Botanicals Nighttime Undereye Cream, .2 ounce, $65 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
After he left, everyone kept telling me that I looked tired. I was tired, but the truth was, I’d already been a single mother for years even with him there. So it was nothing new to stay up late, silence creeping over the house and exhaustion settling into my bones as I wandered around the house picking up this discarded sock here, packing lunches for tomorrow there.
When my year-end office bonus was a gift card to a beauty store instead of crisp cash, I smothered my disappointment in lotions and ointments to bring back the youthful beauty they told me had faded. This cream smelled like blackberries as I swiped it on under my eyes each exhausted evening, reminding me of my childhood carrying a pail into the woods to go berry-picking in elated excitement.
It worked, y’all. What keen sorcery is this? Away went the dark circles of despair. Co-workers started asking me if things had “settled down.” Men who were too young to be appropriate but old enough to know better started to dish out smiles and nods, and after six weeks of continual use, phone numbers. Bartenders mixed my drinks heavy and poured the leftover shaker into an extra glass on the evenings my ex had the girls. Soon I needed this eye cream to cover up for all the sleep I was lacking due to other activities.
I cannot recommend this product enough. The eyes are the window to the soul; that includes looking out as much as looking in. Cast off the dark shadows lurking under your eyes as thoroughly and efficiently as the ones looming over your life.
Stephanie King’s stories have won the Quarterly West Novella Prize and the Lilith Short Fiction Prize, and have also appeared in Entropy, Every Day Fiction, Loch Raven Review, and Lumen. Her education writing has appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Penn Capital-Star, and The Typescript. She received her MFA from Bennington and serves on the board of the Philadelphia Writers’ Conference.