I cannot stop licking picture frames. Wood frames, plastic frames, circular metallic frames, rectangular ceramic frames, leathery antiques, dusty collectibles, South American frames, frames with inspirational quotations inscribed on them, I want to lick them all.
On the night I met my ex-fiancée’s parents, her father walked into his study to find me mid-lick with a frame circumscribing a portrait of his ostensibly Confederate great-great-grandfather. I tried to apologize, but my tongue had got caught on a splinter.
My therapist tells me we all get to decide what it means to live A Happy Life. My priest disagrees. He says, “Even if Hitler had felt warm and fuzzy standing over the carnage of a concentration camp, he was not happy. Happiness is an objective state comprising the virtues that make us truly human.…
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The woman in front of me has an emerald green pea coat, so naturally I am back in
Ireland. He said driving on the wrong side of the road was no big deal, so long as it
wasn’t a narrow country road with a wide tractor puffing past. But we smoothed
everything over with thick beer, national radio stories about “those bad boys from Cork,”
and merry music at the pub that played all night.
It’s so humid and uncomfortable down here, and now I’m back in Costa Rica and our
jungle-side room with the light dusting of mold on the walls. “The parrots! The monkeys!
The green sideways-running lizards!” I told him on the plane, just before I napped on his
arm and he played with my hair.…
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They walk through the park holding each other’s hands like crazy glue had met their palms. Ben picks up an object he finds buried beneath the tall grass. “For you, the perfect pinecone,” he says. Jane laughs, holds the pinecone to her nose, and breaths in the scent from yesterday’s rainfall. She scrunches her nose and sneezes, loosening a few seeds from the pinecone. The seeds sneak down into her blouse and nuzzle in between her small breasts. “Bless you!” said Ben.
The next day Ben calls Jane only to be teased by the voice of her answering machine. Three days later, still no answer. Ben questions whether he did or said something to upset her. He jumps into his car and rushes over to Jane’s house.…
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The cool marine layer had crept over the city through the night, seeping its way into cracked windows, tugging at the edges of blankets. Highway headlights dimmed a little, and the comfort of shorts and shirts soon turned into jeans and jackets, maybe a scarf. Scarves, Henry thought, what a joke. Henry made his way through the lobby towards the elevator doors, suitcase in one hand, rolled blueprints in the other. His visits to Los Angeles felt tropical; a nice getaway from the sleek and sting of a New York winter. He sought them. He sought any opportunity to venture west.
The elevator doors slid open. He began to read through the small calendar he kept in his pocket as he made his way up to the 28th floor.…
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A man sits across from me. He speaks of taming wild thirsts; my fierce, unholy hungers. Of bread and blood. And meat and seed.
He crusades to turn my eyes inward and soul outward. He wants to see the prospect of nature everted and poke at the diseased spots of its pink, fleshy core.
I listen to the living word carried on his musky breath – like the dusty old books on his shelves. It smells like nothing has lived or stirred there in a long time. He spits when he pontificates.
A framed certificate confirms an ordination for God, but I keep expecting a demonic, bifurcated tongue to emerge. Oh God, don’t think of tongues.
He leans forward and asks if I’ve known the smell of sulfur.…
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