She walks with purpose over to a gangly tree and dumps our mother’s ashes at its base, then smears them around with the toe of her purple sneaker. Then she turns to face me as if to see if I’m going to object.
It’s infuriating to watch my peer group become less intelligent and more certain as time winds on. It’s supposed to go the other way. The more reality you experience, the less certain you should be.
Amber beads, electric blue billowing, jasmine. Here comes Louise, here she comes, into the kitchen.
Isn’t that what every artist wants? To do the thing in the way they want to do it and have everyone they care about want that for them, too?
The more of Elaine he had had, the less it felt like she belonged to him at all. Besides, he said, I have learned that even possession is a kind of disappointment.
A shocked reaction to this work really just makes my point about why I wrote this novel. It’s all so obvious, and I’m bored to death.
The rocking horse was hideous, though. It was the eyes. Wide open and vacant, set too high on that giant head. The foot-pegs had snapped off on Black Friday.
I find that autofiction writers tend to have great senses of humor, because without one they’d be too horrified to tell the truth.
While we wait for the fruits of deliberation, my mother asks me to get personal. I tell her I’ve been nightmaring about getting kidnapped and beating the captor up.
You wouldn’t go back in time, but you would stay forever in the present moment. At least that’s how the dream went.