Category Archives: Short Short
I just loved her in that dress, she said, referring to the little black number that Audrey Hepburn wore in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. She seemed so sure of herself as she sat there on my bed, wrapped in my comforter, explaining why she began calling herself Chanel.
I never did find out her real name, for she hurled herself from my veranda shortly after the conversation in question, leaving my comforter piled on the floor and her earrings on my headboard.
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that it was a Givenchy dress.
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The things she did she said that she did them out of love (the violence, the conflagration). Which is to say, the things that she said that she did not do to those other men (nothing much at all) were things she had been able not to do because she did not love those other men, she said.
In other words, K thought to himself, she cannot harm somebody she does not care about.
They had much in common, which is why they loved each other.
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K had a pretty wife who died of tuberculosis. They say that TB is a pretty disease (befitting a pretty wife, then). Life seeps from the body like air from an unused football; it isn’t wrenched violently from the body in the manner of any of those other afflictions that end in “plague.” Over time, the body grows pale, fragile, until it ceases to be a body and becomes a corpse. This was so in K’s pretty wife’s case. Watching her die–which he did, of course–was like watching a light bulb go out. K cried when she died.
K leaves all the lights on in his house now, and changes them every Wednesday because his pretty wife died on a Wednesday.
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Where to begin? I love you.
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K found a doll’s head out in the dirt when he was gardening one day and it turned out that this doll’s head could talk and so K and it began a conversation and then K fell in love with the doll’s head and it with him and then one day he asked it if it would like to take the place of his own head because, like, he just loved it that much and although the doll’s head was apprehensive it agreed to take the place of K’s head and so K got a big sharp knife and severed his head to make room for the doll’s head but then and unfortunately for K the doll’s head changed its mind and left K and so K died because he had cut off his head and that’s just too bad.
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Dearest:
A girl was wearing your perfume today. I wanted to punch her in the face and kiss her on the mouth, though in what order I don’t know. Then I wanted SuperMan to spin the world in the wrong direction (he can do that) so that we would have one more chance to do things right, because when he spins the world in the wrong direction we can do things like that.
When I turned to look at the girl, she was gone. How appropriate.
(Generic Valediction),
K.
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My shadow turned red today. Well, I noticed today that my shadow was red, which doesn’t necessarily mean that it turned red today. You know?
I wonder why. Maybe I’m dying, or maybe I’ve got super powers now, or maybe I’ve finally gone mad. Nobody else has noticed, but nobody ever notices the shadows of others; they only care about their own shadows.
There was that girl I knew whose shadow has horns and a forked tail. I wonder why…
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When I was small I wanted to study viruses. I was intrigued by the ways virus reproduction results in the death of the infected cell. A virus typically uses the DNA of its host to replicate, essentially feeding–indeed living–off of the host until it is dead. Fascinating.
Then I met her. And suddenly I didn’t want to study viruses anymore.
Viruses often look sorta like Bloopers from the original Super Mario Bros., but more angular and mechanical and with a head shaped like an icosahedron rather than an arrow.
She was much prettier than that.
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That dog on that side of the fence wants nothing more than to be on this side of the fence, for on this side of the fence my dog and I play happily while on that side of the fence that dog watches enviously. That dog has thus begun digging a hole under the fence so that he can come to this side of the fence. Sometimes that dog digs for hours on end, fixated as though on drugs. Other times that dog does not care about the hole he is digging, and so I dig it for him. I hope that dog finishes his hole soon so that he will join my dog and me on this side of the fence. I hope, too, that that dog’s pretty, waify owner will come looking for him.
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Have you ever woken up inside your temporal lobe? I have. It’s a scary and lonely place–like the desert during a thunder storm. There are memories that grab at you, hooded and masked figures from your past that whisper frightening things to you, rivers teeming with regret that try to drown you, caverns inhabited by sorrow that scream for you, bottomless valleys of mistakes that want to swallow you. It [your temporal lobe] rumbles and quakes because you are inside it and it does not want you there. So it hides the pleasant things from you because if it gave you access to those things you would never leave. And if you never left what would become of you?
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Asked what I fear most, I responded, People on stilts. Asked why, I responded, Because they do not get stuck in the mud.
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I see her when I dream–standing over me, whispering sand into my ear. There are pictures–always the same pictures–in the sand she whispers: a frowny face, a ballerina, a boxer, a wilted flower, torn lingerie, a cup of coffee, a novel, a photograph, tea leaves. They mean something, though I pretend not to know. Then the wind comes in through my window, exsanguinating the pictures and their unacknowledged significance. I wake to find sand in my ear and a ruined castle on my windowsill.
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We sat in Starbucks and stared out the window at it (Starbucks is always across from grand things and grand places). I know what’s wrong with the Japanese, she said. That. She gestured with an icy nod to the menacing fortress outside. That’s the imperial palace, I said, finally satisfied that my PhD in Japanese studies was coming in handy, the emperor lives somewhere inside. She smiled. Exactly. It’s the absent center. I glanced at her Chanel bag, and then at the Gucci one held by a woman sitting nearby who was pretending not be to listening to our conversation. I then nodded deeply in understanding. It started to rain and the imperial palace began to dissolve. She frowned. Can we stay until the rain stops? I don’t want my bag to get wet.
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When she sleeps, the woman’s tattoos come to life and chase each other around her body–the coyote, the school of fish, the Asian woman, the frowning Venus Flytrap, the pirate ship with torn sail, the fighting octopodes, the moth, the letters in appetentia. Sometimes they rearrange themselves just to see if she’ll notice: the moth, before on her shoulder blade now on her torso; the octopodes, once an aggressive tangle now friends embracing. But she hasn’t looked at her body in years, so she’ll never notice.
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She told me private things as she sat on my floor, this woman who came to my door unannounced, things–significant and troubling–that seemed as though they had been plucked from my own life rather than/in addition to this stranger’s. So when she stood and went silently out to my veranda and jumped off I became fearful that I might eventually do the same.
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Seven inches at least, with a two inch platform. Sparkles. Straps. Very expensive. I stared. The tubby saleman came over and asked if I wanted to try them on. I looked at him quizzically and replied I am imagining them on a woman, or a woman on them, rather. He then dutifully directed me to a pair of black high-topped Converse, which I then dutifully purchased. My dog later chewed them up because she is bored and lonely. Maybe I’ll begin gnawing on them tomorrow.
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There is a sweater that hangs in my closet. It is blue and made of some fancy and delicate material. Sometimes I take it out of the closet–to talk to it or remind myself how much it cost or inspect it for abnormalities or hold it up to my face or rub it between my fingers. But I do not put it on. Were I to put it on, I fear I would not be able to take it off without destroying it. So it hangs there, lonely and afraid, stretching slowly toward the ground.
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