been out for five days, you find the trees in bud. If you don't see the trees for another five days, you discover that they've put out leaves. In another five days, they're so green you wouldn't recognize them. It makes you wonder: Can these be the same trees I saw a few days before? And you answer yourself: Of course they are. That's how fast spring goes by. You can almost see it. From far away it comes racing toward you. And when it reaches you it whispers in your ear, 'I'm here,' and then runs swiftly on.

Spring - what a rush it's in. Every place seems to be urging it to come. If it delays its arrival a bit, the sunlight fades and the earth turns to stone. Trees especially can't endure any delay. Let spring dally even briefly on the way, and many lives are lost. ("Spring In A Small Town")”
― Xiao Hong, Selected Stories of Xiao Hong