There’s an anger, a restlessness about you. You’re carrying scars from your childhood, perhaps. I see you in pigtails laying flowers on your mother’s grave on a winter morning. You’re wondering to yourself why Dad is crying and where Mom went. Or did your dad leave you when you were a child? Mom cried every time you asked her when dad would be back and you didn’t know why.
She first felt a low ringing in her ears when Esmeralda made an entrance with her goat, Djali. Was it the magic of Hugo’s writing or the light summer breeze playing with the wind chimes? So strange!
This is as disappointing as that time I put pencil shavings and a few leaves of basil in an empty matchbox and chanted some gibberish to turn it into gold coins.
When the children turn 18, they are made to participate in a planet-wide pageant where they are judged mercilessly based on looks, body-type and life choices. Mines and sewers await all those who fail to measure up to the judges’ standards.
Wipe your skillet clean with a dry towel. Water makes iron rust. Rusting isn’t good, for skillets or people.
I cannot focus on my books. The peeling green wallpaper, the holes in our heavily stained carpet and my mother’s tired eyes like two broken windows are all pictures of our rusting lives.
Memories, like produce, have a certain shelf life. They’re clearest when fresh. Time blurs them with a generous spread of sepia toned patina.
When she stomped her feet like a petulant child, the matchstick world trembled. Her cosmical body moved to a terrifying drumbeat only she could hear, all the time ululating in grief over the horrors she was unleashing on her own children.
With their candyfloss pink tutus, their hair high in slick buns and their flesh-pink ballet shoes, they looked like elegant flamingos.
She flaps her wings and melts into the horizon. It’s freezing here. I can feel my blood coagulate. It probably looks like strawberry jello on the inside.
