FLASH
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.
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.
A man with a fistful of showbags said, “That cow sounds like a person trying to sound like a cow.”
He used to hold my hand on Commonwealth. I wonder sometimes if he ever still thinks about my mouth.
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.
You’re joking, I say, interrupting the steady bumping of the doctor’s bushy white mustache.
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.
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 day does not conclude with the gentle exhale of the earth, but with Mother Superior flipping the hourglass over, again.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
