splitsville? he asked.
no, i said. not unless you want our first date to be the last date.
woah woah woah, i like a woman who knows her own mind. my treat.
damn right it's your treat.
can i buy you a night cap next door at Bravo?
i'm good.
ok.
[looking at phone.] my mom's here to pick me up.
your mom?
i don't have a license yet.
oh. why not?
epilepsy. can't drive unless i can go a year with no seizures.
wow, i'm sorry.
it's cool. gotta go.
ok, i'll call you.
don't wait three days.
heh, sure thing.
-
it's after noon by now and she can hear the sun radiating through the thin slats in her closed window blinds, but she hasn't seen it's face today. she will see it before it dies, on the train from her dim flat to the sleepy airport terminal. but right now, as she contemplates a turkey sandwich, she wishes she'd seen it born, watched it grow in size and stature - not just later in it's dusty mid-life planning for an early winter retirement. "i've missed so much," she sighs, not hungry anymore.
-
The culinary machines process pears and nectarines into macarons with sugar and fat. Color glow and juice are now color dye and crunch. The glass case lights fluourescent the puffs’ artificiality and “natural” flavor for the “humans” in line: back to chest, heel to toe, hair to face.
I don't want this to bite into, and swallow, and shit. Give me a prickly barked tree in a frigid forest to climb and pluck sweetly rotting fruit from like beasts. Shivering hot fruit in a Neverland cafeteria, money in my arms and legs, wallet empty.
-
A glowworm inches it's fat body south down the pole that stabs a seahorse through the top of its head and into the muddy gummed up floor of an abandoned carousel. On the saddle of the unridden sea creature lays a stray braid from the long synthetic weave of a black haired carnival goer from years past. In one fell swoop a hawk collects the worm and the weave for his chicks and nest. The bird and prize soar home through the abandoned grounds together, watched by crickets and spiders afraid for the short lives.
