Daily Fiction

2007-12-03T01:48:00.000-08:00

What just happened? One minute I was scrolling on my desktop, the next the screen went black. I realize this could mean I won't be able to work. I am trying a reboot now. But the harddrive might be dead. What if it is? Shit. I've never experienced this before. How will I survive offline? Off Line?! Disconnected. No longer on the team. But there are expectations. I have to read the Highline Document and produce the sequence code for Len. Len's going to be pissed. I wonder if the coffee is still hot. Maybe I'll go for a walk.

2007-12-02T01:47:00.000-08:00

daily fiction took a stumble, broke some bones, went to the hospital, was given drugs, took the drugs, fell asleep, woke up in worse pain than daily fiction had ever known, slurred to the person in the next bed over, watched the person shrug and push the nurse’s alert button, accepted the nurse as competent while he tucked the wool blanket around daily fiction’s sore feet, saw the way the cotton crumpled between the nurse’s legs as he walked away, waited while the doctor checked boxes on the forms, let the wheels roll down the hallway, and was granted love.

2007-11-03T01:06:00.000-07:00

The midnight walkway is vacant but for two men. One wears a green print polyester-blend button-down shirt and white slacks, the other wears a tight black polyester-blend knit v-neck and jeans. They don’t make eye contact. They pass each other. The night lit neon makes steady pulse. Cars wait at stop lights, blinkers, headlamps, slick shine of chrome rims. It is a long way before they each reach their destinations. One man wishes he the other would turn around. He thinks it would be nice to kiss the man in the black shirt. The other man has only one thought.

2007-11-02T00:44:00.000-07:00

The alley is lined with motorbikes: red, yellow, blue, silver, hard coated paint on Japanese scooters. Every day I come home to more water in the house. I don’t understand how the roof went so fast. I can’t handle dumping the plastic basin. Instead I make pancakes and eat while watching television. Some flunky kid is singing a Deanna Durbin song with no conviction, not even the sweetness of Durbin, like he never heard the original, like he doesn’t know Deanna Durbin from Doris Day. I wonder how many times I’ve insulted someone informed by not knowing what I’m doing

2007-11-01T00:39:00.000-07:00

In the movie, he wakes up with a sore arm. He can hardly move. His mother takes him to a priest. The priest uses a miniature chair and dances it across a table, spelling out words another man reads. The priest doesn’t wear a shirt. The table is scuffed from the writing. The mother drinks water and the son doesn’t tell her he was in a movie, acting dead, floating in a contaminated river. His father gives watermelon to a repair man when his wife isn’t looking. There is a leak in the bedroom. Buckets of water have dripped in.

2007-10-30T22:25:00.000-07:00

But they didn’t leave. “Look at that!” “And she told me.” “What did you do?” “I never thought it would be like that!” “Don’t tell anyone, okay?” Promises made and broken in an instant and Carmichael began to think he should join them. Maybe they had hotdogs. Maybe they would tell him a joke he could repeat to Ray and then Ray would be his friend all the time. Carmichael dropped from the tree and brushed his pants off. On the road, he knew he would never fit in. He felt certain that his life may as well be over.

2007-10-29T22:25:00.000-07:00

Their noise reminded Carmichael he was alone. His butt felt cold on the tree, the damp was seeping in, his feet ached, toes frozen, and he felt foolish looking around, watching birds sitting watching him, the tide going out, leaving behind its smell, those kids cracking jokes he didn’t understand so that he felt he was eavesdropping when he was the one who was always there, not them, and there was nothing he could do about any of it. He cursed them, he imagined them exploding, catching fire, realizing it was useless, because they would die soon enough, and leaving.

2007-10-28T22:25:00.000-07:00

How’d that happen? Carmichael thought he was the only person to know how to get to this section of beach besides Ray. But there it was; a bonfire with older kids, high schoolers, laughing and crushing cans of grape soda in shows of strength. Carmichael pretended they weren’t there. They kept laughing, occasionally a girl squealed and Carmichael heard her feet scattering rocks as she tried to lung away from one of the guys. The guys said things like, “Watch this,” and, “You gotta know about.” “When you look at it this way,” one said. Carmichael tried not to hear.

2007-10-27T22:25:00.000-07:00

Ducks are oily, he thought, they have hollow bones, or was that birds that fly, or wait, ducks fly, so they have hollow bones. I don’t remember having eaten duck but maybe I have. I wonder if I liked it. Maybe Mom remembers. Dad says he likes duck. He used to hunt them. All the ducks are in the Harbor. Just gulls out today. There’s a sandpiper there. I hear a woodpecker in the forest. I wonder what a mocking bird sounds like. Carmichael felt cold wind through the hole in his sole and thought about his parents’ usual reaction.

2007-10-26T22:25:00.000-07:00

The next morning Carmichael was woken by the sound of the lawnmower. Carmichael shrugged on his jacket and looked out the window, rain. Not enough to stop a good Washingtonian but still raining. The mountains locked the rain to the Sound. Carmichael decided to go to the waterfront. Rain splashed down his collar from tree branches, huge drops that soaked through his shirt and clammed his neck. Being in the rain mattered little to Carmichael. Once on the beach he sat on the fallen tree trunk and watched the birds. He wondered what it would be like as a duck.

2007-10-25T22:25:00.001-07:00

Ray argued the point. He said that was the whole point of a super power – to change. He grumbled that Carmichael was afraid of his own skin. To be a super hero a person has to be comfortable enough to accept himself however he appears. Carmichael hated Ray for saying it. One friend was all he needed. But Carmichael knew Ray wasn’t really his friend. Ray would only talk to him when Ray had no one else. Of course Ray wouldn’t mind if he changed, he already was changeable to suit his needs at the cost of a true friendship.

2007-10-25T22:25:00.000-07:00

He wished he had super powers. What kid doesn’t? Super hearing, super strength. But he didn’t want to transform. He hated that the Silver Surfer was silver. He didn’t like when Batman put on his suit. Why, thought Carmichael, did Hulk have to be Hulk? They start out normal, they start out average, but then they change into something they aren’t. Carmichael decided if he stepped in toxic waste or was bit by something powerful or simply woke up with powers, he would not let himself change. He would rather not have powers than have to transform to use them.

2007-10-24T22:25:00.000-07:00

Number One issues were always prized. Carmichael overheard as much said by the older kids, the kids with money, the kids whose parents didn’t mind them buying comic books, kids with allowances. Carmichael wished he had an allowance. He had asked his dad once and his dad said, “You’ll get an allowance the day you get to work around here.” Carmichael tried to prove his worth by doing dishes and cleaning the fireplace but it wasn’t enough. His mother said, “We just can’t afford it right now.” So Carmichael stopped doing chores and went back to walking and reading comics.

2007-10-23T22:25:00.000-07:00

He was beyond reading the text. Carmichael loved the illustration, the lines, the ka-pow and lightning bolts of revelation and pain. The coloring was printed off line, image blurred against the color match, spots matrix to the left of proper and that, too, made the art fascinating. Carmichael knew people in the city kept their comics in plastic slip covers. If he lived in the city he’d use covers, he’d catalog his comics in special boxes with alphabetical dividers, and he’d get a job so he could buy subscriptions, buy every comic he ever wanted, including number ones.

2007-10-22T22:25:00.000-07:00

“You get the lawnmower fixed?” Carmichael’s father asked. “Did it give you trouble?” “Not any more than you do.” They smiled, some recognition of years together, an understanding Carmichael tried to ignore. Carmichael took his plate to the sink, his parents stayed at the table, not noticing his departure for what he could tell, and he went to his room. He lifted his mattress and pulled out a comic book, not Richie Rich, not Fantastic Four, not Spiderman. The comic was worn. The cover had been folded back too many times and nearly ripped as Carmichael opened it to study it again.

2007-10-21T22:25:00.000-07:00

Carmichael’s father and mother sat across from each other not talking, the sound of dinner, the way his father held his breath when he bit down, the way his mother licked her lips after every bite, the tink of flatware hitting Goodwill ceramic plates with mismatched decorative trim. Carmichael tried to be as quiet as possible. He didn’t want to add to the noise. There was some pleasure to listening to his parents’ routine sounds, also, too, the satisfaction in knowing he drew no attention. Invisible, he could almost not be there at all and, in not being there, happy.

2007-10-20T22:23:00.000-07:00

He kept having to sniffle as he watched his mother chop sweet potato and line it in a glass baking pan. She tossed a bag of marshmallows at him, “Open these.” He tore the bag with his teeth and sniffled, quickly plucking a mallow from the bag. “Don’t spoil your appetite.” She took the bag and dumped half the contents on the sweet potato and shoved the pan in the oven. “I can’t wait,” said Carmichael, drumming his fingers on the counter. “What else?” his mother asked absently while perusing the fridge. “Tuna melts?” “Go ask your father first, kiddo.”

2007-10-19T22:23:00.000-07:00

Without the mower the blackberries would eventually strap over the roof and take the house down with purple pulp. Carmichael’s dad devoted days to chopping them back, using the mower like the rich folks hired men to use weed-whackers, leaning back to leverage the heavy machine over the vines. Carmichael would eventually be handed this task. His back would ache at night, his bed with the pressboard plank frame would become more comfortable than he could imagine and Carmichael would begin spending his leisure time reading with blankets up to his chin, cozy and ignoring the world, but not yet.

2007-10-18T22:23:00.000-07:00

Leverage was difficult with his mother holding the mower up but Carmichael pulled. The mower sputtered. “Maybe it’s fuel?” he asked. “You don’t think I didn’t check that?” “I dunno.” “Try again, kid.” He pulled the line and the motor took hold. His mother’s stance was tilted with a smile and she bonked her fist against his shoulder like they were war buddies, survivors of the mower. “Turn it off before it sucks all the gas,” she said. “I’ll fix you up something good. How’s that sound?” “Fried Baloney?” He shoved the mower to the blackberry side of the house.

2007-10-17T22:23:00.000-07:00

Dirt crunched under his shoes but his mom didn’t look up from her job. “Mom,” said Carmichael. “What you need?” “You fix dinner yet?” His mother fitted the top of the mower and pushed the machine at him as though she was going to roll him over. “Try this, will ya. I can’t stand to have it not work again.” Carmichael slipped the plastic pull in his palm and yanked, yanked, yanked and the motor turned restless. “Damn,” she said and tipped the nose of the mower to look underneath. “I’m going to hold it up and you try again.”

2007-10-16T22:23:00.000-07:00

Carmichael wished Ray had let him play video games instead of leaving him to walk home and see Jeremiah on the hill, the conceit that Ray could change Carmichael’s path. As he walked to the house he saw the driveway was littered with lawnmower parts. His mom was running a rag over the thing that turned the belt that made the blade spin. Her hair was curling out of a banana clip and her apron cinched the rolls of her stomach as she crouched to the mower and tightened the metal thing into place and looped the belt over it.

2007-10-15T22:23:00.000-07:00

Jeremiah was spitting loogies across the street and the other kids were waiting to try and beat his distance. Jeremiah’s technique was to lean back with his fists clenched at his waist, he’d inhale deep, scrape up a wad of phlegm, tongue it to his teeth and purse his lips and, as he lunged forward, hurtling air and spit. “Huhwah” was the sound he made when he thought he didn’t spit far enough. Carmichael had practiced alone but could never spit so far as across the street. The other boys all hocked loogies but none went as far as Jeremiah.

2007-10-14T22:23:00.000-07:00

The streets on the island were few, a handful of long, winding roads that intersected only when necessary for residents to survive. The road passing Carmichael’s house started at one side of the island, ascended a hill, was intersected by a main road, descended and doing so forked into Marina Drive and Bay Road. Jeremiah and his posse of dirty middle schoolers were walking across the fork, flashy new sedans roared around them, traveling too fast to slow in time but agile enough with the latest engineering to swerve smoothly. Carmichael saw the boys and was sure they saw him.

2007-10-13T22:23:00.000-07:00

“Tuna melts, I think.” “Do you have the Mario Brothers?” “No. I asked for it for Christmas.” “Can I come play?” Ray scowled. They had reached his driveway, a long, coniferous tree-lined dirt road the roped curves and hills to his house. “Not today.” Carmichael shook the domino box and, in a tone of differential carelessness said, “I mean when you get the game.” “I guess.” Carmichael used to follow Ray home for dinner and games but Ray’s parents made Ray stop it. Ray didn’t like Carmichael to recognize him at school, either. Now, friends by and for convenience only.

2007-10-12T22:23:00.000-07:00

The dominoes rattled in the box as Carmichael hiked the path to the road behind Ray. When they reached the road Carmichael asked, “Now what are you doing?” Ray shrugged. “I gotta go home, I guess.” If they were in the city Carmichael would ask Ray to play more but living on the island there wasn’t much else to do. “Are you going to play Atari?” asked Carmichael. “Maybe,” said Ray, “Mom wants me to study for school.” Carmichael stalled. He followed Ray in the gravel along the road, “What’s for dinner?” Ray always knew things like dinner in advance.

2007-10-11T22:23:00.000-07:00

“You have apples?” “No, I mean, the apples on the island.” “Oh.” The beach leveled and water rode over it almost to the cliff and the boys jumped through the thin lick of water, splashing at a flock of sandpipers and sending them to the air for a moment. The sandpipers snapped into the sky, circled, and landed in unison like a sheet whipped from a line and falling to a lawn. Carmichael worried he disturbed the birds, worried they already pulled food from the area they were in, worried birds would always fly away though he didn’t mean harm.

2007-10-10T22:22:00.000-07:00

“When you catch a fish, you remember what I told you. Fish food: people, kittens, your shit you flush, all that crap and flesh, fish food.” “We should get,” said Carmichael before jumping from the tree. His breath was blown on landing and his feet stung from impact, hundreds of pointy rocks and barnacles jabbing through the thin rubber soles. “Yeah,” Ray picked his steps around certain rocks, directed toward the old cement dock. “What if the ferry still ran?” asked Carmichael. “We’d be rich,” said Ray. “My dad says so.” “Really?” “Sure. City folks would come for our apples.”

2007-10-09T22:22:00.000-07:00

“If I get married,” Ray offered, “I won’t cry.” He held a seaweed whip and cracked it against a toppled fir tree. Carmichael walked the wet tree like a tightrope until it submerged in the Sound. The tide was coming in. They had about twenty minutes to get back up the hill or they would be trapped by water. Carmichael knew they could shin up the cliff banking the beach. His grandpa had told him how a person drowns and turns into fish food then the fish gets caught on a hook and taken home, flayed and fried for dinner.

2007-10-08T22:22:00.000-07:00

Gulls canted overhead. A teen on a jet ski whooped at girls basking at the point around the bend of the island, out of sight for Carmichael and Ray but they knew the girls were there, the girls were always there, all summer into the fall, until the sun was gone and the Sound grew breezy with the Pineapple Express. A domino slipped from Carmichael’s fingers and knocked the start of a run, pieces crashed into each other and Carmichael looked on dejected. “Now you gotta do it again,” laughed Ray. “Shut up,” said Carmichael. He flicked the other dominoes.

2007-10-07T22:22:00.000-07:00

“My momma,” said Ray, “was saying we oughta stay out of war.” A larger crab, still no bigger than Ray’s thumb, snipped at him as he stirred wet granular dirt. The crab moved behind a good skipping stone, slipping under until Ray’s hand lifted the rock. Fists raised, the crab motioned at Ray but Ray was bored and let the rock drop. “What do you think?” asked Ray. “Dunno,” said Carmichael, “I wish we lived in New York.” As though New York were impervious, as though people in New York didn’t talk of war. “Are you going back?” Carmichael squinted.

2007-10-06T22:22:00.000-07:00

Ray brushes the seat of his tan pants before he sits on a round, chipped rock. His pants remind Carmichael of an old man, the seam where the zipper ends points down, exaggerating his crotch, and the knees are stained. Ray loved to play marbles. Carmichael talks while he arranges the pieces. “My dad says there’s going to be a war in Nicaragua. The terrorists are going to get it and we’re who’s gonna give it to them because everyone else is too chicken shit.” Ray lifts a rock and sticks his finger into the crabs, crushing a spotted baby.

2007-10-05T22:22:00.000-07:00

Carmichael will never realize this. He’ll shake the older man’s hand all the while admiring the not-boyfriend’s ability to smile and gain the older man’s trust, enough trust, anyway, to induce the older man into letting the not-boyfriend take the sail boat any day he felt like it. On that day, when Carmichael is twenty seven, Carmichael will decide he is not an ass kisser, no matter the perks, though he will watch the not-boyfriend closely to make sure he knows what ass kissers, generally speaking, Do. Carmichael, setting dominoes on the beach, doesn’t know what an ass kisser is.

2007-10-04T22:22:00.000-07:00

Sailboats with snapping white sheets tipped by, headed for the harbor where they’d shore-up, lashing ropes over the stubby metal Ts bolted to the docks, all lined up, aligned and proper, cleaned by hired help, scrubbed white and sharp, the below deck beds made fit for another set of bikinis. Carmichael had never been on a sail boat. He expected he never would be. At twenty seven he will be invited to join a co-worker on her not-boyfriend’s sail boat loaned to him by his ex-girlfriend’s father, a man who will be disappointed his daughter’s ex isn’t more like Carmichael.

2007-10-03T22:22:00.000-07:00

The dominoes were black with white denominations tinged ochre from cigarette tar. They stayed in a box on an open shelf in the kitchen with other board games; Pit, Scoop, Sorry; games with cards that required table space hard to find with fatty elbows, greasy coffee stains and chewed fried chicken bones about. The endless rocks on the beach were easier to clear than all that. Smoothed pebbles or sometimes the big rock down the shoreline served for stepping out all the dominoes into marshal order, a regiment Carmichael, and sometimes Ray, would arrange, yellow spots facing the sparkling water.

2007-10-02T22:19:00.000-07:00

We used to call them Siwash. Hell, what did we know? P.C.? That’s just what they were called. It wasn’t like we meant anything by it except that’s what we called them. They were dark and short and stank, hoo wee! Did they ever. They couldn’t bathe you know and they were walking around wearing animal skins and eating blubber and their teeth would rot out because they didn’t have dentists and I can’t begin to imagine what it was like when they took their clothes off, if they took their clothes off, and got in bed for the night.

2007-10-01T01:30:00.000-07:00

It never occurred to me until now that this is why I hate birthdays. Every year I am reminded of that sorrow, of that loss; as though every year I am again told I can’t have what I want, that if I get what I want it will be destroyed just as I am growing comfortable with it. So I keep the ruined boyfriend and the bills. I recycle the empty beer bottles and wait for more to line up under the fridge. These are the things I expect, my friends get what they deserve and I get more disappointment.

2007-09-30T01:33:00.001-07:00

Aaron had knocked on the door, invited himself in. He said happy birthday and handed me a gift but he looked odd. He wasn’t proud, self-congratulatory as usual. I tore the paper and inside was a board game. “You should play,” Dad suggested. Aaron shrugged. “Wanna go outside?” “Yes.” Aaron led me down the street. “You got a kitten?” “Uhhuh.” “I saw one down there,” he pointed across the street. “Is it yours?” I saw on the curb a lump of red. I never told mom or dad. They wondered what happened to Battleship but Pumpernickel was enough for them.

2007-09-29T01:32:00.000-07:00

After the cake, after the unwrapped doll, the unwrapped book, the unwrapped miniature bubblegum machine, I wanted to go to my room. I was both overwhelmed and underwhelmed. How could they not know me? What was there to know? All I could think about was Battleship. How the perfect birthday would be letting me follow him outdoors and watch him climb trees and shadow grasshoppers. I wanted to be Battleship. I wanted to sleep all day wherever and whenever, on dad’s lap even. I wanted to eat alone, by the dryer, with no mom to push more food on me.

2007-09-28T01:32:00.000-07:00

Dad had dictated the kittens be outdoor cats. He said he would have nothing to do with a litter box. I didn’t know what that meant. It seemed right. Of course they go outside. That’s what cats do. They come back with brambles and rodents and smelling of moss until the next morning when the chocolate smell returns. Mom plied me with soda and cupcakes for breakfast. “You can have anything you want, dearest.” I didn’t know what I wanted. Not really. Now I’d ask for understanding, less pretense, fore-knowledge. At age five, I wanted to never go to school.

2007-09-27T01:32:00.000-07:00

I cupped Battleship onto my shoulder and followed mother into the family room. I sat on the sofa, Battleship slipped to my side, and I felt the wool prickle my legs as my shorts hitched up. I didn’t feel any older. I wore the same clothes as always. Dad still ignored me, his paper up over his face while he read. He still ate eggs with ketchup. Mom still bustled in the kitchen pretending she knew how to cook. Battleship walked over my legs, dropped to the floor and went from view. Hungry, I thought, He’s getting food. How wrong.

2007-09-26T01:32:00.000-07:00

And then it was my birthday, my fifth, and Battleship was still beside me when I woke. His green eyes slit and a slow, deliberate purr as he watched me scratch my head. When I kicked my feet out he curled his face under his tail and resolved to sleep. I shimmied into clothes, proud to remember underwear and socks first. Then I flopped by Battleship and felt the fineness of him, his tiny nose, one tiny paw, until my mother knocked and entered with her smell and her smile. “Good morning, birthday girl! Are you excited? Ready for presents?”

2007-09-25T01:32:00.000-07:00

That bottle of perfume, so yellow, with the stylized butterfly; the way her blouse cut open because the buttons were too small for the holes; the leather clogs she always wore though the heels of her feet were callused and cracked raw; her calico kitty always on her lap, at her feet, in her hands, purring so loud I could hear them in my room, my mother’s murmurs and the cat’s reply. Battleship and I would sit on my bed, side by side, and pretend we were someplace else: Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, Cape Town, any place better than another birthday.

2007-09-24T01:31:00.000-07:00

This year I told him to leave it alone. He kept asking me if he could rent a room at the beach or organize a party. “It’s the big three oh,” he argued, “You can’t ignore it. Your friends will want to celebrate.” Then I remembered my mom, “You’ll be turning five. It’s a big age. In a few months you’ll start the first grade!” And then she smothered me, stuffed me into her skin and polyester, the smell of her sweat and Jean Nate perfume. I wished my kitten could interrupt, kindly claw her leg so she’d drop me.

2007-09-23T01:31:00.000-07:00

Carl had a cat named Frankie when he was a kid. He’s told me many times about how he didn’t get along with Frankie and spent time with the family dog, Rapier, instead. I asked him once if we could get a pet but Carl said he couldn’t stand the hair. He is particular. Tidy. For my last birthday, 29, he took me to a downtown restaurant with a view and invited everyone he could think of. Less than ten people showed. They felt obliged to bring gifts. A journal, a record, a book, a pack of gum from Japan.

2007-09-22T01:31:00.000-07:00

As the day got closer, my mom ramped my birthday. “Do you want a Sally Suzy doll?” “Do you need socks?” How could I tell her I had everything I wanted? Everything in the kitten, in his big belly, in his pounce, in his curling tail and direct nature. Mom named the calico Pumpernickel and kept asking me what I’d name my kitten. “Smokey? Ash? Pussywillow?” I named him Battleship. He took to sitting on my shoulder like how I imagined a gun would, resting there waiting to attack. And he did. Once I walked by Dad and Battleship jumped.

2007-09-21T01:31:00.000-07:00

The kittens were always fun. My dad came around quick. It wasn’t before bed time the day we got them that he was laughing at them. They crooked their tails and tripped; they crossed paws and fell; they climbed with prickle sounds and wriggled before they jumped. They smelt like chocolate bars. Dad cursed when he saw the worms. He took them to the vet the next day. I had to force the pills. He didn’t want to have claw marks, he said. We felt more like a family this way. I kept the bowl full, mom and dad laughed.

2007-09-20T19:57:00.000-07:00

If I could have had any cat I wanted, the ideal was a white and fluffy. Now I know it to be a Himalayan, preferably flame-point. Then I simply wanted white and fluffy. Fluffy enough to never feel the bones, fluffy enough to have the claws disappear behind the foot fur, fluffy enough to turn the shed into yarn. White so I could name her snowflake. A female she must be. But I never got the fluffy white cat. She wasn’t around then. She still isn’t. And now I wonder if maybe I won’t let myself have her, on purpose.

2007-09-19T01:31:00.000-07:00

“Fine,” dad said, handed the teenager a ten and shoved the grocery cart to the car. My mother grinned and told me to hold my kitten tight in the car. When we got home dad laid the rules: no cats in any rooms except the shared areas. “You know that won’t work,” said mom. “She’s going to have them in her room.” “Fine.” I held my kitten high above my head, supported by palms, his tail twirling anxious, a worm wriggled from his ass and I realized the cat was mine, mine forever, my pet, my kitten, my perfect. “Yippy!”

2007-09-18T16:35:00.001-07:00

Mom led us back through the same doors and past the girl. All the kittens were still there, including the one I’d locked my heart on. I didn’t know gender. I didn’t care if it was a boy or girl. It was grey with the tiniest patch of white, a dollop, a spill, a thumbprint, a cork-sized white mark on his chest. His belly was round and hot and his eyes were green. I held him up to my parents and said, “I want this one.” Mom held the calico to her heart and closed her eyes. It purred butterscotch.

2007-09-17T16:35:00.000-07:00

I think I was either attempting to drape all the kittens on my shoulders or was throwing a tantrum. I can’t recall. I wasn’t one for making a scene but I do remember how fervently I wanted, how palpable the desire, how desperate and determined I was. I would not leave the store without a cat. My dad insisted we take care of the groceries and if I still wanted a kitten after we could consider it. This may have worked on other children, but I doubt it. Thirty now, I know what my father was hoping and how pathetic.

2007-09-16T16:34:00.000-07:00

A vision of me and a cat curled on the sofa in sweet, sweet mammal love. I wish I had never asked for it. But I suppose that’s what living is. My father sure didn’t want a cat. “I don’t want a cat in the house,” he said. “Especially not a kitten.” My mother said, “Oh, Hal.” And picked up the calico runt. The teen ran her fist under her nose and sniffled. “Five dollars,” she said. “It’ll spray. It’ll claw things. It’ll stink up the place. It’ll shed.” Mom pointed to me as her argument. How could he win?

2007-09-15T16:34:00.000-07:00

They made the fatal mistake of taking me to the grocery store and walking me by a teenager with a cardboard box on the curb by the entry. I may have said something like, “OOOOOOOOO! KIT-T-TENS” Or, “Can I have one, Can I Can I Can I Can I Can I?” Thinking back, I’m pretty sure I heard the mewling before we left the car. I think I knew my day had come. I had already experienced the subtle disappointment of birthdays, I didn’t know yet that the feeling would carry over forever, I was hopeful, I had a vision.

2007-09-14T16:34:00.000-07:00

It was a few months before my fifth birthday that I managed to beg my parents into obtaining the one thing I wanted more than anything else in the whole world. Being five, my needs were pretty limited and my wants revolved around other mammals. Specifically, I wanted a kitten. A kitten I could call my own. A kitten with whiskers and a tail and retractable claws, though I didn’t realize how sharp they’d end up being. I wanted rotating ears, a hunger for tuna fish and the urge to sleep on my pillow at night. Words were not enough.

2007-09-13T16:34:00.000-07:00

What I liked, what I really wanted to hear, the album that made me transport from the stale air of that crappy little house was Camelot. Richard Burton in tights. I already knew he was dreamy because the album opened up to a photo montage of him and Julie Andrews singing in the lusty May breeze of a closed movie set. Looking back, my father must have found Camelot insulting. What would the simple folk do, indeed? They’d tell their daughters to stop listening to Camelot and wizen up to the government regulations compromising the simple folk’s quality of life.

2007-09-12T16:34:00.000-07:00

I didn’t know how anything worked except the record player. I remember my dad watched me, his fist out ready to flick a finger of scrutiny. “Ahgt-ahgt-ahgt,” he’d jag, if he thought I would drop the needle too quick, too far in, too far out. By five I could cue the tracks. He’d say, “Put on ‘Wanted Dead or Alive’,” and it’d be done careful to keep him resting on the sofa. On my birthday my mom said I should put on whatever music I liked. I knew my dad wanted reggae. It was all he listened to those days.

2007-09-11T16:34:00.000-07:00

Carl’s family calls him, ships him boxes of mementos and gift cards and relics from his childhood that they carefully preserved though they moved across the nation to retire in the sun. My folks divorced, burned the memories away with their anger, threw out marbles and journals and tugged me between them until I broke apart and landed in my father’s house, unknowing of what to expect, of what was to come, of what I should do or what I could say. But when I was five they were together and I didn’t think people ever fell out of love.

2007-09-10T16:34:00.000-07:00

For the most part I’ve gotten over it: my father’s ambivalence and my mother’s cluelessness. He never expects me to remember anything and she doesn’t dare ask for more than an occasional phone call. As distanced as they are now, it is by their own doing. Their choice in the matter as drawn out from the first time I remember, when I was five. Carl tries to make up for it. Threatens me with parties, asks me daily what I want months in advance: you know the type. Those people who always had it made. It was always so easy.

2007-09-09T16:33:00.000-07:00

My father pretends he doesn’t know my birthday is coming. Still. He never liked acknowledging anniversaries. Through the years it was always my mother that made sure I had a present, a card and a cake, no matter how foul smelling and brown. To this day my mom sends me a package: a pair of acrylic crochet booties, an orange acrylic crochet poncho, a set of acrylic crochet pot holders that melted when I grabbed a pan from the oven. My father sometimes gave me a book or an album, something he was through with and figured I wouldn’t mind.

2007-09-08T16:33:00.000-07:00

I remember sitting on the brown striped sofa, five years old, my bright blue shorts riding up. The sofa’s alternating wool and velveteen fabric made my legs itch. I remember this day because I’m thirty now. Birthdays, shit, bills, ruined boyfriend and the empty beer bottles: I never liked birthdays. Five years old and my mother can’t bake. What a fucking gyp. Aaron always got a cake. He’d invite me over and make me eat a piece all the while knowing my mom couldn’t bake. Not that his mom baked, either. She bought his cake at a bakery in town.

2007-09-07T01:13:00.000-07:00

I hurried back to my mother, feeling thoroughly conspicuous. We were the only white people in the building. I was the only child in the building. More women shuffled into rows on the floor without guidelines or instruction. They all seemed older than my mother and shorter than me. They put their bags to one side; canvas totes, rumpled grocery sacks, silk pouches; and deftly wrapped beads through their fingers. One after another the chanting began. All those voices and then my mother’s, hers clear and tight, tongue sharp on her teeth, so different from the slouching, old Japanese women.

2007-09-06T00:51:00.000-07:00

I didn’t understand a word he said. He was tall as my shoulder and hunched with his face wrinkled and sunken so he looked like a mummy, like one of those NOVA specials on pre-Vikings trapped in peat moss bogs and preserved, dehydrated and furrowed like an apple-head doll. “I’m sorry,” I said, dropping my hand. The man laughed, his head tossed back and I could see him young and teasing on a sunny day somewhere far away from this warehouse Buddhist temple. “Take,” he said, “take.” I held up two fingers and he nodded, “Sure, sure.” “OrReGahTo,” I said.

2007-09-05T01:45:00.001-07:00

“So go over,” she pushed me up. “They aren’t going to say no to a cute little blond girl like you.” All I could think of was Nazi Germany and the American bombing of Hiroshima. Being a little blond girl could get me killed in some parts of the world. I knew well enough that blonds have more fun and pay the penalty for it. If we don’t now, we will some day, I’m still sure of that. A wood rack was propped against the far wall with mats filed perpendicular. I reached for a mat and a man approached.

2007-09-04T01:45:00.000-07:00

My mother hadn’t brought mats, we didn’t have mats. She had invested two nights of dinner in beads alone. “Next time we’ll have a mat,” she said. The woman next to me nudged me with her elbow and a river of words flowed from her as she jabbed her fingers to the other side of the room. “I think there are mats over there,” I said. “You go and see,” mom said. “But what if they aren’t free?” “They won’t charge you. If they do send them to me.” “But, mo-om, I can’t talk. They probably won’t talk either so…”

2007-09-03T01:45:00.000-07:00

I was taller than most of the ladies. Tiny Japanese women, former war brides, war refugees, long-time natives of Tacoma, Washington, pioneers, few of them spoke English. My mother bowed, Konichiwa, and smiled, her hands pressed together displaying yellow stained fingers of a seasoned chain smoker while her lipstick cracked apart. I was embarrassed. A couple of women tittered and smiled, Irrasshaimase, panning their cupped hands over the room to indicate we could sit where we wanted. Domo arigato gozaimasu, my mother said. I heard the women whispering Gaijin, Gaijin. They settled into rows, tucking red mats under their knees.

2007-09-02T01:45:00.000-07:00

It felt like we were in a warehouse, the fluorescent lights and the white-white walls, I felt exposed. I was glad to be short, young, a kid, excusable in being dragged along by my mother’s devotion to the Lotus of Buddha. Her leather purse, the one with flowers stamped along the lip, held her prayer book and the bead strand, along with her discount cigarettes, steak colored lipstick, and the keys to other people’s houses. Later I’d have to haul the vacuum out of the Corolla and listen to her complain about her bad back while she cleaned those houses.

2007-09-01T21:25:00.000-07:00

The girl’s lips parted. “But game’s not over,” she moaned. I looked at her, crooked my lips and shook my head with a shrug. The girl’s eyes flicked over the board. “Can’t take any more?” my brother teased, “She wear you out already?” The girl rapidly moved the pieces across the board, her arms cranking, flashing like metal spokes in a music box. The game pieces stacked in piles to the side of the board as she leapt them over each other, red black red. The girl stood and exclaimed, “You win!” I locked eyes with my brother, “Why bother?”

2007-08-31T01:35:00.000-07:00

I was never like that, was I? I know for looks I was far more refined. My brother was around but he was not responsible for turning me into an automaton, a monkey on the box dancing for quarters. No, I was shy. I concentrated on details and never trusted anyone. A word, a look could send me skidding down the hall and barricading my bedroom door with the dresser. This girl would never do that. She lived empowered. Her life was diligent instruction and the occasional smile of dick dastardly. “I’ve had enough,” I said, standing to stretch tall.

2007-08-30T01:30:00.000-07:00

“Isn’t that boring for you?” I ask. The girl doesn’t respond. She looks at me with some mark of curiosity. The snot beneath her nose has crystallized into a dark smudge. Her lips are fat from thumb sucking. Her hair is dirty straw. She reminds me of my crazy mother – puffy from psychotropic drugs and delirious with self-gratification, years of doing as she will. How can a three year old seem nuts? She looks to my brother. He is busy loading bowl with cold pasta salad. She must live for his attention, she must follow him everywhere like I did.

2007-08-29T01:27:00.000-07:00

I let her make the next few moves for me then I start throwing my pieces in random, illogical directions. At every opportunity I force my black in the tread of her red so she has to jump them. Bewildered, she stops grabbing my pieces and playing them for me. She takes a combative approach. As soon as my black touches her end of the board she kings it and says, “Now you go to the other end and you win!” “But what if I don’t want to?” “You just go to the other end and you win,” she repeats.

2007-08-28T01:23:00.000-07:00

“She is intent on forcing the game,” I say. I can feel my eyebrows are arched and I am sure my lips purse. I bet my face looks much like our grandmother’s did when we reached for a tray without asking for it to be passed. “She’s a spit-fire,” he says, “What can I say?” The girl waits for me to move, she analyzes the board, has likely visualized all the possible moves for the rest of the game. If she is going to force me to win, I may as well gum up her plans as much as possible.

2007-08-27T01:10:00.000-07:00

“How goes the game?” my brother asked. He had begun mixing mayo into the bowl of potato salad. “Daddy, she, Aunt, already has my guys and I have one of hers and …” the girl babbled excitedly. My brother’s smile has always been more of a smirk. Being the definition of cynical, he rarely bursts out laughing and when he does it is in response to a hardship or meanness. He wears a Dick Dastardly tee shirt. His moustache takes on an air of arrogance as I look at him smirking, mixing, proud of the winning creature he has trained.

2007-08-26T01:08:00.000-07:00

I put my black so she could take it but she fumbled the play and grabbed my black, hopped it over her red and made me win her piece. “You can’t do that!” “No, you have to jump my guy or you don’t win. And see, then, you get over here and then I king you and you go back to your side and then you win.” “Okay, but you can’t move my pieces like that.” The girl looked at the board; I could see no registration of my comments. Obstinate girl, I thought, I’ll show you what disrespect wins.

2007-08-25T01:02:00.000-07:00

The pieces were all in order. Her red army faced my black army. She couldn’t resist further tutoring me on the rules of the game. I waited for her to finish then we started. “You move first,” she said. So I did. She moved her red then grabbed my black and said, “Now you go here and look you got my guy.” “Wait, wait, wait a minute. What if I didn’t want to move there?” “No, see, you got my guy and now I move here.” She put another red out and let me move a black. We moved again.

2007-08-24T00:58:00.000-07:00

“I don’t remember how the pieces go,” I said. My brother commented from the kitchen counter where he was dicing hardboiled eggs for potato salad, “You’d better remember quick or she’ll beat your pants off.” The girl wriggled closer to the glass table and said, “That’s okay. I can set them up. The red ones go like this and the black ones, you be the black ones, I’ll be the red ones, they go here and then when you come across you go like this and you can jump over me and then I’m gone and you got my guy.”

2007-08-23T00:56:00.000-07:00

“Can you play checkers?” the girl asked. “It’s been a long time,” I said. My brother laughed, “Watch out! She’s only been playing for a week.” I could tell he meant that as a threat, that he had trained his pet monkey to burn the competition. My brother was infamous for always knowing everything. Growing up, he lorded over me. He thought he was my protector, he thought he was wiser, he though he was a good and balanced ruler. I though he was crap. Sitting across from his adopted daughter I couldn’t help wanting to spank her checkers game.

2007-08-22T00:53:00.000-07:00

“She just learned how to play checkers last week. You should play a game with her,” my brother suggested. He had the girl go get the game board. We sat at opposite sides of a modular u-shaped sofa with a ceramic glass top table between us. The girl wanted the glass closer to her so she could reach the game pieces. She yanked at the glass, causing it to scrape against the ceramic base. “Careful,” I said, “this table is handmade. Don’t break it.” The girl looked at me and yanked the glass again. “Okay,” I said, “Stop. No more.”

2007-08-21T00:48:00.000-07:00

The first time I met her she was running through the dining room, a three year old sprite in a hot pink dress, dirty fingers and runny nose. She played shy. My brother was aghast. “She’s never shy,” he said. “Go on, tell her your name.” The girl curled her gummy fingers into the hem of her dress leaving brown smudges. I smiled and shrugged, “Evil auntie, I guess.” “No,” my brother said, “she’s never like this. I don’t understand. This is your aunt. Say hello.” The girl smiled, “You’re my aunt?” “It would seem so,” I said, half apologizing.

2007-08-20T00:45:00.000-07:00

It took a long time to get over it. I read books about it. I talked to friends. Few people are experienced in the matter. They align it with money, troubles of the heart, garden gnomes on the hoof and what can you do? You can tell them it is not like student loans. You can explain the fear is nothing like the errant garden gnome because you know the gnome will return with your vacationing friend. The closest is love but that always mends itself with time. No, I was certain I’d never get over it and would die.

2007-08-19T00:41:00.000-07:00

Mary sits beside me and puts her hand on my knee, just for a second, just long enough for me to look at it and register the touch, then she clasps it to her other hand. I miss the touch. People don’t touch each other much. We share stories, we laugh, crack jokes, express woe, grumble but we don’t sing. We don’t linger. Who would dare break out in a love song, a heartfelt rehearsed song of devotion for a friend? Life could be a movie-musical. Couldn’t it? For Mary I’d sing a song of praise, a song of courageousness.

2007-08-18T00:38:00.000-07:00

What is spiritual? People want to be rich. The television is all about possessions, how much you can buy, how much you can store, ways to spend money on organizing the possessions, following extraordinarily rich people around their extravagant homes and panning across the fields of automobiles, saunas, golf courses, studio and corporate endorsements; where are the servants? Where are all the attendants, the men and women who polish all the stuff? Everything I own is dusty. I rarely get to touch my things, let alone admire them. So why do I keep them? Why hold on to American spirituality?

2007-08-17T00:24:00.000-07:00

He sounds crazy. The artist I’d admired all my life since I first knew what art was – how art could make people feel, wake up, remember – has gone bonkers. I’m certain of it. He talks about meditating, his being soaring above all humanity and resting in nirvana like wings on a bird tucked against a warm, rapid beating body of light. I decided I don’t want to listen; information over load, too much all at once, a rift in my imagining, a bump in my conception. How I had missed it before. Artists are all like this, disconnected from reality.

2007-08-16T00:16:00.000-07:00

A great opera panned and praised; Mahler loved it, Verdi hated it, Berlioz swung both ways, and Wagner, the anti-Semite, celebrated it. Forgotten, seldom performed, the opera languishes. Few care of opera anymore. The young think it is all fat ladies, false hair and beauty marks. Puffy underpants only go so far to make an opera entertaining. Plenty a farce about misplaced messages and misplaced love affairs have gone round. But when the tragedy of love misguided leads the key players to die in flames for the final act, who can deny the greatness of opera? Love transcends the fire.

2007-08-15T00:12:00.000-07:00

Another dollar folded into a shirt. How many times will this gimmick work as a tip? She seems to think that the act of having folded the dollar makes it worth more than a dollar. I wonder about that. Could I let myself believe? There is a charm to the origami. Something about it seems magical, as though it were added value. But as I hand a dollar folded into a shirt to the librarian to pay my fine she looks unimpressed and rapidly unfolds it, nearly tearing the bill along the collar, making me feel sheepish, knocking my pride.

2007-08-14T23:51:00.000-07:00

Racked up with debt, bills piled by the sink, power turned off, two sweaters on, cell phone off and full of messages, exercising his butt cheeks by clenching in the straight back kitchen chair, Darren wishes he could write. But every word is useless. Nothing makes sense. Combinations that once rang true now make him angry. His Remington typewriter is on the curb with a free sign. Darren has given up. Why pretend? Why fight it? Darren knows his failure as he pencils in applications for Taco Time, Burger King and Walgreen’s. He’ll cut his hair and shower at Larry’s.

2007-08-13T23:20:00.000-07:00

What would possibly be worthy to post. On a day like today he is lost. There are no words. Fear of failure, a life lived outside of the self, his creative flow is jammed, gummed up, stuck in the works, monkey wrenched. He curls his fist under his chin and pouts, elbow hard on the kitchen table. The sun waggles outside, now behind a cloud, now shining through. He watches it through the window, looks down the block cataloguing the houses, the colors, and thinks about the luxury; fridgerators stocked with bacon, lettuce, factory direct apple sauce and leftover pizza.

2007-08-12T22:05:00.000-07:00

The healthier Dieter grew and the more distant the dealings with our mom, the more comfortable our dad seemed. Dad took over the kitchen, sharpening knives and buying a huge cutting board to cover the stained counter. He sliced mushrooms and sautéed them with pan fried noodles in a ginger spice sauce of his own design. He started screen printing, paperbacked emulsion rolls unfurled over a metal rack ready to be cut into designs. Self satisfied, dad looked younger, smiled at chores, ruffled my brother and read out loud to me page by page, whole passages of wisdom and humor.

2007-08-11T21:56:00.000-07:00

My brother was a bully. He didn’t take any crap from anyone. Before he got sick he was average size. After the Chron’s he was suped up on enough steroids to make him a menace. His height kicked in. He should have been tall and gangly like the men in our family but steroids made him tall and stout, a combination that enabled him to circulate through his classmates without care. He bragged about being a man before the rest of them. I never saw he was much with the ladies but he seemed to think he was hot shit.

2007-08-10T21:50:00.000-07:00

I always felt inadequate, a goofy kid with strangled hair and not enough lip to get the words out. Other kids seemed to have their own spotlights, a camera crew and orchestra following them, dramatizing their performances, adding highlights to their cheeks and posing them at just the right angle for adults to appreciate. They didn’t lose their shoe during recess. Other kids didn’t pick them for easy bullying practice. Recount the times I was corned and it would read like a tides table. Run too fast and there goes another shoe, easier to get pummeled and walk away polished.

2007-08-09T21:46:00.000-07:00

“but you could.” Dad’s grin, the grin of a cagey beatnik, a guy who’d seen the greats do their jazz band spoken word shticks, a guy who’d never compromised his studies and yet compromised his life by marrying and having kids and staying with mom through her most manic moments. “Why don’t you? You could do that.” He was always saying things like that. Like, “How do they do it? Can’t be hard if that jerk is doing it.” Somehow this translated in my mind to pessimism: how _do_ they do it? It must be insurmountable, they must be brilliant.

2007-08-08T21:45:00.000-07:00

Dad’s hours were irregular. Some nights he came home late, gym bag in hand, juicy fruit gum smacking in his mouth, a sheen of sweat and dark circles under his eyes. Other nights he was home early having beaten the traffic, self satisfied to be sitting with a book before I got home from school, hogging up the one comfy seat in the house. He’d read and pause, “Listen to this,” quoting from the book. Alan Watts one day, Vonnegut the next. “How does he do that?” he’d ask, rhetorical and yet not. “I can’t do it, whatever it is.”

2007-08-07T21:41:00.000-07:00

Divorce papers arrived after Dieter was released. He took steroids. His cheeks were swollen and his eyes puffy and he walked with his fingers inflated, difficult to grasp impossible to do the things he used to. He cursed as his knuckles split when he repaired the lawnmower. The radio dial was easier to turn. Headphones large enough to make his teen head look small, my brother kept to his bed with the Led Zeppelin poster and his automotive magazines. The divorce seemed to wash off him. Nothing lost after regaining his life. Mom moved away and dad worked as ever.

2007-08-06T21:30:00.000-07:00

My brother was in the hospital with Chron’s disease when our mom decided she couldn’t live with us anymore. He was twelve. The Chron’s was first diagnosed when he was ten. Mom and dad visited Dieter without me. They said I was too young and left me at our neighbor’s. Cherie was nice enough, made me ramen noodles and let me watch cable TV. She asked about my brother. I was 7. Mom had accidentally burnt the house down and while insurance paid for it to be rebuilt Dieter started bleeding and I kissed a girl for the first time.

2007-08-06T15:37:00.000-07:00

Daily Fiction will resume September 1st.

2007-08-05T01:25:00.000-07:00

I don’t know how she did it, but she did. I was staying off-and-on in a church group's basement for wayward children. My way was way off. My rolling skills had moved from tobacco to weed. I was proficient with one hand. By then, though, nobody I knew smoked pot. Everyone was hooked on Brown. I’d tell you what Brown is but I’m not even sure myself. All I know is everyone was cooking it. Mary saved my life. My mother’s sister, Mary was a counselor for Puget County Jails. She said I reminded her of the girls she profiled.

2007-08-04T01:24:00.000-07:00

I can’t eat wheat. My pizza eating days are over. It occurred to me today that I have spent a lot of time avoiding this fact: my mother’s mistreatment of me has lead to my worried self-care. So much of my life now is worrying. What to wear, how to behave, what to do with my blip of a life. I get pretty philosophical about it. I mean, WWPD, right? What Would Plato Do? I mean, what would have happened to me if Mary hadn’t stepped in? I was already 16 and living on the street when Mary located me.

2007-08-03T01:23:00.000-07:00

I don’t remember how old I was when my mother taught me to roll cigarettes. I know I was excited to learn. I was eager to learn anything and to make my mother happy. This, rolling smokes, was one of the things that she rewarded me for. Sure, a medium double pepperoni extra cheese from Pizza Haven wasn’t much of a reward, at least, looking back now, I see it for what it was: cheap. Considering the alternatives, however, it was luxurious. Any other night and it would have been Top Ramen. Now the creator of Top Ramen is dead

2007-08-02T01:20:00.000-07:00

I knew mom would be home soon. I wanted to get the task done. Sooner it was over; the sooner I could go outside and find Nicole. I licked the paper, a long snail trail across the crackling line, and folded it, patting it against the main. The smell was sweet and dark, like a bonbon gone wrong. I put the cigarette in the can with my day’s work, at least a hundred tightly packed, carefully rolled cigarettes. The lid made a satisfying Pock as I snapped it back on. Hungry, I made a fried egg and grape jelly sandwich.

2007-08-01T15:59:00.000-07:00

I remember sitting on the brown striped sofa, my shorts riding up and the alternating wool and velveteen fabric itching the back of my legs. I was six, not long before the house burned down, a few years before my mother was in the slam, but I was well past being corrupted. My mother left her can of Zigzag tobacco on the coffee table. Ghostly circles from sloppy cups dotted the wood. It was easier if I bent over, bracing my elbows on my knees. That way I could get more force with my wrists as I tucked and rolled.

2007-07-31T01:15:00.000-07:00

Kathy works in Burlesque. She posts for dates on Craig’s List. “You: tall, sandy blond, rugged good looks, ability to Salsa. Me: flexible, honest, sassy and damn foxy.” Rarely do the guys look like her requirements. She figures the attributes are subject to interpretation. How sand-colored is ‘sandy’ anyway? On every date Kathy sooner or later has to face her self-imposed metaphysical challenge. Does she tell the guy her real job or feed him a clever lie? Guys always think of Gypsy Rose Lee or some sleazy nude housewife in sunglasses leaning over the engine of a two-tone 1957 Buick.

2007-07-30T00:32:00.000-07:00

Her size smothers her heart. She can barely bend her knees. Her hands are treasure trunks heavy in partially hydrogenated soybean oil; each finger dilated with juice. Her stomach bulges with exploded intestine and her lungs collapse and expand like the leafy wheeze of an overburdened truss in Napa Valley. She has heart, enough of it left unclogged to love. Volunteering for Audubon, what she loves are birds. A metabolizing flicker, a migrating goose, a gliding crane; she wishes they would land in her hand, her body collapsed and transformed to both food and home for millions of tiny birds.