smoke lingered throughout the air
illuminating my father’s face
and shadowing my mother’s
the bud of the cigarette catching fire
the somberness of this second fading in the distance
a memory being erased
the screams gone silent
her hysterical tears scrubbed harshly from her face
the look of shock smeared from mine
but father stayed still
through the cries he stayed still
and he let the moonlight trickle in through the window
reflecting off of his watch
the seconds ticking into minutes
and transitioning into hours.

we sit for hours in silence
in grief, torment, misery
letting the sound of shuddered breath
and last drags of cigarettes
ghostly wisps in the air
fill the room.

i know they’re concrete bumper slugs because the slime leads right to them. the trails are obvious every morning and then the sun ingurgitates them leaving a glittery residue.

it is an aberrant cursive, some curse for their brethren snails to decipher.

the customers don’t believe me. they doubt that and they doubt the fees i’m told to tuck under their paper packet and they doubt the slugs are solving math proofs and they doubt interest is a thing of the heart. but it is and don’t tell my concrete parking lot bumper slugs otherwise.

curses are foldable, or the best ones are, and that is why i become the passive utterances of a wise woman when she calls me to question. i will fold so quickly don’t test me.

with a grain of salt, the glitter stain takes a chalky quality. pique my glasses, tap on my clipboard, make slow circles around the concrete fringes to consult with the grass.

it seems like the slugs are solving the complexity of theorem proving procedures. if we call the Federal Math Department (FMD) then they better know what these slugs are on about.

i would love to liberate them from this parking lot. i would love for them to sit by rivers and make bumper slug babies. lovers pushing strollers would beckon to them and say, “that’s who solved the complexity of theorem proving procedures.”

even the reader is starting to doubt me. starting to doubt the fees i’ve tucked in here. maybe even doubting the intellect of these bumper slugs.

please.

they just need more time. their snail brothers just don’t get it. i have it all right here, just wait until the FMD gets here. just wait until the sun spits it all back to us. don’t doubt it.

a line of claymores hang from the fuselage. the trees wince from the feint. even though they know the cut of wind in winter. it’s a game to get by with a parachute.

i try to use upcycled versions with the holes properly patched.

i bring a little bell pepper with me and whisper into its fuzzy bottom that we’re going to be ok. we’ve gone at least a week without fajitas.

nylon comes from meshes and bristles, from quilts and frayed edges. i heard in the vault of DuPont they have the only nylon doll. she is the bravest of all trees.

my stomach gurgles and dissociates and slips into an anomalous extradimensional space and lurches from liminal backflips. it must be Tuesday. or some other onerous occasion like the first mycorrhizal shiver.

what if canaries made gay love in coal mines? what if they sang with the intimacy of warning? what if we feared their silence before it came?

dicyclomine has a mean plasma elimination half life of 1.8 hours. its wrapper however, part plastic, part foil, part waste, part breached, part fingernail slice, part flattened, part incinerated, part carbonized, part smoke, part dust, part forever, part brain-burn, part palinopsia.

the aircraft avoids chemical manufacturers and places of dangerous business because a falling claymore could spell disaster.

fasten my goggles one more time, kiss my bell pepper, start the slow journey home and apologize to all the trees on my way down.

tree burls and fish tumors, both knotted buds, both of growth gone sickly, both enclosed history. ever open a book with a knife? has it ever been cake with a message on it?

one time the sun (the ticklish version) set over the river and it rose underwater. it only happened once, so it’s a well kept secret told in filter-feeder folktales.

i hear their gurgling sometimes, it follows me like a scared balloon and knocks brittle craft supplies off the shelf. it once set off a carbon monoxide alarm. the gurgling can even steal my nose hairs if it gets close enough.

it’s not even fusiform. it’s more vermiform if anything…

which of my sounds haunts my mother? i know that memories line my lips like casted hooks. they clink in my storytelling. Chubbles plays with them when i whisper close to his face. we are bonded because i smell like off-brand tuna and lab fish.

i’m not alone, nor lonely, just in a lonely story. the same isn’t true for the others.

resting my coat on the burls, the river rejects the distant light. bespectacled seams of twined liters, stitching a glass pupil and pulsing cataracts. in the winter, a river spoils blindness and starves visibility.

i never noticed the pimples placed around my cheeks and the roughness of my hands intertwined around soft ones. i never batted an eye at my failed attempt at wing eyeliner until i saw girls my age’s eyelashes were longer than mine and their eye makeup sparkled with the L.E.D lights at parties. then i made it my mission to pump three pumps of lotion onto my hands and wash my face religiously and spend thirty minutes in the mirror before school, even if it meant i’d be late. i never knew the standards i set for myself until i realized the pedestal was too high for me to climb. i always told myself i wasn’t afraid of heights but broke down in tears when i got back my test and saw my teacher’s red-inked mark ups. faults of mine swallowed me whole and spat me out into a more flawed version of myself with tears smearing down my cheeks and smudged eyeliner covering my eyes and pimple patches peppered on my face and dry skin all up my arms. i wrote perfectionist in big, bold red letters but was too perfect to notice. i always told myself i wasn’t afraid of heights so i went above and beyond my ambitions, too consumed to realize my high standards were too high for me to reach.