1.
The master bedroom is on the first floor. It has five walls: four of plaster and one of fire that engulfs our mother. We have been told this violates National Fire Protection Association codes and standards.
Thatβs the best thing about film, or novels, that soup of experience that swamps you, that isnβt your usual, or known experience, your lived experience.
He wasnβt afraid to crack a grin, in the most colorful sweater, a bejeweled crown atop his head, raising a glass of his favorite cocktail to let the world know he is still kicking it, even in deathβs hallows.
The old say to the young: π΅π©π¦ πΈπ°π³ππ₯ πͺπ΄ πΊπ°πΆπ³ π°πΊπ΄π΅π¦π³. And when the old men speak these words, they are sincere, because the world has been delivered unto them, and the world is now theirs to bestow.
“I’m not perfect.”
“Nobody is…”
I breathed in the piss scent of the alleyway through the black knit. Then my face emerged from beyond the shirt, and I stood facing the dead end of the alley holding my breasts with one forearm.
i thought i was prepared for friends and strangers to be able to glimpse some of my innermost thoughts, but sometimes i get a wave of anxiety: is it too much?
She rode her pony here and he stinks like old socksβthereβs no bond better than between a woman and her pony. I note she wears striped leotards right up to her loincloth.
At two in the afternoon, she hears a bang like a gunshot. Eugenia peeks out her bedroom window. Whatβs visible to her: the Tangsβ barbecue pit, their garden shed, their kidney-shaped pool. She counts dead oval leaves trapped on the water.Β Must be the Tang brothers lighting firecrackers behind the shed again, she thinks. Theyβre always plotting to give the birds a heart attack. Forefingers stuffed in her ears, she wonders why the brothers arenβt studying, and from where do they get their sadistic toys? But if the Gohs across the street managed to smuggle in flamingos to chain to…
Iβm in class reading Hamlet and contemplating suicide on a cliffside. Reciting poetic verses about family curses and hiding behind a curtain with a knife. My phone buzzes, and I lean forward to read something out of a Shakespearean tragedy. She killed someone. The words glow like the flame of a lit match and I spring from my desk chair, repelled by their heat. Faces swivel toward me, judgement radiating from their eyes. Iβm an injured animal at the center of a swarm about to be mauled by my own pack. My heartbeat radiates in my ears: glove to a…