Relations
In the living room the mother and the daughter sit side by side chatting like sisters. The mother arranges her umbilical noose like a strand of black pearls around the daughter’s neck. The daughter laughs and moves the bowl of fruit — glistening berries which appear pregnant in their ripeness, just ready to burst — beyond the mother’s reach. As time passes, the shadows in the room deepen, eventually darkness covers each face like a veil. In the cellar desperate impulses gather like mice. The mother tells the daughter to close the curtains and turn on a light. Completing her task, the daughter climbs the stairs and returns to her attic, tucking her wings beneath her on the bed. The mother sighs then dons her mask, traveling deep into another mind to disappear.
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Paranoia
The truck, which is unusually clean, possibly new, has small tanks affixed to its side and the back appears to be filled with sand. Looking down at the truck in the street from the second floor window of the gym, I can see only part of the driver’s face. The tanks, glistening in the sunlight, contain unknown liquids and covering the sand in the back is a tarp the color of the sky on an unlucky day to marry. Painted on the door beneath the driver’s casual left arm draped across the open window are words that can be assumed to reveal the truck’s business. The driver keeps glancing into his rearview mirror then back at the opposite buildings, their obstinate facades unchanging. “Maspeth” is one of the words painted on the side of the truck, the letters overly bright like a deceptive explanation. Rugged is the profile of the driver who stares into the street through his window that is open like the heart of a woman who wants to be kissed. Behind me at the gym where I stand staring down at a truck with small tanks filled with unknown liquids thick metal weights make chinking sounds as I inhale the scent of perspired dreams. The driver yawns and runs his fingers through his dirty blond crew cut and momentarily the sleeve of his t-shirt slides back from his tanned arm. The driver’s profile does not in any way resemble that of the mobster who crosses paths with an actress on her way to the water fountain to my right. The ink on the driver’s bicep spells “semper fi” in block letters. Tick tock assessment from the second floor of the gym, I turn and touch my palms to the floor. Feeling the stretch in the muscles at the backs of my legs, I wonder about the unknown liquids and sand in a truck sitting outside the building where I am feeling the stretch in the muscles at the backs of my legs and wondering about the unknown liquids and sand in a truck sitting outside the building where I am feeling the stretch in the muscles at the backs of my legs and wondering about the unknown liquids and sand in a truck sitting outside the building where I am feeling…