Our heroine just another A & W customer, with a well-stocked purse dangling from her left arm. Husband ba-dum ba-dums behind. Her age-speckled hands – look closely and you’ll note their suppleness and strength – his only portal from this galaxy to the next. She finds them a table, helps with his jacket. She orders […]
The time will come when arms transform into swinging scales to balance our vertical existence. Best memorize the gait, the deliberation a step requires. Best master the crabwalk for mornings on our own, mimic the turtle’s teetering reliance on slide-pull/slide and the snake’s low-belly work. Tottering’s on the agenda, accompanied by downright fear. The ground […]
Of all the pills dispensed by pharmacist October, beauty’s the most bittersweet. For who can live on watered-down dribs and drabs, on discoloured leaves when we’re used to bouquets, hunger for last-minute floral showings. We hunch in sun-funnelled corners, inhaling the vigour of each remaining bloom, hues intensified by near-death experience. We siphon ebbing light […]
I may be hatching a chicken collection. The most recent addition, a pair of hens. They are palm-sized paperweights, made in China, heavy bronze. I place them near porcelain biddies from Spain. Salt and peppers I’d forgotten till now, one black speckled white, one white speckled black. They nestle next to a milk glass basket, […]
mountain markers abound, at least we’re in the vicinity, so near and yet so far is the song we’re not singing, on this second wrong turnoff of a shortening afternoon despite the map’s precision, despite having been before, we cannot correct our course ‘no U-turn’ one sign declares, too late, we’ve overshot a major mountain […]
