“In the city of concrete and dust he biked to work in the morning and back home in the afternoon. In the evening he ate soup made of beef broth, cabbage, chili, garlic, a few slices of sweet pear, a hard boiled egg and cut buckwheat noodles, while he watched the news on the chubby TV in his main room.”
in Atticus Review
Thank you very much to editor Katrina Gray for giving my story a good home.
Thank you also to Chris Galvin Nguyen for sharing of her knowledge of tea for the story.
(Image from Wikimedia Commons)
Berit Ellingsen 
Berit, Autumn Story is outstanding. You address some heavy issues in this piece. These are problems that just don’t seem to go away. How sad, too, that the poor are the ones who have no choice but to eat poisoned food. How sad that people must make choices such as your protagonist, to stop going out with friends in order to buy better food, and yet the food is still not good enough. Finally, must we all move back to the countryside and eat off the land? The return to a simpler life would be lovely for some, not so simple for others.
Thanks for the nod in my direction concerning tea. It’s an honour to have contributed in some small way to the creation of this story.
It’s an honor to be able to add from your deep knowledge of tea. I think it made a lot of difference to the story.
Thank you again for letting me do that. And thank you very much for reading the story so thoroughly and for commenting on it. You are right on all views of it. 🙂