MANDALA by Vallie Lynn Watson

He always walked me to my car when I left his house after sex, so stealing his albums was tricky. Not stealing. Borrowing. I started in month two, initially one album at a time, always only the record itself. He’d have to excuse himself to the restroom five or six times an evening, and I’d barefoot across his new carpet to just outside his bedroom, where the shelves began. I would slip an album out of the cover and into my messenger bag, take them home until our next engagement—he usually asked me back within a week—and after sex, put it back in its cover, fetch a fresh one. By month three I was exchanging ten at a time, and by month six, eighteen, the most I could carry in my bag. He never mentioned any missing, and he certainly hadn’t noticed the condition I returned them in. He said he’d not played music since the summer, but I was scared that he didn’t want me around for the music. I always made the short drive home in silence.

I missed him, in the in-between. Sometimes there were phone calls, about our day, about our faraway families. He did most of the talking while I painted on his records, repeating dots, lines, and swirls, starting around the center label and fanning out, playing the record backwards, pulling fine-tipped brushes over the surface of the grooved vinyl, until side A was nothing but a kaleidoscope of color. I bought a kid’s turntable and let the B-sides play wavily, lifted by the uneven, dried paint beneath, while I slept.

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A EULOGY by Michael Hendery

Cynthia B. Hurley, known online as @iBrake4Corgis17, was a well-connected woman visible across the social media landscape. Her beloved Instagram feed totaled 12,574 posts, and she amassed 836 followers after more than twenty-five years of daily engagement with the app. Cindy’s all-time, most-liked post was a photo from October 2031 of her wearing a Davy Crockett raccoon-skin cap, pretending to strangle the eight-foot-tall stuffed grizzly bear in the lobby of the Fern Creek Lodge which garnered 529 likes and spawned dozens of comments, including the expected accolades from her dear friends @tango4one and @winediva77. This post’s popularity surpassed her previous record for the selfie she took in front of copulating zebras during her well-documented safari trip to the Serengeti back in the winter of 2029.  

Cindy’s YouTube channel was a hallowed storehouse for her personal concert recordings, including a third-row video capture of nearly all of Neil Diamond’s “Cracklin’ Rosie” live from the Hollywood Bowl that, to date, has been viewed more than 8,200 times. She also leaves behind a nine-part series of how-to videos for removing stubborn stains from a variety of fabrics. Cindy’s upload demonstrating how baking soda and vinegar can be used to get a dark roast coffee stain out of a hand-tufted wool rug has gotten nearly 5,000 views, and it ultimately earned her an invitation for a featured segment on household cleaning tips and tricks on Wake Up Bakersfield!

While a perilous allergy to pet dander rendered Cindy incapable of keeping a dog in her apartment, she nonetheless maintained an active Tumblr account where she collected innumerable photographs of dressed-up Corgis. Her favorite was of a Pembroke Welsh outfitted with a deerstalker hat and wool tweed jacket to which she added the caption, “the Corgi of Baskerville.”

On Twitter, Cindy only followed celebrity chefs. She liked their weeknight recipe links, and appreciated their reluctance to discuss politics in public forums. Cindy had registered accounts on Linkedin, Pinterest, Snapchat, Pastiche, Splay, among others; however, it was her Facebook presence that most endeared Cindy to hundreds of family and friends throughout the world. Her profile picture—a brown-and-white cartoon face of a pointy-eared Corgi, sporting a top hat and monocle—became iconic among her followers. This tiny portrait was framed next to each of her comments, linked Instagram photos, and witty status updates. “I forgot to workout today; that’s nine years in a row!” was posted at 8:52am on the day she passed.

On Facebook, Cindy was known for her tenacious commitment to celebrating birthdays within her vast circle of friends. She developed something of a trademark for the occasion, writing “Feliz Cumpleaños” squeezed between two maracas emojis for each friend on their special day. On her own birthday, Cindy would respond to each of her well-wishers with personalized GIF reactions and emoji sequences tailored to their particular connection. 

Although she could be playful, Cindy did not shy away from important global issues. She received 345 likes and 97 sad-face reactions for the article she shared about the devastating flooding and refugee crisis in Cambodia and South Vietnam. Her powerful post that simply displayed the block-lettered phrase “dog fighting” within a red circle and backslash had a similar kind of impact on her followers. 

While Cindy’s passing is sorrowful, she did opt-in for Facebook’s Posthumous Content Generator, so it is comforting to know that her spirit will live on with posts authored in her likeness, originating from her account forevermore. The first such post, Cindy’s Life Retrospective, is now live and can be viewed at her profile page, or at her memorial tablet onsite at Hillcrest Cemetery.  

#pour1forCin #CorgisRpeople2 #mother_of_4 

 

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THE MOON GOES ON by Lydia Copeland Gwyn

The tea warms through the paper cup and through my gloves. A tiny island of pleasure in the winter air outside my car. My head is still reeling with the conversations of the night. Friends from upstate New York, who drove here in their Prius. Their gentleman toddler who sat in the backseat through miles of I-81 without one solitary meltdown. The straw-bale guest house they want to construct next summer, where we can all stay when we visit. We being any friend who wishes to make the 12-hour drive.

I can’t help but look up because the trees are bare and so much of the night sky is visible. The moon full as boiled potatoes and stars always moving away.

I could reach up to the branches, damp in their centers, and pull one down to raise like a torch and stir the air. To stir the air the way my eight-year-old daughter moves the wind up in her tree house with an old walking stick. The way she owns that shit, full-faced and unflinching. And the leaves move here and there at her command. All the saints from the Catholic gift shop clinking together around her neck.

My energy is at an all-time low. Lately I'm unable to maneuver through a conversation with the ease I used to, and my brain feels dull. I can’t remember words. I interrupt more these days, and what I have to say is not important. Tonight I repeated what my friends said. I agreed. I smiled. I nodded. I added nothing new but the detail that I moved to a new office at work. I have more light now, I said. 

The moon goes on shining above my car through the oak and maple branches, a silver mystery, its gray craters like oil through paper.

I hear the cars going down Highway 400, and a train clanging and whistling in the town down the road. The town where owner-less dogs walk freely. Their fur bristling with the filth of garbage scraps. The town is named after the wild turkeys that inhabit the area.

I stand in my driveway unable to remember the planet whose shape is brightest now, nor the word whose meaning is to expand fiercely. To expand fiercely.

My brain loops like a Philip Glass machine, the same refrain, the same refrain. Only it's not the same. There are faint changes in every line.

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EVENTUALLY NOTHING’S COMING BACK by Gabrielle Griffis

First they converted five-thousand year-round homes into summer rentals. 

The number of Airbnbs and zoning regulations filled the ponds with nitrogen and cyanobacteria, stuff that evolved 2.7 billion years ago. You stare at a sign that says keep kids away from scum. You think, something is desperately wrong, but folks just shrug, elated that the remaining ponds are six degrees hotter. 

A woman in a bathing suit reads the same sign.

“I’m glad I won’t be around to see what happens!” she says, snapping swimming goggles over hair the color of spider silk. She details her upcoming trip to a coral reef, devoid of coral. 

“I’m in a mad house,” you think and take your beach towel elsewhere. 

***

Ornithologists say there are more birds on the peninsula now than a hundred years ago. 

People get excited because one time Thoreau was here. Shanties are famous because a well-known transcendentalist stayed there. Newspapers write about it. The land was deforested, cleared for sheep. In the absence of forest, rain washed away the soil. Precious minerals recycled for millennia were lost to the sea. 

Now spruce and oak have reached a certain height. Bald eagles return. You adjust your binoculars next to the woman who commented on the algae sign. She’s hoping for a raptor mating show. 

Developers clear scrub pine forest for luxury condo units.  

You watch your friends vacate, tired of living in mold infested apartments. 

Erosion and strong storms in March wash away clutches of piping plovers. Their eggs, indistinguishable from rocks, are swallowed by the tide. 

Time and the temperature feel messed up. You’re sad and eat a popsicle.  

***

The sign-woman says she enjoyed her vacation. She’s on the land conservation trust. 

You consider the Sekki calendar, the 72 micro-seasons of Japan, punctuated by the sensory experiences of nature. You think about the low-tide stink and where the first pungent smell of marsh methane would fall on the calendar. Probably spring. April smells like rotten eggs. 

If only we all measured time by blossoming beach plums and the arrival of dark-eyed juncos.   

In nature, everything is reused, birds smash and eat shells for calcium, coral reefs struggle with large nutrient disturbances because their ecosystems are efficient at recycling. Slurries of fertilizer are bad. You have no friends because it’s more lucrative for property owners to do summer rentals. 

Eggs drift out to sea. Trees are felled. Birds die or leave. You wonder if anyone will come back. You hope they will, but you’re not optimistic. 

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THE BIRD by Mary Widdicks

There’s mud between my toes. Slimy, sticky, and covering the chipped pink polish that now decorates only the tips of my big toenails. It’ll be gone the next time Mom cuts them. The ground is hot even though the sun is starting to duck behind the trees, and I can’t stand still for very long or it burns the bottoms of my feet. I hop from grass patch to molehill along the side of the road, avoiding gravel and broken glass like a game of hopscotch, and trying desperately not to spill the water from the bucket dangling from my right hand.

Slosh.

Hop.

Splash.

The air still smells like clamshells on the creekbank even though I can see my house waiting on the other side of the street. It has a covered porch on the second floor, which people say is fancy, though I’ve never been out there. Mom says it’s not safe, and the window has been locked for as long as I can remember. There’s a long stretch of sunbaked asphalt to tiptoe across to get home. Pinched in my other hand are my favorite boots, hot and damp and dripping silt. The boots are green rubber and look like frogs with two big yellow eyes that gaze up at me from the toes. They’re two sizes too small and give me blisters now, but I don’t care. 

They’re lucky. 

I set the bucket on the grass beside me. More like a pail. The kind you build sandcastles with at the beach. I peer inside.

Crawdads. 

Piled in the bottom of the bucket, the little river lobsters squirm on top of each other. A wriggling tower of shells and pinchers tangle up with antennae and spider-legs. The alien creatures roll onto their backs and curl inward, as if they’re afraid to touch the plastic sides. Their whole lives have been spent hiding beneath rocks and traversing the gentle rapids of the creek. The water is murky with sand and fear, the metallic tang of desperation rises from the sloshing water. 

I plunge my free hand into the chilly water and pinch one of the wriggling creatures between my thumb and forefinger, careful to keep my flesh clear of the flailing claws. The remaining crawdads clack against the bucket as they test the limitations of their new surroundings. Plucked from the only home they’ve ever known, these creatures waste no time in mourning. The static death of plastic must feel like another world, and the natives are getting restless.  

I lift the hefty crawdad in front of my face. Ruddy brown eyes stare through me as if my nose isn’t poised inches from its sharp snout. The crawdad stretches its legs to the side, reaching and hoping for anything it can use to escape. One antenna tickles the back of my wrist. Goosebumps rise up along my tanned arms and I grip the hard shell harder, just in case. The boots in my other hand dangle heavily against my thigh and I drop them to the ground without breaking the crawdads beady gaze. 

The crawdad in my hand writhes and I flip it onto its back, a little trick I learned from my cousin a few summers ago. In contrast to the dark mahogany shell along its back, the underbelly of the crawdad was pallid and speckled with tiny orange and black orbs. Dozens of them, mashed together and protected by the scooping tail shell that was now resting against my palm. Eggs. This crawdad was about to be a mother. 

I curl my toes into the soft grass and bite my cheek. The sun has dipped behind the trees along the creekbank, and it’s starting to get dark. The light shining through is sherbet orange instead of golden yellow, and the little ginger eggs glow translucent. My stomach rumbles. There isn’t time to take her home. Not today. Cars whiz past on the road ahead and I ease the pregnant crawdad back into the bucket. The others pile on top of her and within seconds it’s impossible to distinguish claw from leg. My toes start to twitch. I tip out my lucky boots and water pours onto the grass beside my feet. Maybe I’ll take my chances on the hot blacktop. I crouch to scoop up the bucket and that’s when I see it. 

A few steps away, half buried in a pothole, a mass of black feathers and dirt is crumpled in a heap on the road. A single feather sticks straight up from the center like someone planted a flag. The crawdads clack against the side of the bucket as I drag it behind me. One step. My wet toes sizzle against the ground. At first the thing looks like a pile of leaves or dirt, but soon my eyes make out the shape of a large, black bird. A sharp rock jabs between my toes and tears cloud my eyes. Is he still moving? 

When I’m close enough I could reach out and touch the broken wing, I stop. I let the bucket fall from my hand. Water splashes onto my feet and seeps into the ground as the pile of crawdads wriggles free. They’ll be fine, I tell myself. Mud drips from my toes, and I fall to my knees on the verge of the street. I’m close enough to touch the crumpled mess. The long flight feathers of one wing are bent toward the sky and twitching with the wind from each passing car. Someone honks as they pass. I examine the bird. A starling. They’re easy to spot from the metallic rainbow of colors shining from their slick black heads, like oil spills leaking across parking lots. 

He’s been hit by a car. The back half of his body spread thin like playdoh, his skinny legs bent until they look almost like the Crawdads. I wonder if he suffered, how long he’s been plastered here. Sadness rises up from my stomach and sticks in my throat like a bubble. Everyone hates starlings, but I always thought they were pretty. Some of his feathers are still whole and unbroken. His black eyes are staring up at the sky. I set my boots down and reach my hand toward one of the long, sleek, tail feathers. 

Then he blinks. 

His head rises from the ground and the twisted wing flaps pointlessly in the air. 

I jump to my feet. His legs and body have glued him to the ground and no matter how hard he struggles, he’ll never leave that place. 

The bubble in my throat bursts and a sob escapes. The sound shocks the bird as much as me. We both freeze. His eye fixes on me. I look around for someone to call, but there’s no one. Who would help him anyway? Birds die every day. It’s nature. 

But not this way. 

Not slow and painful and pointless.

I want to help. 

Beside me the eyes of my frog boots glare up at me. Calling me weak. Stupid. They know what needs to be done. I slip one foot into the wet boot. It’s cold and gritty inside. I step closer to the bird and he flaps again. My face is hot and then cold and it’s not until I reach a hand to my cheek that I realize I’m crying. Someone has to do it. I can’t leave him this way.

I’m standing over him now. His wing pointed at me like a finger. I raise my foot high. Probably too high, because I tip off balance as I bring the heel of my boot down toward his head. The force of the impact vibrates up my leg and into my hip. It hurts. Like a shock from an electric fence. But I missed. The bird’s beak scrapes against the road but he’s still moving. More frantic now. The last of his life energy fighting to stay alive when really he’s already dead. He just doesn’t know it yet. 

My chest burns and my stomach heaves. I want to leave. I want to run home and forget I ever saw him. In that moment I hate him. But I’ve made it worse now. Half snapped, his wing still flails and I know he’s hurting. I sniff hard and snot leaks down my throat. I close my eyes and bring my heel down again. This time I know I’ve done it. There’s a loud popping sound like those little firecrackers you throw at the sidewalk. 

And then nothing. 

I can’t even look. I slip my foot from the boot and leave it where it falls. My knees crunch against gravel as I ease back onto my ankles in the ditch. Hands shaking in my lap I count the cars that pass, so close I can feel the wind dragging me along behind them. One. Two. Three. Beside me a rustling pulls my attention back toward the bird. The crawdads sharp legs scrape the asphalt as they test this new environment. Within moments, they gain confidence. One reaches a claw toward the bird and grips the one protruding feather still pointing toward the dusky sky. 

Crack. 

The feather snaps between the pincers, and I scramble to my feet. Crawdads don’t scavenge dead birds. It isn’t right. My stomach turns and I wish I’d never seen the bird, wish I’d never tipped out the bucket and introduced these creatures to the cruelty of human nature. Another car honks and I  and there’s no time for mourning. I turn my back to the boots and the bird and the bucket and I walk home. The ground cooks my feet, but I don’t care anymore. I’ll never go back. 

No more lucky boots. 

No more hopping. 

No more dancing.

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A VERY SHORT STORY ABOUT TWO (THREE) FORMER FRIENDS by Eli S. Evans

On my fortieth birthday, my old friend A– sent me the following message: “Happy birthday, bro. Mark Fisher summited Everest last week.” As Mark Fisher and I hadn’t been friends for at least twenty years, this news was not meaningful to me except in so far as it provided a measure relative to which all of my own accomplishments in life suddenly appeared quite meager. And on the day of my fortieth birthday, no less! In bitterness, I composed the following reply: “That’s cool, but not as cool as when I summited your mom last night,” and only after not receiving a response remembered that A–’s mom had just recently died of something unpleasant involving, if I was not mistaken, her colon. Some months later, another old friend, J–, asked me if I’d heard the latest from A–. “No, and I don’t expect to,” I answered, and for the sake of explanation told him exactly the same story I’ve recounted here. When I finished, he was uncharacteristically silent at the other end of the line, at which point it dawned on me that it was actually J–’s mother, and not A–’s, who shortly before my fortieth birthday had died of something unpleasant involving, if I was not mistaken, her colon.  

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EGGS by Emma Howard

I'm just going to write stream of consciousness 

I don't like women I admire I'm scared of them I'm scared I'll never be like them and I'll always laugh at every joke and be afraid of feeling angry and letting people know every time I was angry I ate a lot of something really salty or really sweet and kept the wrappers in my bag so roommates wouldn't see them in the trash can 

I remove them at irregular intervals, when I'm in public by a trash can and I don't know anybody there I move to a new one for each different wrapper so a stranger won't know how much I ate in one sitting not to feel angry 

I think it's important to be kind to strangers but you don't always need to be nice and you don't owe anyone your politeness this is something I think but not something I believe 

I think there should be more women in comedy 

I also think there should be a way to express myself on a wider platform in an unironic voice that cracks and wavers because I cry a lot when I'm angry before I make a joke of it

Anything that feels too heartfelt or passionate or opinionated has to be followed by an lol so no one will be uncomfortable 

I don't know when I learned to bond over insecurity and forgot how to bond over anything else. Confident people have something I don't understand and can't relate to and I want to learn but I'm afraid to, afraid that if I spend too much time with them I'll see how much I want that 

I laughed and smiled when Mike From My Hometown said are you a virgin is that why you won't have sex with me and when Tom something stuck his hand in my pants and his fingers inside of me 

I was drunk and I said I didn't want anything and then he put his hands inside me it hurt and I pretended to enjoy it i didn't know what else to do I backed away and laughed and started to close the door he said are you okay you look like you're scared of me and I laughed and then I closed the door 

The night I slept at Mike From My Hometown’s house I lied to my mom 

It didn't feel sneaky in a fun way 

He was a manager he was the first manager I had who said he wanted to fuck me and I liked that he could tell me what to do 

Invitations became obligations that I thought I liked but knew I wouldn't in the morning 

I didn't have sex with him but I didn't want to be there in his house or his room or his bed 

He was high on quaaludes and I didn't know until later 

It made me feel worse 

He made eggs the next morning with onions 

I love eggs with onions 

I was upset that he was the person cooking me eggs with onions and also they weren't done enough 

I don't like eggs over easy 

I drove home the license plate still says "thespian" without an e cause it wouldn't fit and that was the first morning I felt wrong being in my teenage car like something adult had happened to my body and now I needed to change my license plate 

I listened to this CD of old French ballads I got at goodwill and I felt icky but I couldn't cry even though I wanted to 

When I was 12 I watched Chicago and convinced Maddie to reenact scenes with me for her parents and we sang "When You're Good to Mama" even though that's not one of the duets so we didn't do harmonies we just sang all of it in unison and I danced in this vulgar hypersexual way on a chair and her parents sat there and tried to smile 

I miss when my sexuality was all my own accidental performances 

Living room skits for adults I hadn't learned not to trust yet 

And we laughed the whole way through 

Because everything was funny and nothing was uncomfortable 

For us 

And that was all that mattered

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THE FULL LENGTH OF THE WALL by Darren Nuzzo and Toddy Smith

I watched him do it—down there in the alley beside our house. “Up to no good,” my wife said. “Can you handle it, Sam?” she asked of me. “I’ll handle it,” I told her. But I just watched. I watched this tall man from our bedroom window standing in the alley, near our things, near my wife’s car she’s almost paid off, near the flowers finally blooming from finger-painted pots, near my daughter’s purple tricycle we won in a raffle just last week, near all the things a husband is supposed to protect. I opened the window and leaned my head out. I cleared my throat to sell it to my wife that I might have it in me to yell, just how a man has it in him to yell. But I just watched. I watched this man spell his name with pee on our red brick wall. He had two hands on it. He moved left to right, knees slightly bent and angled outward so that his jeans wouldn’t drop any further. His long flannel was pulled up and stuffed between his teeth. His hips thrust forward like he was doing the limbo. He shuffled the length of the wall like a number of things that might shuffle the shoreline: a fisherman, a photographer, a lifeguard — no, not just a crab. He traveled a great distance, something I’ve never had to do being given such a short, weak name: Sam. But this guy, he really moved. The full length of the wall, like I’ve said. Two hands on it, like I’ve said. And just like that, it was over. He opened his mouth and let his shirt hang. Pulled up his pants, buckled his belt. He stepped back from the wall. Centered himself in front of his work. Admired it briefly. Pulled out his phone to take a picture. Held the camera sideways, had to. The wall lit up, eleven letters dripping down red bricks: Constantine. Now that’s a name. 

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SHORT STORY AS MODERNIST WITH HUMAN BRAIN by John Milas

for Marianne

My classmates and I were waiting in line to hold a human cadaver’s brain. I took it with both hands when it was my turn. It was gray and smelled like tequila because we’d pulled it from a bucket of brains soaking in alcohol. It was heavy as if a generation of memories had accumulated within its rubbery noodles like a pile of dust. I thought if I dropped the brain on the floor by accident it would probably bounce like a spare tire. 

My professor brought our class to the cadaver lab on campus because she told us it would be a uniquely human experience and it would change our lives. This was for a graduate-level course on modernism that my advisor told me to take. This was supposed to make us feel less alone in the world, but I thought it was pointless and I didn’t know why I had to be there. I had told my professor as much in her office, but attendance was mandatory because the field trip was listed on the syllabus. 

I thought we’d end up in some dark cellar with concrete slabs displaying dead bodies that looked like they might come back to life at any moment. Instead, we walked into a bright classroom with about six cadavers laid out on stainless steel tables. The cadavers were so dead they looked fake. They were so dead they looked like they had always been dead. 

My professor had been to a cadaver lab before, so when we first strolled in as a posse of modernists she walked right up to the nearest cadaver after putting on some blue gloves. She started picking things up, such as this dead person’s heart and liver. A med student in a white coat told me the brain I was holding belonged to the same man whose heart my professor was practically kneading like dough, as if she were massaging the rhythm back into it. I was close enough to see that the third finger on the dead man’s left hand was constricted by the ghost of a wedding ring. Each of his organs looked as dry as a gourd. 

“This one died of leukemia,” one of the med students said to my professor.

“Right,” my professor said and pointed at the body. “That’s why his liver is so enlarged.” She knew things about leukemia and livers already. She knew something about everything it seemed. She impressed a lot of people. Her med student was impressed and they both started poking around together, inspecting the cadaver’s scalp, which the med student pulled off like a hat. The two of them looked closely at the dead man’s shriveled up eyes from inside the top of his skull and I felt bad for him with all that pink residue in his hollow head. 

Here was this man who had elected to become an organ donor when he signed up for a driver’s license. He was lying politely on the table and he looked like he was made of plastic. His brain was cold as hell and soggy like a wet basketball. The two halves of it moved independently as I twisted each of them around. I wondered if I could tear the halves apart by twisting far enough, if I could take the logic part of the brain and separate it from the passion part of the brain so easily. Then I would have two separate brains and each half would be less complicated on its own. Someone cleared their throat behind me. I remembered my classmates were still waiting in line to take their turn. I handed the brain to the next person. My gloves dripped alcohol. I did not tear them off or toss them into the nearby wastebasket. I tried to play it cool like I was bored and wanted to be somewhere else, but I had nowhere to hide. I knew my professor was across the room watching me as I stared at my empty blue hands.

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CONSIDER RAVIOLI by Jane-Rebecca Cannarella

We’re three in a row and it’s warm like the way the bottom of a plate is hot and comforting after you microwave leftovers. Colleen and Sean both throw off heat to my right and my left, so much blue between both of them like the most blistering parts of a fire. And Colleen wants to know why no one will consider the plight of the ravioli. Pierogis and poptarts are pockets and appreciated. So she wants to know why I won’t give ravioli another chance. What’s to hate? We’re calling them raviolis even though the word is already pluralized but it adds to the gentleness. My heart is all valves and pulleys; with blood sluggish in the in-between seat at the bar. Like three uneven legs on a stool, we fun fight in a rapidly unwinding late afternoon.  

Time is a fragmented line from a middle-school notebook, like how you start to write a note but then get called on to answer a question during class. Hours become skipping stunted pen strokes, and Colleen says she's going to open a ravioli stand and name it after me. A little plea for the pockets to get the grandstand they deserve. It’ll make a killing. 

Everything needs a little more sympathy and people find comfort from other people. Like the way this dude at the bar who thinks Colleen is cute comes over and we pet his wool sweater. It’s warm and tender like throwing spaghetti against a wall and it sticks because it’s perfect. And who am I to hold a grudge? 

Nutrients are nutritious. What if I’m the disagreeable one here? The sort of disagreeable like a person yelling at you for making the meatballs wrong when all you wanted to do was cook your loved one dinner. And while I never ate the meatballs in question, I do know that they were perfect in the way that you just know something. It's the same way that bodies make their own lightning and it travels right to your sternum in shocks and surprises. That sort of knowing. Perfection doesn’t go unnoticed if you actually care.  

And we are three in a row. Drinking past our bedtimes on a school night, maybe we'll stay at this bar in South Philly forever? But they’re running out of red wine for Colleen. So I guess we have until the last mini-bottle of wine since it’s the thread of time from the start of hanging out to the end. And until they cut the thread, we’ll elbow lean on the glassy wood bar talking so fast. 

I am in the pocket of warmth and red wine is a river in the underworld pulling us all into the winter of the evening. For what it’s worth, I would stay here for another six months with the three of us hothouse flowers blooming indoors during the coldest season. And throughout the frost, I could use the time left to consider the ravioli and all sorts of other things, too.

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