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.
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.
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.
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…
She woke up in a classroom. Chalkboard at her head, corkboard at her feet. As she adjusted to the dusk lightβwas it 5 a.m. or 5 p.m.?βshe discovered she wasnβt in the setting of a recurring dream sheβd been having. The βI fell asleep at the desk and missed the most important test of a lifetimeβ dream. No, she was in a hotel room. The Eaton. The card pinned to the corkboard wall held her personalized key to the rooftop gym.Β As she pressed her body against the hotel room window, the humidity moved through the glass and brushed up…
We were going to scrape that possum off the road because somebody had to do it. Thatβs what our Dads said, trucks rattling in neighboring driveways, complaining about the borough workers, asking nobody in particular where their taxes went, if not to cleaning up a dead possum right in the middle of the intersection. The Biology teacher had even joked about dissecting it for class, because it was the intersection right next to the high school and so every student and every teacher saw it, curled up and still in the mornings then somehow more freshly dead in the afternoons….
Passion turned thirteen in the middle of July, and when the first light of this day, this special day, woke her and sweetened the darkness like milk stirred into coffee, Passion divided like a cell, turned into two Passions, a watching Passion, a watched Passion. Passion sensed Passion, keenly and with great interest. Herself. Her self.Β Passion thought, Here curls Passion on her side, under a worn sheet, her gaze turned to the paling window. The curve of her hip is slight. The arm hugging the pillow is slim. And there rises the sun. Pay attention, Passion, Passion ordered. Smell…
She lay huddled and naked in bed, her skin a grayish black. Her brittle hair broke off at the slightest touch. I rested my head on her rigid body, hearing nothing. I inhaledβa dull, mossy smell. I called Dad. He came over right away. He tapped Mom a few times, then knocked on her like he was knocking on a door. He placed his ear against her open lips. βGet me a flashlight.β I brought him one. He shined light into her mouth. βWhat do you see?β He grabbed a cigarette from the pack in his back pocket. He…