Who Is Sylvia?

She is trying to remember whether there is a third verse. And she is crying. She has been crying for a while. Not because her mother’s name is Sylvia. But because she was friends with neither Schubert nor Shakespeare so that beautiful song was not written for her.







Marion Cohen has two books of flash-fiction (that is, if that’s the same thing as parables): Parables for a Rainy Day, and Sizes Only Slightly Distinct. Her books total 27, including two memoirs about spousal chronic illness, a poetry book about the experience of math, and one about thrift-shopping.

You can see more of her work in 50/50 and 3.3