They gave us little yellow tickets and instructed us not to lose them.
Yellow like the flowers sprouting from the ground,
Wrestling blades of grass,
Growing up towards the sun, yellow and shiny,
Yellow teeth, dentist bills,
That week was full of “almost!” moments. I almost called out but came in begrudgingly. I almost left the event early to return to my office and work in solitude or just left early for the day, stealing a roll of toilet paper on my way out. I thought about all of those “almost!” moments, staring “almost!” comatose at the asphalt outside the hospital.…
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My fiancé does not like the smell of fast food, greasy paper bags or unrefined sugars. I like the scent, at times, more than the contents. Limp potato matchsticks with bits of potato skin left on make it seem more real. He scolds me when I come home with a Big Gulp in hand. He likes the gym and time management.
“Managing time.” He stresses, finger pointy, seeking to transfer his passion for precision from his nail bed to my wrinkled forehead.
Anyway, I knew this simply would not do. I did not like to manage my time. I enjoy getting soil between my fingers and recycling plastic spinach bins. He gifted me a pink plastic brush to scrub my filthy nails. He is averse to natural things, even the blood spot in my underwear one week out of the month.…
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“It says here that when Leonardo Da Vinci died, he asked forgiveness for not using his art to the fullest of his abilities. That somehow, he had failed God and mankind.” A lanky man with a thick red scarf around his neck folded his newspaper, stuffed it into his jacket pocket, and turned to his companion not expecting an answer. The two men had stopped to take a break from their afternoon walk, sitting down on a bench overlooking a stretch of beach that surrendered to waves, the bay, then out to the ocean.
“Guilt.”
“Excuse me?”
“He was Catholic, wasn’t he?”
“And what does that have to do with anything?”
“The old boys back then probably made him feel guilty because he couldn’t turn clay into gold.…
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I sit at the dining table, and the warm spring sun falls on an empty sheet of paper. I draw almost every day now. And no matter what I start to draw, I see myself in the end.
The day before yesterday, I was a tennis ball. A green one, with light lines wrapping around my body. Such balls are usually picked up by men in snow-white shorts. Those with strong hands and stressful jobs. They grab the ball, lift the racket, and swing it against the wall. Just to have fun and relax. “Stupid ball!” they shout if it does not fly straight back into their hands afterward. And then they hit it against the wall even harder.
Yesterday was better. I was a fish.…
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When the school in Japan asked in her interview why she wanted to teach overseas, she didn’t give the real reason: that it had been an ear infection.
Her parents had rented a lake house for early July. The first day, water had gone into her ear and had stayed in, resisting head shakes and leg kicks. She was the oldest of four. When she was younger, relatives called her “Young Mother Hen” because she changed diapers, helped with homework, and, later, drove her brothers and sister to their practices and rehearsals, as if naturally inclined to cook mac and cheese for children and then play their chauffer, coveting no life for herself at seventeen.
“It still won’t come out?” her mother had asked.
Her neck had ached from the jerking.…
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“Drinking drivers/Nothing worse/They put the quart/before the hearse/
Burma-Shave” Series of roadside signs by Burma Shave, 1950s
In the driveway sat the 1950 Buick Roadmaster Estate Station Wagon, its toothy grille like an angry steel smile, proud of its dynaflow automatic transmission, and wooden body side panels. The back of the car was packed with suitcases for a trip to my grandmother’s funeral five-hundred miles away. Dad was intent on making the trip there in one day, go to the service, and return home the following morning, so we could, as he put it, “get it over with.” When it was time to get in the car, my mother and father sat on the front bench seat and my little sister, older brother and I sat in back.…
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A piercing morning sun promised no relief but only more heat as the carefully tanned woman stood waiting with the little girl in her overly heavy dress and orthopedic shoes. The woman was sporting faux haute couture in crisp white shorts and a mind-blowing bright blue halter, her blonde hair carefully arranged in a silky ponytail. Delicate leather sandals with a troublesome strap were a bit loose, but she loved the look.
Sunglasses, not Bentley Platinum but knockoffs, shielded her eyes from the sun’s glare. The little girl, refusing to hold the woman’s hand, squinted in the painful light and squirmed, scraping the bottom of her brace on the cement. No attention was paid to her discomfort.
The doorman’s heel crunched on tiny pebbles as he twisted to turn away, seeming not to notice the activity at the curb.…
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