Basics: fed and watered. The sun shines. I can feel the bobbing of this uncertain sea. When I come to the surface, I breathe in and if – if – I can stay on the surface a while, I remember I am breathing and isn’t it pleasant to have the sun on my face and how cool is it not to be drowning? I have been more me this last …
Summer does not mean free time and a break from work. Professors still have things to do. It’s just unstructured…not really the best environment for me. There’s that thing-I-have-to-do and the-shiny-thing-I-wanted-to-do and the-house-that-is-chaos. But the paper is done. I just haven’t hit “send”. Leaving it until I forget the sentences so I can see it with unclouded eyes. With that done and after investigating where else I may submit it, …
Beatrice, a capuchin, says, “You are insignificant.” Beatrice says, “No one cares about you.” Beatrice says, “They expect nothing from you, why bother at all.” Beatrice is pissing me off. Adder, the lemur, thinks this is just fine. She rejoices in rage. She whispers, “Anger is powerful. Fuck that simpering bitch. Stoke that fire. Let’s get it on.” I’d rather that they both shut up and let me sleep instead …
It was a mistake to go o the attic. I had mistaken the quiet for…what? resolution? That maybe they were gone? Freddie is chittering, “titties! boobs!” Stupid little thing. We’re okay. He wings overhead as I hit the top of the stairs. I track him as he goes round three times and closes the door to the birdcage where he sleeps. Guess he just wanted me to know he was …
She has three fingers and one thumb on each hand — just like a cartoon. Her Maker took shortcuts with her, it seems. There are other ways she is not of us, her hair is too white; her skin, too dark. The gray eyes are some compromise of extremes. When I need a view well outside of myself, I go to her. Nothing like an alien perspective to put …
“You’re gorgeous.” The gut response is to argue the point. The list of what-is-not-gorgeous and possibly-downright-ugly springs to mind. That is, her mind. What she says instead is, “Thank you.” and walks away.
A charm invests a face Imperfectly beheld. The lady dare not lift her veil For fear it be dispelled. But peers beyond her mesh, And wishes, and denies, ‘Lest interview annul a want That image satisfies. -Emily Dickinson You do know that what you see is carefully edited. So much is behind the veil. So much is left out. Context. Wars, scandals, legislation. So many words. No need to report …
With each step, the hallway doubles in length. Behind each door is the possibility of the man. Maybe behind each door. She can’t escape him. Turning around doesn’t seem to matter. “Am I turning at all?” “You’re thinking.” The hall recedes and disappears into a spoon in a cup.
Everything has something that makes them tick. Sometimes it’s a battery. Sometimes that battery is dead. Thought there were words enough there to get a story going. Sometimes that battery is dead. So there is the review of the day, the asking of feeling, maybe a revisiting of memory and looking for holes. Perhaps it is safe to visit the box labeled “dead to me” for some thing, some spark, …
“You’re thinking.” he said. Coming back to the physical world is swimming to the surface from the bottom of a swamp. She lets it go. Reluctantly. That pearl of thought is lost. Never very good at holding on to ephemera, even the stuff that lives inside her mind. Cute. Okay. He can be forgiven for interrupting that particular reverie. Seems unimportant now. It turns out it really was important, but …
