After swapping inner voices with me, all you say is, “Everything is so much softer.”
Which I take to mean quieter and gentler—the kind of change you were hoping for.
Then, all smiles and bright eyes, you thank me and head off to take care of other Saturday plans. I linger on the park bench, to get Aeterna’s take on the new arrangement.
“Thanks for helping out,” I think to her, using her voice as we agreed I would. “How does it feel so far?”
“Like I’m hearing myself or who I once was,” she answers in my mind with your inner voice. “How do I sound?”
“Firm,” I answer. “Like bark—tough and furrowed.”
“I hope it’s just bark and no bite,” she quips—though only half successfully with your inner voice dampening her usual levity to a low-key seriousness.…
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I’d left several phone messages but apparently, my godfather didn’t care to connect.
He lived in the Midwest, where he and my father had grown up and joined the service together, but after my baptism at old St. Pius, which I don’t remember, he dropped out of Dad’s life. According to Dad. Now, Dad had died. I thought Bill, my godfather, should know, and I wanted to tell him in person. And meet him for the first time.
I drove a thousand miles back to my birthplace. There I staked out the humble brick home where Bill and his wife, Frannie (who was not my godmother), had lived their entire adult lives.
It was a summer evening with cicadas roaring in the humid trees like evacuation traffic.…
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The music venues that were spared have opened their doors again. I dial the number of a friend to arrange to meet at the hall at the end of the boardwalk. There’s a concert later: four acts, each renowned. It’s important to arrive there early to avoid the crowds, though I might be overthinking the whole thing. As of this date, the death toll has surpassed one million, and most people aren’t that willing to take the risk. It’s safer to catch a stream. A woman picks up, and I leave a message with her. It’s loud, and the connection is poor. She speaks with a foreign accent. People are driving mechanized vehicles on the wood or composite wood. No one has any respect anymore. Nonsense.…
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Dear new homeowner,
(Do you know that homeowner is the only instance of the word meow in the dictionary that doesn’t relate to the cat noise.)
Welcome to 163 Oak Street. Please enjoy this bottle of wine and a $50 gift certificate to Luigi’s down the street. The pizza from there is just okay, but it’s fast and cheap and it will do for the average Thursday evening dinner when your whole family has a project or meeting due the next day and everyone is cranky as hell about it.
I think you should be able to leave gifts for the people who replace you when you move. If houses had souls (and who knows, maybe they do) the gifts would ease the transition between occupants.…
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“Ahyeon-dong is a motherless neighborhood,” Mother says as she looks out the narrow window of our banjiha.[1] Half-underground, we can just make out the legs of a group of guys wobbling around and spitting on the street. One guy drops his cigarette, stomping on it like he’s dancing.
“Go on up to the store,” Mother says firmly. “Make sure everything’s okay up there.”
From my mattress, I run up the staircase crammed right next to me. Within moments, I’m standing behind the counter at Paddy-Go, where I stumble to find the light switch hidden behind the mini-microwave we use for our instant rice on weekday mornings. But today’s Saturday, so we’re in less of a rush, especially since we don’t have the usual herd of mothers stumbling in at five AM to buy last-minute school lunch items for their children.…
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So, this guy’s breaking my friend’s yo-yo, which has drawn considerable attention since we’ve been in the Maple Leaf Bar on Oak Street in New Orleans. We’re poor grad students. Won the tickets from our campus radio station. We nibbled on some homegrown psilocybin about an hour ago but agreed we felt nothing as we walked in the door.
I merely raise my eyebrows in disapproval when this guy says, “Oh MAN! No way that’s a yo-yo!” and holds his head in his hands as if he just discovered the earth was round. My friend is a kind soul and hands over the red butterfly.
I look at the guy, who’s straight out of the Beach Boys’ Endless Summer soundtrack, fucking my friend’s yo-yo up good.…
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I look up, where forgotten things go, saying, after a pause, And a robe of some kind.
The detective nods. what about his demeanor?
I look up again, Well, he seemed, I don’t know the word.
mad? angry? upset?
Those are the same things.
sad? depressed? unhappy? heavyhearted?
Heavyhearted?
disappointed.
That’s it.
he was disappointed? about what?
About everything. But also me.
how do you know?
I could feel it.
he touched you?
No. I mean, not like that. He looked at me.…
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