No Poem Is the Only Poem. No Story Is the Only Story. No Kings.
The man was, Molly’s mother might have whispered, “flying low.” He stood by the counter of the restaurant with his zipper down, dressed in a khaki safari suit better suited for tracking rhinos in the bush than eating breakfast in Boston in February. Under his stool lay a violin case covered with stickers that were peeling off. Molly couldn’t tell how old the man was, early forties, maybe.
She frowned. Her imagination was too good today – she was walking too slowly. It felt like her feet were actually sticking to the floor. Shaking her head, she tried to take another step. And stopped.
Her foot wasn’t coming up. She lifted with all her might but it wouldn’t move. She looked down and let out a scream.
Her right foot had sunken into the floor up to the ankle. She bent down and grabbed her calf, pulling it upwards with all her strength, but her foot wouldn’t budge.
Grandad read me manga, tales rendered in Chinese ideograms that made no sense, on the settee exploring a black-white world, antics of a time-travelling genie-bot.
I wake at 3:00 a.m. and fry two eggs until they burn. My husband sleeps upstairs. He used to photograph my eyelids, knuckles, fine bones of my pelvis.
Often, on house calls, the clients meet my Dad with lemonade or tea, occasionally fresh milk. As we pull off the highway and into Uncle Harry's drive this afternoon, I watch the long, empty porch and its lonely swing pass by. Summers, we played with my cousin, Brett, here on the farm, my brother and me. We'd fish the pond. I tried fishing last summer with Dad, but he only made it an hour until the heat made him dizzy. Spells of “vertigo,” he called it, but not an inner ear thing, something with his heart. That Kareem Abdul-Jabbar disease. I can never remember the name.