FLASH
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.
A man with a fistful of showbags said, “That cow sounds like a person trying to sound like a cow.”
Allanson looked out of the viewport, at the ragtag flotilla of ships trailing behind, some of them slow to catch up. It was to be expected with the little time that they’d had to cobble the fleet together.
At twenty, the world is yours because you’re beautiful. But never acknowledge your beauty, or it makes you a bitch.
He used to hold my hand on Commonwealth. I wonder sometimes if he ever still thinks about my mouth.
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.
You’re joking, I say, interrupting the steady bumping of the doctor’s bushy white mustache.
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.
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.
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…
The day does not conclude with the gentle exhale of the earth, but with Mother Superior flipping the hourglass over, again.
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.