Everybody in the Wink-Mart was talking about snow, how the snow was poised on the edge of the state, how Nebraska had to close I-80 west of Kearney, how last year a woman in South Dakota froze to death in a blizzard when she tried to make it to the barn to find her husband.
He told her about the Russian space station. Like four buses crashed at a crossroads, the force of the impact melding them forever.
She had disco in her hips and wants to dance. Tells me her name is Sheila, but wishes it were Flannery. Naturally, I assume she’s a writer.
When you tell the man you bring back to your hotel room I’m shy, he says you don’t seem shy as he’s unzipping your dress.
Ignis, the flaming wreckage, bubbling rubber, liquified cloth, her skin charred and blistering, acrid smoke, the tiny thunders of survival’s kicks
When I was six, I had a sister. She liked to call herself Red because she despised pink. She said pink tasted like cat piss. I didn’t know how cat piss tasted, so I believed her.
Fridays, we rarely see patients. After transcribing therapists’ notes, learning all the details of our clients’ messed-up lives—details that I will later pretend not to know as I offer people coffee, schedule appointments, collect co-pays—I spend a few hours tending to the 1000-piece puzzle in the corner.
The wrens can’t decide. They flirt with the pretty purple tin birdhouse we have hung from the back fence.
The ceilings are all over. Floors don’t seem to matter. As if we could walk in the air and band our heads under the arches from room to room.
Santorini, I fell in love with your blue, sea blue, Aegean blue stretching for miles to the horizon: azure, lapis, sapphire.
Now. Temperature hovering at 0°C (32°F). Top up your windshield washer fluid. Freezing rain. Record number of car accidents reported.
They were early for the first tour of the cave and waited outside at a picnic table, where her son ate granola bars and her stomach roiled from weak hotel coffee.