Marcie had just watched a polar bear starve on television and describing the stumbling, saggy beast to her grandfather wasn’t easy. Her assertions came in a rush of breath. If the magnificent, lumbering polar bears were in danger, what would happen to the people? Not to mention the penguins and the seals and the spikey, mud-colored fish who couldn’t handle a PH balance over 8.1, but it was 8.2 of late because of all the plastic straws and the acid rain.
“I met a polar bear once,” said her grandfather. “Nasty thing.”
Marcie’s grandfather, who was prone to exaggeration and suffered from a nip of dementia, listed the bear’s attributes, starting with its fiendish, river pebble eyes and finishing with an account of the way it had lumbered home, disinterested towards an old man.…
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You died during the winter, while wet snow melted and mixed on our faces with the tears we all cried. It was hard to image the summer, but that’s the way I want her to remember you if she can.
When winter stops biting, and the sting of your death has softened some, and we can walk barefoot in the shallow tidal pools that form like they sometimes do, I know she’ll be looking for you, the way she looks for the sand crabs. She can never catch them, not the way you could.
For you, they crawled into your hand and did tricks and skips and ended with flips as you poured them into buckets, so we could watch them swim in umbrella shade of the summer sun. …
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The floors have been mopped with vinegar and hot water, so there is nothing left from before this moment to provide me with a steady sense of origin. I’ve been showered and soaked and scrubbed with tea tree oil so anything that “I remember” can be excused as only confusion because how could I possibly? There is no proof.
But I’m not wrong. With the bugs as my witnesses, I’m pretty sure I’m not wrong.
It was early afternoon, and it was the end of a scheduled meeting that we made to end all contact. You stood near the door procrastinating, but for nothing sentimental.
“Can you think of what I’m forgetting?”
Yeah, maybe. Is it the way I slept in a full bathtub so that I could be deep-in and not left-out, whether of a blanket or an arm or even warm water?…
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He reaches for his notebook. Last night I was in the desert with mice who grew wings. What a wild ride. To be decoded later. He wakes when there’s no sunlight left, not even a hint, choosing to use only five out of the twenty-‐four hours available. My life, my rules. He opens his wardrobe. His uniform resembles that of a magicians. But he’s a waiter, of sorts, at a chicken restaurant. The golden blade sits in a closed box on the table. Tonight, he counts to five before opening it. The longer he waits the better it feels. The sight sends shivers through his veins. Good shivers. The kind you can recall months later. The blade, it’s for the chickens in case you were wondering.…
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I don’t think I drank that much, Ali thinks. Just a couple of pints. That’s what everyone drinks here to end the day. It’s normal. Being in school here, though, means a couple can often turn into a few. ‘A few’ means three or four or five. That’s what she taught her ESL tutees last night, before the dreaded couple (or few) pints. Thirsty Thursday exists here too, just like it did back home, in college. This is ridiculous, she thinks. Just because she is living in Ireland does not mean she has to turn into an alcoholic. She doesn’t have to, but she’s afraid she might be anyway. Turning into one, that is.
Her stomach gurgles. What the hell? Did I eat something gross?…
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It would be brie en croute that evening, then—a wheel of brie, sliced in half and stuffed with walnuts and cranberries, rebuilt and wrapped in puff pastry. She removed it from the oven and dipped her finger in the fine trickle of rich, unctuous grease that ran from a corner of the croute and brought it to her mouth, and groaned in simple ecstasy, and wondered if the guests had smelled it yet from the dining room above and if not, how quickly she could eat the entire thing all to herself in gluttonous bliss. She swallowed the rush of saliva that flooded her mouth as she sliced the fuyu persimmons into thick chips and similarly, the flat, crusty bread alongside it, and plated both around the croute on a faux-rustic cutting board the charlatans upstairs grew so frothingly tumescent over, a homey display for a winter home used four weeks out of the year—four weeks during which she had to wear pants as she cooked, since the master and mistress would be in residence and entertaining.…
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It is January, the month of resolutions. You have resolved to become one of the people that drinks spinach, owns multi-vitamins of the non-gummy variety, and does yoga at six in the morning. You are here because you want to be, or so you keep telling your bleary-eyed self as you walk into your first class at Namastay Awhile, desperately clutching a large coffee with only one sugar, please, thank you very much. You are going to be healthy.
Slipping off your sandals at the door, you wind through the maze of oiled, humming yogis to an empty spot, unrolling your brand new mat with a sticky thwop on the studio’s hardwood. The unforgivingly acrid smell of never-been-used plastic wafts around the small room. You receive sympathetic smiles from experienced yoga students who are secretly cursing the New Year, waiting for the thicket of resolution-makers to be weeded out by laziness so they can again practice comfortably.…
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