Marriage
I was married once, at least we thought about it, it was in b&w, we were tiny, walking in a forest, the trees dwarfed us—the trees had been married forever, moss hung from their fallen branches, we had to step over them. We put on the costumes—groom, bride— these are jobs, I realized, that only last a couple hours. Why not try it, what could we lose, we were already deep inside the forest, we were already lost, marriage was just where the path was headed—I thought it would make us more like the trees, growing closer every year. I wanted you to put your hand out, to pull me closer, I wanted all the way in. A child would be the glue. Was it wrong to think of a child as glue? Too late, we were already in our costumes, we’d already had a shower, maybe someone would give us a red toaster. It was just another day to get through, even if it felt like everyone was talking through long cardboard tubes. In the distance, the Empire State Building, no matter where we were we could find a window or a roof & it would be lit up red or blue or green & that would tell us what month we were in. We could even climb it (it’s not impossible) & then look back at all the windows we had looked at it through, all over the city, waking up in strange rooms, & there it was, waiting. It was the tallest for a while & then it wasn’t & then it was again.
Anemones
My daughter puts her face beside a photo of her infant self, tries to make the same face. All of this is a simulacrum, she whispers. The anemones on the white table need water, even though they are, technically, dead. I tell her the story of the guillotine, how the head, as it rolls away, looks back at its own body, how the heart keeps beating ten minutes after it is pulled from the chest. How if you sit before anything long enough, it will become something else— that maple, say, bare when you find it, then it brightens to that green shimmer, which becomes a deeper green, & even that turns yellow, then orange, then red.
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