theaphroditeeffect

on a clandestine roof somewhere near a baltimore highway with a boy who is no longer quite a stranger i sit back on my palms and look at the sky. i never used to be scared of dying, sitting in trees not once wondering how i might get out because i knew i could fly, that i could walk off a cliff over the canyon as long as i didn't look down. i had a skin then, one that i could trust, i am so young, but i was younger once. one day someone peeled my skin straight off, starting with my left shoulder and i still don't know how to ask it to grow back. now i walk around with my organs all loose my heart on my sleeve, sure, and my lungs

Today I was cleaning when I had this strange thought that if wishes were dishes, a number of mine would be dirty. Some of them are. Dirty, that is, not dishes though I wonder how it would be to drink my coffee out of "I want to go into space" pour my cereal into "I need a change of pace" but some of the things I want cannot be spoken aloud. A few are not for the polite crowd, but more of them have no words, and some of them are whole worlds. These are more daring than the ones that involve any kind of swearing my undying love, or devotion, or whatever emotion they're calling it these days. And today I was sewing because the

"My grandfather," she said, my friend, "wanted to donate his body to science. But he was too old, see and they couldn't use it when he was done." She paused, and I could hear the life of him, I could hear those scientists, just imagine it, could see their faces squinting What have we done? "Don't you understand?" they must have said, "Don't you get it? What we have already done for a body, for his, for your body, what we've accomplished." In the silence that followed, they would have said "Our science has been rendered useless by our science, your longevity our late-night joke. It is so almost funny, what we've done. What we c

 "Marry me," he said. I could hear the hum of the refrigerator kick in. Kick in, kitchen, I thought. Kettering. Kenning. There was snow beginning to fall outside the window. "Hey," he said. "Can you hear me?" The news was playing quietly on the television. Blurry visions of revolution, chants of protest, new improved fabric softener. "I just asked you to marry me." I looked at my fingernails. None of them were the same length. I couldn't find my nail file. "No, you didn't." "Yes, I did." "No, you didn't." I looked at the television screen. Angry tan faces screamed into the ether with their hoarse, whispering voices. The news anc

I dug up the powerlines buried in your yard last night using only my hands bending back my fingernails for the love of my own powers of resentment. Briefly I considered slicing them open, pressing their veins to mine (because I wanted to know what it's like to be your desk lamp, or your toaster oven) but instead I whispered to them a secret (to convey to your toast), instead re-buried them with the light from my eyes and love: "My bedroom windows move past me because my heart never mended and you never told me your middle name though I wish you had and every night though I know you're not coming back and you're not really mine I ju

         The envelope did not have a return address. It was wood-orange and padded. His name, address, and postal code were written on it in straight black capitals. The house number had been written incorrectly once, and the right digits sat next to a dense, inky squall.          He flipped the package over and peeled up the edge. The fabricky paper stuck strongly, and ripped several times. It hurt the pads of his fingers and his joints to try to open it.          The adhesive finally gave way and he peered

 He had not asked her to come. She was in town on some vague conference and she had asked him to come. She had seen him on the street in front of a library and asked him to dinner with her in a different voice, asked him to dinner on this last night she was free before returning to Montana and Frank. Frank was her husband. So she had asked him, and he said yes because she was an old girlfriend from high school and still very pretty and she had given him a hug and asked him to dinner and because she seemed so earnest. His wife would not mind. He had not asked her but she would not mind if he had asked and would not mind if she found out. S

 She had once heard them called zebra crossings by an old English friend of hers. She pictured herds of the equids quietly lying down across busy intersections, laying down their lives so that she might cross the route safely. The eimage made her feel sad in the best possibly way. Never before had she seen a duck in the crossing, however. Wasn't that a book? Hazy memories of a vague children's story swam lazily back to her and lazily away. The sun of the day was making her thoughts come in jagged shards, making her anxious. She fancied she could see him across the street, sitting with his legs crossed underneath him like there wasn't anything