Backyard, trampoline, large heavy raindrops drip down my face, I spit them off to breathe.
Backyard, trampoline, large heavy raindrops drip down my face, I spit them off to breathe.
The sky is green and roaring like a freight train, almost louder than the siren, as a patter of hail pummels the siding.
More than four years ago my puppy arrived, a baby so small it could fit in my little hands.
At first, I resisted and pulled away.
“Guess what’s in my hand?” he said, emerging from the Mong Kok train station bathroom at the end of our date.
I watch her from across the café.
Dong dong. I get up from the bed, put on my pants, trip over the coffee table, and open the door, revealing the landlord in her pajamas.
Her knees, grazing the handlebars as she sits. We’re here again at her favourite ride.
The first thing I do when I get on the ice is ask.
After the stop-and-fix baths, my father enters the kitchen. In his hand, an eight-by-ten black-and white photo, dripping.
“What is it?” “An ascot tie. Vintage.”
Someone brushes past, dropping, “Hey,” in my ear and, I discover, mint chocolate Milano cookies in my hand.
Most nights, my toddler rejects sleep.
The pub owner wanted more customers, so he let a fortune teller set up her table behind a beaded curtain in the corner.
I wheeled into the Lufthansa check-in line two hours early behind a bald, sixty-something dude decked out entirely in Patagonia-wear.
When the garbage man rides by, I pull up my top.
On Valentine’s Day, a group of fifth grade girls wave at her in the library.
Can I touch your beard? I ask my best friend, and he says yes, but I’m shy suddenly, wondering if it will feel prickly under fingers that haven’t touched a man, any man, since coming out in 1989.
I can still smell the gasoline, feel the airbags deploy, and the crushing weight of the metal pinning me down.
PLOP. The wasp plunges from the heavens into Maria’s glass of cider, right in front of our eyes.