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.
You’re joking, I say, interrupting the steady bumping of the doctor’s bushy white mustache.
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.
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.
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.
Mama sped along the highway, unbothered by bits of gravel that flew up from the front tires and struck the windshield of the sedan.
Sound engineers believe Alan Rickman possessed the perfect male voice. Early acting teachers told him he sounded like he was speaking from the back of a drainpipe.
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.
A man with a fistful of showbags said, “That cow sounds like a person trying to sound like a cow.”
The day does not conclude with the gentle exhale of the earth, but with Mother Superior flipping the hourglass over, again.
I’m dancing with my best friend’s husband, under the influence of his jaws and thighs.
