Francesca Bossert's Blog

 

 

I remember how

I bewitched him that evening

Swathed in my shy and slinky —

In a burst of sudden, inexplicable bravado,

How I tilted my chin just so,

Lips caught between a smile

And the smidgeon of a pout

As I flicked my lashes down, then up again,

Skewering him with a slanted glance of my emerald eyes.

 

I remember how

He gasped

As I rose from my seat

Slow, deliberate —

In whispers of

Silk and cashmere

Misted with

Rive Gauche.

 

I remember how I turned

Slowly —

Feeling the burn of his ice-blue eyes on me.

 

Sharp intake of breath.

 

I smiled at him over my shoulder

As heat simmered in my belly  —

The promise of

 

Heat.

You will not find me today.Pathetically apathetic, I lie, a blanketed puddle of despondency,depleted by the outlandish misfirings of my muddled body.There is a leak in my stiff upper lipAnd my joie-de-vivre has taken a sick day.Outside a storm swirls.Snap.

Un rouge à lèvres qui m’illumine,Des extensions de cils sublimes,Un teint lissé made in Korea,Douleurs cachées, pommettes blushées,Super crevée, toujours lookée.Mes cheveux brillent ? Glamour survie !Mes yeux vous racontent mille mensongesPendant que mes osBrûlent en silenceEt mes médocs proscrivent mes larmes,Malgré mon chaos intestinal.

But she says it’s normal, happens to her all the time…

 

Whenever I sit at my desk

Determined to do this,

I’m certain in five minutes flat

I’ll think I should do that.

 

I pivot to the other task,

And get on with my that.

But then the this I left behind

Insists I’ve lost my mind.

 

Whereupon I switch back again

To tend my nagging this,

But that keeps jumping up and down,

Convinced he’s more profound.

 

All day I pootle back and forth,

My laptop feels quite sloshed.

Is that in this or this in that?

Oh no, it’s gone and crashed!

 

I find myself -Finally! -Beyond the brim,My heart racing,Lingering In that delicious place Where story and wordEmbrace with abandon,Rolling over and over in the surf,Giddy with excitement,High on possibility.

It’s not too late for one last summer read, to make the season last. I began my summer with @Francesca Bossert’s wonderful romcom, Just Like A Movie and it was the perfect beach read. I wait all year for those summer reads, something lighter and frothier than the type of reading I do in fall or winter. And invariably that includes a romcom, the kind that takes you by the hand and with two really great characters destined to be together and all the plot twists the author conjures up for them, at last they get their big “movie” moment.

Add humor to the mix and I’m going to keep lying on my beach blanket, sunburn be damned. Just Like a Movie kept that promise. Set in Ibiza, with newly divorced heroine Gemma, 37, flying to Ibiza for the bohemian, creative lifestyle she’s always craved, escaping the airless marriage that kept her captive.

When the novel opens, she’s just getting settled on her flight from Barcelona when Cupid decides to put her heart throb in the seat next to her, the gorgeous Spanish superstar singer Emilio Caliente on whom she’s long had a crush. As the story unfolds, it had a little of the flavor of the 2024 film, “The Idea of You” starring Anne Hathaway, but Gemma is entirely her own person and she makes me laugh and feel for her predicaments on every page.

It’s Gemma’s first-person voice that grabs me, like your funny, self-deprecating, vulnerable and totally relatable friend. She’s endearing. And so I’m rooting for her all the way as fate has a field day in throwing rocks at the Emilio-Gemma romance.

The novel made me laugh out loud and rip through its pages to find out what happens next. My favorite element, though? Just like Francesca herself, it has so much heart.

Review posted today by AMY BROWN, on Substack

 

My theme song

was the title track

from The Breakfast Club.

I played it over and over -

metaphorically speaking of course -

But hardly anyone

got the message.

 

Lately I feel more

Llke a track from

The Police’s debut.

Oh, please!

not Message In A Bottle -

we’re far too old

for lonely island drama.

 

Mind you,

even that would be better

than static.

 

Meanwhile,

my body plays me

Loony Tunes

on a loop

in Surround Sound.

 

If I could runaway,

Go somewhere

Far away from me

Myself

Personally,

Find another me,

Today,

I would run.

 

There is nothing quite like

The magic stairway to anywhere

Born of the alchemy of crisp paper,

A smooth-gliding pen,

And your vivid imagination.

 

Pick up your pen –

Take the trip of a lifetime!

 

ballerinas, terrified

In covert ops,

Wind slither-crawls down the mountain,

A meteorological army raid,

Building to

A destructive stampede.

 

Coarse-breathed boots on the ground

Wrench sun-zapped leaves

From fried sockets,

Forcing pirouettes and curtsies

From flower-ballerinas, terrified,

Just because they can.

 

Shrubs gesticulate in protest –

Surely such heinous behaviour won’t be tolerated?

Surely summer won’t be such a pushover?

 

Surely?