This piece is excerpted from a story in The Souvenir Museum by Elizabeth McCracken, a guest at Amherst College’s 2022 LitFest. Click here to purchase.
Even Punch and Judy were in love once. They knew the exact clockwise adjustment required to fit their preposterous profiles together for a kiss, her nose to the left of his nose, his chin to the left of her chin. Before the slapstick and the swazzle, the crocodile and the constable, before above all the baby: they’d known how to be sweet to each other.
