The birds had not come in last night and now they would be lost.
Common birds! She spat twirling a small gold spoon in her coffee clattering nervously on the edge of the doll like cup.
So long years of sorrow, so long back breaking toil. The training, the binding of tiny claws the midnight dropper feedings. All of it for nothing. Now they would peck at trash and pretend to get excited when they heard the fog horns of a garbage trawl.
Why do I bother? She picked a tiny scar at the corner of her mouth and drank...
Ridiculous. He was being utterly ridiculous.
"Married? You want to get married?" She stared at him with dumbfounded annoyance. He looked completely serious.
"Of course I do. Don't you? What is so absurd about getting married? I thought we were happy."
She closed her eyes for a moment, held them shut tightly, and reopened them. Nope, she thought. Still there. Still looking at me, waiting, expecting.
"Jim, we can't get married. You must be crazy. I was going to ask you to take me home, but I think I'll call a cab." She reached into her purse to pull out...
The trick was picking the tired, lost ones. That was the trick. Many passengers coming into Warsaw Airport had been warned about 'unlicensed' taxis, but if you chose well they would be too confused to argue. The trick was getting their bag. Once you had that, with a "Let me carry your bag, Sir/Madam," they would have to follow you.
The trick was to walk fast enough to scare them into following you, for fear of losing their baggage in the busy arrivals lounge, but not so fast the airport police would think you were stealing something.
That was the...
I cannot be old as were, but I'll be as old...
No springs, no machination, no burn, can retreat the circle
but the circle will come round
--not old as were
Along the shore they did not remember
Walking until their flesh and their ligaments
Wasted
No mercy for the parched
And she stood staring from behind pa(in)
And he paced
And he destroyed
And he ripped--because
This is not the girl I wanted
This is not the girl I knew
This is not the girl I ordered
Custom made behind a pa(in) of glass
Darling or darling oh darling...
She wandered between the potbellies and the beer guts, the sharp-cornered purses and the waist-length hair that tickled her nose. She could smell the body odor of the teenagers, ripe and fertile. Popcorn in cardboard buckets passed under her nose, the butter shiny like gold.
She wasn't afraid. There was nothing to be afraid of. They were people. People everywhere. It wasn't like being lost in the woods, in an ocean, in a cave. Those places where she would be alone, those were scary places. Here she wasn't alone.
The carousel echoed its off-key melody and bounced off the carny...
You can count me out. In teaspoons if you wish, but it might take a while. I prefer metric, none of that standard or imperial nonsense, it's just not scientific.
You can count me out, I'm certainly in the process of it. Measuring it all, repurposing the materials to a better purpose. 3.7 litres of potable water, the rest bound up in organs or areas that I have not processed yet. 2.5 grams of iron, perhaps that will go to the electromagnet I am constructing, perhaps to the dynamo. But what am I saying? It will have to go to...
It was inexplicable that two latino, hipster twenty-somethings from East Los Angeles would talk like 85-year-old Jewish retirees from Queens, yet that was how it was.
"Pull ovah and ask fuh direck-shuns," shouted Isabel.
"I know where I'm going!" Ricky replied with a Yiddish accent that seemed to come from nowhere. "You always do this! You always want to undermine my AUTHORITY!"
He exclaimed very loudly, mostly because he was hard of hearing and couldn't monitor his own pitch. Isabel was silent for a second, silently mouthing words to herself. Then, as if in an afterthought, she said, "You just...
Monkey banged into the table leg. The box hesitantly tipped over, shortening its shadow. Small waves of wine sieved through the table cloth.
"That fucking dog."
We laughed, watching our evening sink into the carpet.
We were too high to be drinking anyway.
Gradually.
That was the secret, wasn't it? Build up their trust or indifference, either one would do, like in that fable about the mouse and the lion. First it was hello over the mail as they each made their way back to their separate apartments, next? Why, after months of chit chat, it was coffee shared in the buildings laundrymat. More chance meetings, more talk about incidentals, info on her fake bio. There was no need for him to learn of her unpleasant past. He would only get the wrong idea.
It wasn't really lying, not when she was honest...
When you got home you found me in the back corner of our not-quite-walk-in-sized closet, surrounded by shoes I hadn't worn in years, clothes I should have given away long ago, and miscellaneous scarves and belts and things that I hardly remembered owning.
I hadn't planned on ending up there, but washing the dishes led to laundry, which led to vacuuming, which led to looking under the furniture, which led to me finding that pin you had given me. I wanted to see the other things you had given me. When I was beautiful and you were kind.
I'm not...