FLASH
You’re joking, I say, interrupting the steady bumping of the doctor’s bushy white mustache.
The day does not conclude with the gentle exhale of the earth, but with Mother Superior flipping the hourglass over, again.
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.
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…
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.
I’m dancing with my best friend’s husband, under the influence of his jaws and thighs.
It was spring and the hills were irradient, like they had to get out all their green in one short burst before catching fire.
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.
At twenty, the world is yours because you’re beautiful. But never acknowledge your beauty, or it makes you a bitch.
When Laika the space dog comes back, bulleted to earth in a tiny white escape pod that dissolves upon opening, nobody can believe it.
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 know you shouldn’t keep wild animals as pets, but I’ve had the same spider in my bathroom sink for over two weeks.
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.