FICTION
“Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”
On the first day of our new life together, my husband realized that I was not interested in theoretical debate. He said it was okay by him and went out to get some pancake mix.
Sitting at the bar on Pacific Avenue. With the seashells in the walls. Same bartender from last year, still here, making the same lethal Mai Tais.
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 don’t know why I was still talking about the rapture. I certainly didn’t believe in it. Regardless, it remained a thief…
Ever since your son brought you here, things have been different. He was crying when he dropped you off. You still don’t know why.
It was spring and the hills were irradient, like they had to get out all their green in one short burst before catching fire.
It all started with the curse of my tits. Women’s bodies are cursed. Everyone tries to look at them, everyone tries to ignore them.
And then he feels that familiar sensation of drifting—when his body untethers from the material world and he soon dissolves into a fine, floating mist that evaporates into the atmosphere.
Darkness always follows.
Before the headaches began, I thought myself sturdy: firm in my foundations, set square like a saltbox house.
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 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.
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…
The most entertaining thing about Miguel is that when he was 13 he dislocated his shoulder playing basketball and can now pop it in and out of place. There is nothing particularly interesting about Miguel.
A tortured simper uncoils itself across my mouth as I open another bottle of Penis wine.
