FICTION
“Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”
You’re joking, I say, interrupting the steady bumping of the doctor’s bushy white mustache.
He used to hold my hand on Commonwealth. I wonder sometimes if he ever still thinks about my mouth.
None speak of how the streets collide in coarse seams like scars, the fresh cobbles unable to level with the ones shaken from their mortar by uncountable seasons.
When I was on earth I was a pretty good kid. I only got drunk when I needed to get drunk.
I know you shouldn’t keep wild animals as pets, but I’ve had the same spider in my bathroom sink for over two weeks.
It was spring and the hills were irradient, like they had to get out all their green in one short burst before catching fire.
I pushed my nose to within an inch from the rug. I sniffed, and sniffed, and I smelled something…not quite right, but I couldn’t place it.
To be encased, Clint had always thought, was foolishness. Why allow yourself to be open to such sorrow?
I’d never heard of anyone having a second baby right after the first one, but everything was so strange in those early days of motherhood that I just acted on instinct.
and on and on and on and on they ran, the Merry Men, running from a hundred and one arrows bought with taxes stolen twice over…
Another image rises to us both: A man hunched before a TV, watching historical documentaries, correcting incorrect facts. Rasputin was not a priest, damn it.
I loved Rena as much as a patient could love their gynecologist. We had tea together in her office. I cried when she asked how I was doing, and she showed me pictures of her terriers.
Hitting up homes peopled by those with nothing much to lose was an easy score. The less you had, the less likely you were to defend it. But this home was different. Its residents had a lot to lose and the will to fight for it.
She turns her back for me to fasten the rows of metal hooks. Why isn’t our small, tender freedom enough?
You’ve been dreading this day since the moment you found out you were pregnant—perhaps even before.
Share some abandon.
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