When you ran alongside me, barefoot, following the beach pier below, I thought you meant to tell me something profound, announce something real. When you caught up to my shadow and climbed the iron steps and looked in my eyes and said, "Your mother died," I thought you were either funny or cruel. It took a long time for me to realize you were going for both.
I can't help it. I associate your metronome hips toiling in a sandblasted skirt with the death of my mother.
At my tea party, Kate Winslet is Emily Blunt's aunt. Kelp lies forlorn on the shore.
"Honey, don't make me do anything. Let me do it 'cause I want to."
Escape your uterine penumbra. Ask me how?
"I'll ask this. Impossible to answer, no doubt. How is it you seem to know me when all you know is my menstrual smell? And what is it that tastes like people? Makes us numb?"
"Because you climb men like we're trees."
"Seriously, no words. You should be banned from speaking."
"True. But then I'd write."
Here we all are, rulers of a thousand silent kingdoms. Wearers of so many tawdry cotton shifts.
"You are not the marrying guy. You are the affair guy."
"Welcome home, girlfriend."
"Ugh."
The wind gets up. Stirs the treetops. Will you dream of a monster hunched among the dark limbs, breathing quiet, awaiting its time? All I know is, every coward craves a gun.