FLASH
It was spring and the hills were irradient, like they had to get out all their green in one short burst before catching fire.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
I’m dancing with my best friend’s husband, under the influence of his jaws and thighs.
At the end of the meeting, the villagers agreed to contribute shillings and pounds to sponsor Elochi to a university in America.