We Love in Small Moments: a Collection on Love Review

We Love in Small Moments: a Collection on Love is the debut chapbook by Melissa Boles published by Emerge Literary Journal as part of their Magpies Series. In these 14 stories, Boles looks at many different aspects of love – the main two themes being romantic love and parental love – and the myriad ways this can be experienced.

Many of the stories in the collection are about characters leaving. In the opening story, ‘Wishing’, a couple makes love, but the ending is a little melancholy, with the impression that he wants more than she can give. “Ana is the most intriguing woman he’s ever dated, though he wishes that, just once, she would still be in his arms when he wakes up.”

‘Left in Valdosta’ encompasses two different types of leaving. There is the immediate leaving in the story: a man and his daughter are visiting the man’s dad and their visit is nearing its end. Neither the young girl nor the granddad want the visit to end, both calling out from the garden to “[s]tay a while longer” or “[f]or five more minutes!” The man, watching his dad and daughter play, is washing up at the end of the visit. He’s scrubbing tobacco spit out of a Valdosta state mug which until his wife left “was just as crisp and white as the day they bought it.” Resigned at the state of the mug or the length of the visit, or both, he sits with a whisky and waits.   

“It’s hot out and I’m sweating and I don’t want to be here, but his son is playing.” This opening sentence of ‘Home Plate’ is pitch-perfect and Boles deftly portrays the situation. The new girlfriend looks at the other people sitting on the bleachers and makes the observation that: “[a]ll the moms have matching handbags and matching up-dos and I am out of place but still here, clapping and cheering when he does and not actually caring what is happening.” There seems to be a deep sadness in this line; the feeling of being out of place, but trying to fit in, however only on the surface as deep down you know you never will. 

In contrast to some of the grittier pieces about couples, ‘Hormones’ and ‘Toe Shoes’ are soft and sentimental stories about babies yet to be born. The interaction between the parents and the child in ‘Hormones’ is very realistic, the young girl puffing out her stomach to be like her mother, waiting for her father’s affection. In ‘Toe Shoes’ “[h]is wife finds the necklace while pulling out Christmas decor, the sterling silver toe shoes glistening in the sunlight as she runs her thumb over their outline, remembering how they used to feel on her feet.” Instead of suspected infidelity, the necklace is not for another woman, but their future daughter.

We Love in Small Moments: a Collection on Love is striking and unflinching in language and exploration, containing stories that will stay with you long after you’ve finished reading them. More importantly, maybe, reading this chapbook will make you breathe a little easier, your belief in love restored.

Melissa Boles (she/her) is a writer, storyteller, and impatient optimist. Originally from the Pacific Northwest, she is currently residing in East Tennessee with her two friends and their four dogs. Her writing focuses on art, mental health, love, and human connection, and she believes that storytelling is humanity’s most incredible miracle. Melissa has been published in multiple literary journals and on several websites and is in the Pages Penned in Pandemic Collective (published January 2021). If she’s not writing, she is reading or helping people tell their stories through her day job in marketing and communications. You can find her online at melissaboles.com.