FLASH
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.
Mama sped along the highway, unbothered by bits of gravel that flew up from the front tires and struck the windshield of the sedan.
A man with a fistful of showbags said, “That cow sounds like a person trying to sound like a cow.”
It was spring and the hills were irradient, like they had to get out all their green in one short burst before catching fire.
The weeks go like this: accepting, horny, hopeful, sad. I’m four different people trying to establish one perspective on a major life event – on the creation of life itself.
Kate Winslet always reminded me of my mom. Maybe that’s why, even to this day, I get defensive of Rose from Titanic when people call her stupid or shallow…
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.
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.
At the end of the meeting, the villagers agreed to contribute shillings and pounds to sponsor Elochi to a university in America.
When Laika the space dog comes back, bulleted to earth in a tiny white escape pod that dissolves upon opening, nobody can believe it.
At twenty, the world is yours because you’re beautiful. But never acknowledge your beauty, or it makes you a bitch.
I reached for my invoice, which Dr. George, holding it between thumb and forefinger as if it were a soiled diaper, dropped into my hand.
The new octopus at the children’s aquarium was named Athena, and as we waited for her to emerge, I thought of the almost-too-faint second line on the pregnancy test three days before.