Snow Day

She washes the dishes on one of the coldest days of the year. Her voice is hoarse from yelling at the children to put on their mittens and scarves, even though they loved the way the wind numbed their noses and turned them pink. She decided when the first dull rays of sunlight touched on her and Gordan’s faces that today would be one for clinging to warmth from a mug and watching the flakes dance rhythmically to Earth. Of course, Gordan saw it as an opportunity for indoor chores that were often neglected in favor of sunny days. Macy spent much of the day skirting around her husband and shooting him furtive glances, gauging if he would raise his voice and hand like he had last week. All she had asked was why a woman had called at three in the morning.

At lunchtime, while Gordan was taking a hot shower and the kids were constructing snow houses, she noticed an alarm chime on his phone. The message read, “Tell your wife. She deserves to know.” A puff of air escaped her lips and her eyes narrowed. She knew it.

She rubs out the memory with slow circles on soup bowls and tries to drown out the happy sounds of their children down the hallway. The bubbles take flight and land in her nose, causing her to sneeze and the dish to crash on the floor and splinter into dozens of pieces.

            The feeling of being watched creeps on her like a tempest. She checks over her left shoulder. Nothing. Macy squints through the window that has become a mirror with the sun’s descent. She notices her suspicious, almond-shaped eyes, narrowed as if accusing herself of foolishness. Even if someone were watching, what would they see? she muses. Her hair falls in limp, blonde curls over her round face. Once, she had the time to arrange it into ringlets so the tendrils framed her high cheekbones. Dark pouches hang beneath her weary green eyes and the lines running along her forehead are smashed together. A smattering of freckles form a constellation on her fair skin. For a moment, her eyes catch on her full bottom lip and the corners quirk slightly at the thought of an admirer. It seems like years since Gordan watched her. He used to come up behind her, kiss her neck, and pretend his arms were hers as they washed the dishes and splashed water on each other. Her cheeks, now blushed with pink, make her believe again that she is beautiful.

 A shadow darkens her face and distorts the reflection. This time, she is convinced someone is watching her. She follows the shadow to Gordan’s dark eyes.

“You scared me!” she says.

Gordan clears his throat and looks at her—the wrinkles etched deeply on his forehead move with his deep inhale. He takes a rough hand through his thick black hair.

“We need to talk,” she says.

At the same time he says, “I’ve been going to a counselor.”

With Love, the Virus You Carry

To you I am invisible.

Not even seen through the microscope of your limp

marriage. These three letters of me dance in your veins,

HIV.

It starts with a touch,

the kind of sneaking clutch in dirty bars

with sweating collar and breath that reeks of

desperation.

The blue dots you mistook for eyes,

the chiseled lines of my surface now attach to you,

the lipids you lust after are my

lifeline.

The ungloved love

we shared haunts you into rashy nightmares,

while my nanostructures molest your

molecules.

Did it hurt?

Tonight, when your wife placed the card

in your hands, the Happy Anniversary like a cold

sweat.

Our one-night stand

turned into a bond of shared DNA,

like the way you turn from me but I seek out your

cells.  

Curiosity killed the

leucocytes and now the crevices of my disease

swim in your veins. My octagonal shape a lint roller for your

shame.

Flowers

The door creaked slightly upon opening. The hinge had always been a little rusty. Once, the dog would have come bounding around the corner, a blur of reddish fur and white paws. He would scratch the laminated floors and Mom would yell and laugh at the same time with her infectious exasperation. She would be proud of the way they shone now, as if we were the kind of rich that had time to care about scratched floors.

Underneath the smell of Clorox, patchouli oil ignited a reminder of the nights Mom, in her flowered dresses that left space for her to dance, would light the incense sticks. The dog would put his head on her lap and wag his tail in perfect time to her musical voice. The living room, now filled with boxes, had been a place of youthful joy—a place where the slick vinyl furniture cultured possibility.

When we danced, our flowered dresses would bloom with laughter. I was young then. Slowly, the space between us filled with anger and bitterness—my desire to grow, hers to hold on too tightly. You’re wasting your time with dreams, she had said. You can’t leave me! The dog had cowered at her shrieks and the door had shut firmly behind me.

Boxes stood open and shirts half folded on her low bed in the back of the house. A moment frozen in time. Dried flowers wrapped in shining ribbons hung from the ceiling and the air tasted of lemon and honey. I ran my hand along the silken fabric of the dresses hanging in the closet and could imagine the gentle swoosh they made as she spun around and around.

Everything else was new—a bottle of lotion from a brand she had never used, the collar for a new dog with an unfamiliar name, a postcard from her new lover in France. On the short, painted table beside the bed lay a pressed-flower jewelry box. Glue clumped around the large crack that had split it down the middle when she had thrown it against the door. The last five years was a blur of wrongly spoken words, bad timing and regret. Tears splashed against the box and lacquered it with a temporary shine.

Resolve bubbled up and spilled over with the tears. The box was a feather in my hands and made a soft clink on the tabletop. The new life Mom had built surrounded her with a fortress of unshared memories too tall to scale alone. The clock struck three and my eyes widened. The time had come to pack up the past and walk away from childhood.

Soon she would know I had collected the last of my things and she would be back to finish her packing. She would find the box sitting on the table, much the same as it had been since my small thumb had pressed the tiny daisy and my smile beamed like a jack-o-lantern. But with one addition: a crinkled piece of paper with the words I love you written, rusted with disuse.

Self Portrait as the Lotus

You smudge my petals

with your slovenly hands, dirt

gathers in my soft curves.

These swellings you call rough, but stroke

as I sit in spiritual waters. Could I sink,

I would. Not to bathe in the shining halo

of untouched white, but to remove myself

from your clutching hands.

I’m sacred to you and you bow to me,

palms face down in the dirt. Men like you

watch me float on the pond’s slick surface,

cleansed of the last one’s filth. Could I close in prayer,

I would. Not, like you, to venerate a flowered thing,

but to cast you off from the shore

like my droplets of dirt are in the breeze. 

You close in on the moment

when my petals—my sacred flowered self—

return to what you deem as touchable.

The pink you hold between your thumb and pointer,

opening a core of stamens and pistils,

this is what you came for. But you leave me

standing on waters, unable to avoid the

cycle of forced purity.

God's Radio

            There’s that blasted radio again. It’s cranked up to maximum volume on an unworkable station, so that the constant buzzing, hissing, and popping is a visceral thing that slithers its way into my eardrums. God tunes the station and the static quiets. I look at the ceiling with squinted eyes and pull harshly at the corners of them to knock away the sleep sand. I try to sit up. The bed is empty beside me, the pillow neatly fluffed and the blanket folded. Whoever sleeps there is too neat. The hands on the small clock on the bedside table are straight and smooth, unlike the wrinkles that have formed on mine. When did that happen? The framed picture of Jesus beside the clock is a familiar face; the only man I still know from my past. 

            “Got to get up,” I say. My hands feel heavy on the smooth nightgown and I drop the slippers three times before I can grip them. If my hands are heavy then my feet are anchors that tie me down to the depths of a noisy ocean. I slide them into the black slippers and struggle to the door. The handle jiggles, but will not move.

            “Goddammit, open the door!” I yell frantically. Whoever slept in the bed is out there—I know it—probably laughing at my feeble attempts. I pound my tiny fists against the wood. The heaviness of my hands prevents me from doing anything more than making the old door rattle in its frame, shaking the drywall. I look at my hands, now bent and shamelessly useless, and think of the deftness they were once capable of. Why won’t they let me out? I hear footsteps and press my ear against the door as I imagine God is pressing the radio to my ear.

            “Shirley? Now hold on just a minute, love. Let me put the milk away.” Oh, it’s a man. I vaguely remember a puff of white hair and skin marked with age spots. I make a face at the door and fold my hands over my chest. I remember suddenly that I am not wearing a bra—a strange man cannot see me like this.

            “You’re not allowed in. Don’t you dare open that door.” That will make him understand. Maybe buy myself enough time to get my robe from the closet. I walk to the dresser and open the drawers. What was I looking for? Ah, yes. The cotton socks bundled toward the back. I hear him at the door now, turning a key in the lock as if he is the master of my comings and goings.

            “Socks again, love? Let’s go and have some breakfast together. What do you say?” he grabs my arm and places the socks into the drawer.

            I shuffle in my slippers down the narrow hallway. My feet know the familiar path so I look at the walls and ignore the man. Pictures of a young couple taunt me with their smiles. I imagine the strangers’ life for them: a wedding in a small backyard, years of trying before a beautiful black-haired baby girl, sweethearts from high school just slightly stale from the years together. If I knew them it was long ago, before I was stuck in my house with a no-named old man. The radio spits static into my ear and I see the round kitchen table. Toast, my favorite, is sitting on a plate with a spoon for the butter and jam.

            “Hmmph. I don’t like toast. What horrible service,” I say. I watch his eyes. They’re blue like the creek I used to swim in as a child in Idaho. I look him up and down slowly, searching for any clue of who he is. Perhaps he is a caretaker. He looks in need of more care than me if that’s the case. “What’s your name anyway? I hope you don’t expect a tip from me.”

            “My name is Howard and a tip won’t be necessary. I’ll just leave you alone as you eat,” he says and for some reason I think he looks sad, as if he is the one experiencing the terrible service. He walks away from the table with a slow limp, one foot coming down harsher than the other in a strange rhythm. He turns slightly to the old radio on the counter and adjusts the station. It’s too much with the radio in my head and I look down at my food to ignore it. The toast would be better if I had a knife and not a spoon to spread on the butter, but the coffee helps. He’s come to stare at me from the doorway and the pen shakes in my hand while I try to ignore him and finish the crossword puzzle. Watch all you want. After a minute of this I take pity on him and smile because the heavy frown on his face is etched with deep wrinkles and, for some reason, I think I may have caused them. 

            He approaches me with a curious expression of expectation like I’m going to lunge at him. The anchors wouldn’t allow that. Howard (was that his name?) is timid, but I like the way he smiles. It makes me think of long drives through pine tree lined roads and smeared red lipstick. It is quite possible that we knew each other in a past life.

            “How was your toast, Shirley?” he asks me after a time.

            “Quite good, thank you. Except for the spoon,” I answer politely. He keeps looking at me and I notice greying inky eyebrows that betray the color his hair once must have been. “You look like this old boyfriend of mine. He was something else, let me tell ya. Jet-black hair, blue eyes, a smile with higher wattage than any light bulb I’ve ever seen. Can’t seem to remember his name, though…”

            “He sounds really great,” Howard says with a small smile. “What do you remember most about him?”

            I think about this for a moment. What do I remember most? There’s the radio; the buzzing and popping becomes louder in my ears and I’ve forgotten the question. Howard does look so much like the other man. But he was a boy and that was before my hands wrinkled and felt bound with tape. He asked a question. Yes, I remember.

            “I remember the smell. He always smelled of hickory.”

            “What happened to him?”

            “He faded away, as did the smell. I suppose he must be thinking of me somewhere. I swear I can almost hear his voice sometimes. Little hints and memories,” I say. Howard clears his throat and seems to choke on his words like they’re a dry piece of toast.

            “Maybe he’s closer than you think,” he says but I doubt it. “What do you want to do today?” I stand up and walk unsteadily to the window, feeling very alone. The large window overlooks the small patch of green I think I once called a yard, but the flowers are bright and I see only three wispy clouds. Similar clouds always dotted the sky during summers at the creek. I met the boy at a time when my tongue and wit were equally sharp, but he softened my edges with smooth hands. I feel suddenly anxious and look down at my thin nightgown. No bra!

            “I can’t do anything today. I need to go back to my room immediately,” I say attempting to rush down the hallway with the anchors. My slippers try to keep up with me, clinging fiercely to my aching feet. I fling them off; stupid things. Slamming the door behind me, I trigger the broken inner lock and it rattles loudly. He doesn’t understand that I need to be alone from all the confusion.

            I wake from my hazy nap. Piles of socks and undergarments lie around me in the bed. What are these for? The radio clicks on again and I pound at my head, but I cannot drown out the noise. I remember there is a man whose name begins with ‘H’ or ‘A’ or something. It seems like he works for me and likes me well enough so I might be able to convince him to make me food. The idea slithers through my mind like a garden snake underneath the shrubs; once it’s gone, I can no longer hope to follow.

            “Come Fly With Me” begins suddenly. That’s a new one; I guess God decided to change stations. I hum and walk to the closet to pick my best dress with the matching flowered belt. I put my hat on and pin up the last curl under the rim and walk to the door where the music becomes louder. It’s unlocked. Why shouldn’t it be? I hear the man speaking loudly, covering the music with his voice and I make my way slowly down the hallway. I ignore the photos this time, more curious about the man and who in the world he could he talking to. I pause in the doorway of the kitchen. His arched back is facing me and he grips the counter with one gnarled hand and the phone with another. There’s a ring on his left finger.

            “Today’s not a good day,” he sighs. “I just don’t know what to do anymore. I’ve tried music, but she ignores it. You know she talked about her ‘old boyfriend’ again?” He pauses. Who is this ‘she’? I crane my head to hear more.

            “Sweetie, I know you want to be home for your mom. Your husband’s work in Germany is important. I’ll be fine here, but we need to accept that she isn’t our Shirley anymore.” He stops tapping his finger against the counter and moves his hand to wipe swiftly across his eyes.

            “Don’t even say that word.” He’s harsh now. “Alzheimer’s is a terrible thing, but my wife is still in there.” Alzheimer’s? The noises stop in my ear for a moment. The word sounds like a dirty one by the way he spits it out, hissing the s like the snaking thoughts in my mind. Maybe he means a different Shirley.

            “No, she can’t hear me. She’s been asleep for hours,” he answers. He must mean me. The noises come back full force now so that I cannot hear anything above the spluttering and popping. My breaths come in short bursts and I grab my ears yelling for everything to stop, stop, “STOP.” The man turns around when he hears my outburst. His panicked face concerns me, but I pull at my hair and ears to make it all go away.  

            “She heard me, I have to go. I’ll call you later, sweetie. I need to be with her now.” He hangs up the phone.

            “Shirley, now you look at me for a minute. That’s right, look right at my eyes and take a big breath,” he coaxes me. His eyes are so familiar. “Good job. Take a few more breaths. Here, let me have your hands and I promise the noise will go away.” How can he promise such a thing? Does he know God? I focus on his eyes and the soothing quality of his voice. With a few more breaths I hear Frank Sinatra over the popping noises. My body stops shaking.

            I look up again and see the same blue that meant nothing but a faded memory of a childhood summertime, but I hear “The Way You Look Tonight” and hum softly as I clasp his hands and begin to dance. I put my head slowly on his shoulder and inhale the tang of hickory.

            “Howard,” I sigh. “How I’ve missed you. Remember when we first danced to this? On our wedding?”

            He gasps and stops swaying back and forth. “But I –Shirley?”

            “I’m here, Howard. I know who you are. I don’t think it will be for long, but I’m here,” I say as the tears build. I can already feel the sharp edges of the disease I ran from for so long erasing my present moments.

            Howard smiles at me with every ounce of affection I know he has had to hold back for so long and, for a minute, he softens my edges like he used to.

            “’Some day, when I'm awfully low, when the world is cold, I will feel a glow just thinking of you…’” he croons as we begin to sway again.

             “’…And the way you look tonight,’” we sing together. I close my eyes, knowing if I open them I could forget. For now, it is enough.

Eulogy of Biology

My mother was killed.

The Big C, masked in pretty

pink ribbons. What good are they now?

Last week, we tested rats at school,

and while it squealed my eyes tightened

the grip around its chest.

“Put the needle into its skin,”

the professor said through gummed up goggles

that hid her eyes, made her blind.

One down, two down, three.

Dissection was next

and for the sake of science

I grabbed rat four and poked again.

My mother was killed.

I’ll say it again, but it might not make sense

coming from the girl who killed

rats to advance in Biology.

I cooed calculations at rat four,

watched the way it squirmed

like a fat worm in a bird’s nest

or my mother with ace wraps

on her flattened chest.

In recent memory animal testing

went beyond cruelty into

egocentrism.

This eulogy is about me now isn’t it?

But if needle to neck

could have brought Mom back,

if I could have found the cure

to this pink disease,

if it had been more than about passing

biology, I could have stood the sight

of thin ribs against the distorted belly.

So we gather here today

for another victim of a faceless disease

and tomorrow I pursue

my degree and rat number five.

Off the Lion's Back

            Trafalgar Square was full of people. They chattered in different languages; levels of tourism displayed on their faces and clothes. There was a man on a business trip from China wiping down the seat of a bench with a black handkerchief, his Armani suit glistening in the sun. Next to him and unabashedly tourist, was a group of Americans wearing I Heart London white t-shirts with “Smith Vacation 2011” written on the back in chubby marker. And across from them a group of primary students, presumably from France based on their jacket emblems, sat in a circle in front of the larger-than-life lion statues at the base of stone pillars. They wrote in small notebooks while a teacher called out to them above the many voices.

            Emily and Simon climbed on one such lion, making faces at the kids and distracting them from their scribbling. Emily looked over at Simon who had already climbed up the sloping back of the lion and was grabbing its left ear. His messy boy band hair was contrasted with the preppy navy blazer he wore. Tall and lanky, he easily reached for both ears of the lion while Emily struggled to use the tail to lift herself onto its back.

            “C’mon Em. You’re slow and it’s bloody hot,” Simon called down to her. She could see him shake his head and used her upper body to lift herself onto the statue. From here, the people milling around the square were slightly blurry—she had forgotten her glasses when Simon tugged her through the door and ran ahead of her by three paces until they stepped on the Tube at Piccadilly Circus.

            “Coming,” she said. He didn’t reply and she rolled her eyes. He could be such an arse sometimes and, lately, his troubles at the office and with his mother’s diagnosis had made him moodier than ever. His normally brooding nature had been what initially drew her to him, but usually she was the one who could break his storm clouds.

            It was laborious work—she really needed to find more time for the gym—but she made it to the top right behind Simon. Still below him, but closer. He turned around when she announced that she’d made it and looked forward again quickly. Emily scanned the crowed and squinted against the sun glinting harshly on the fountains around the square. It was set below the National Gallery, which sat on its haunches like an even larger lion than the one she clung to. People leaned back into the early afternoon heat wave and smiled as if thanking the gods that, for once, the English rain decided to take a break.

            “Let’s go into the Gallery,” Simon said suddenly right beside her. He grabbed her hand, the black bandana tied around his wrist tickling her arm, and she smiled at the contact. She’d go anywhere as long as he didn’t let go.  

            “Sure, love,” she said. He released her hand and continued down the lion’s back, which had already absorbed so much heat that it had begun to feel like the cast iron skillet Emily’s mother used to make bangers and mash.       

            As Simon slid down, his foot caught on Emily’s purse string and the contents spilled over the lip of the statue into the middle of the school children. They looked up, laughed, and said something in French before hurriedly gathering the compact, wallet, and hairbrush and waiting for Emily to jump down to claim it.

            Landing sent hard shocks up Emily’s legs and she regained her balance while she scanned the crowd for Simon. He was already near the steps of the Gallery, lighting a cigarette.

“’Ere you go, miss.” A petite girl with long braided pigtails held the bag out to Emily and she accepted it with a distracted “Thanks.”

“And to our left is the National Gallery, a landmark in British culture, and home to original Monet’s, Van Gogh’s, and Leonardo Da Vinci’s. Trafalgar Square to your right is always a hub of activity—especially on the rare sunny day—and has been so since its opening in 1844. Its various reconstructions, addition of the fountains, and its prime location to shopping, music, and theater make it an integral part of our culture,” said a tour guide in an obnoxiously colored yellow blazer. The tourists followed him with mouths open and smartphones snapping, seemingly unaware of Emily waiting to get by.

The crowd thinned and she spotted Simon at the base of the Gallery’s steps leaning over a street artist using chalk to recreate the famous works inside. Simon was always looking at art of some sort—even if, at the moment, it happened to be an artfully dressed female who had stepped in his line of sight.

“Si, you could’ve waited for me,” Emily said. The irritation she had been trying to keep untapped was slowly finding its way through the crack of her lips.

“You were slow.”

“Jesus, what bat clambered up your arse?” She thought of the woman again and her anger renewed. “Let’s go inside, shall we? There at least you can ogle women all you like and look cultured doing it.” She bit her tongue to keep from saying more and took the steps two at a time. Simon followed her with his eyes before taking a long drag on his cigarette and tossing it on the street artist’s design.

“Oy mate! Watch where you put out your fag!” The man yelled after Simon as he walked slowly up the stairs. In response, Simon scratched the back of his head with his middle finger.

Emily turned around in time to see his immature response and walked into the security line without waiting for him. Ordinarily, she didn’t mind the guards rifling through her handbag, but today she tapped her foot and checked her watch several times before they were satisfied she didn’t have any weapons. She snatched it up and swung the strap diagonally across her chest and heard a dull thud where the bag made contact with someone.

“Pardon me,” she said while adjusting the strap. She looked up, noticed it was Simon, and continued adjusting the strap. “Nice of you to join.”

“Don’t give me that, Em. Let’s go see the Monet’s.”

He said it more cheerfully than before and she half expected him to turn around and pick her up to run her up the stairs, their squeals echoing off the marble like they did the first time they had come to the Gallery. They’d been young then with the worry wrinkles from the transition into their twenties not yet touching their foreheads.

The National Gallery gift shop on the left of the landing was full of people rifling through prints of the famous work in an effort to find their great grandmother or next-door neighbor the perfect gift from London. She followed Simon to the right of the landing, choosing to enjoy the artwork in its original state.

“I’ve always thought these ceilings were the most beautiful in the city. Even matched up to Westminster Abbey,” she said. The domed windows let in dappled sunlight and illuminated the paintings so that the brush strokes of the masters were cast in relief.

“I know. You’ve told me before,” he said but not unkindly. She wondered if making him smile would be impossible. The first time she had told him, he had answered that he hadn’t noticed them because she was standing in the light.

Room 43 looked similar to the others with paneled mahogany doorframes and roped off paintings surrounding cushions for patrons to muse about the art. Some snapped pictures from their phones or pretentiously built Nikons while others simply stared with a look of confused awe. The first time Emily had seen the works in person she imagined she looked quite the same way—as if trying to comprehend the history that was brushed onto the canvas. Simon walked with purpose to the far wall. It was a rare moment where a new wave of tourists had not yet seen the attraction and gathered in a gaping group in front of it. The white square hung in right corner:

Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies, 1899

                                       Claude Monet (French, 1840–1926)

            She’d seen it before. The hushed greens and blues in Monet’s secret bridge. The water overflowing with pink lilies and willows dipping their bows into the calm pond. They’d both felt the magic that lay there, a kind of silent history that they debated couldn’t possibly have existed in the world they lived in. 

            She imagined that she and Simon were leaning against the railings of the wooden bridge and looking at their distorted reflections in the pond. Perhaps in this universe the harsh tones in their voices would be as muted and abstract as the painting.

            “I want to break up,” Simon said suddenly. She continued to stare at the painting and picture the other world, but it was only as real as the strokes of a dead man and she turned to face the man she had thought she would marry.

            “Excuse me?” She said louder than she had expected. A middle-aged couple glared at her over their pamphlets and she lowered her voice. “Si, what the bloody Hell?”

            “I just have a lot going on right now.”

            Emily stepped closer to him and attempted to reach for his hand, but he began twisting the bandana around his wrist in quick circles. She let her arm drop.

            “Is this about your mum? I know it’s been awful, but we can help her get through this. We live together, Simon. For Christ’s sake, I gave up Uni in the States for you.” Her voice rose again. This time a young girl in school uniform looked at her meanly through thick spectacles. Emily resisted sticking out her tongue.

            Simon raked a hand through his hair and the gel made it stick out more than usual. An “adorable troll doll” she had called him the first time he had done this.

            “We’re not the kids we were before, Emily. I have responsibilities now. I’m not saying that you don’t but it’s different, you work at a pub and study Austen.” They’d had the conversation before, but in joking terms. Back then he had understood what her studies meant to her and that her family didn’t have the means to hand her money like his did. When his hadn’t been able to fund him anymore, he had asked Emily to move in.

            “You’re right. I have no responsibility Simon. I couldn’t possibly know what that’s like,” she said. Her sarcasm fell harshly between them.

            A couple holding the hands of a young boy walked behind them and smiled. Emily and Simon stepped out of their way.

            “You’re obviously not listening. I just said you do, but I’m working at the bank now and I don’t have the energy to keep fighting with you,” he had lowered his voice when the family approached the painting.  

            “You brought me here to ruin it, didn’t you? This is our place and now you want to slash all over it. You can sod off,” she said. The couple to their right looked over and the woman shushed them as moved her son to the opposite side of her legs.

            “There are children here. Have your row somewhere else,” the woman said. Emily noticed that her husband grabbed her hand and kissed her on the cheek, telling her to focus on the painting.

            Emily grabbed Simon’s arm and walked in an empty corner of the room.

            “I get it now. You didn’t want to ruin this for me. You just didn’t want me to bloody yell,” she said.

            Simon said nothing and she took a deep breath.

            “Yes,” he said. She dropped her arm, which was still on his. “Happy?”

            She wasn’t happy at all.

            “Can you at least tell me why without this rubbish that you’ve got ‘a lot going on’? Maybe we can fix it,” she said.

            “No, we can’t. Unless you can grow a new personality. Don’t give me that look, I know I sound like the world’s biggest sod. Em, I loved you. And a few years ago before everything that’s happened and before our constant rows, I thought I would marry you. But I can’t do it anymore,” Simon said. The wrinkles on his brow stood out in the canned light of Room 43.

            “Are you seeing someone else? I saw you look at that woman out there.”

            “No, I’m not. That didn’t mean anything, ok?”

            She looked away from Simon and watched the crowds of people going from painting to painting. Some of them seemed to care about what they were seeing and others barely glanced up from their phones at the masterpieces around them. She and Simon used to come in the rooms, plop themselves on the benches in the middle, and narrate what people could possibly find so important on their phones. Then, they would wander the rooms they’d seen dozens of times and find new things to be excited about in each of the paintings.

            Emily laughed then. Loudly. People turned to them for a moment then lost interest in the crazy girl whose heart was breaking.

            “Are you mad, Em?” Simon tugged at the bandana again.

            “No, I’m not mad. I was just thinking: do you take all the girls on such nice break up dates?”

            For a moment, he simply looked at her like she really was crazy. Then, a solitary laugh broke his flat expression and, once started, he was soon doubled over.

            “You’re so bloody ridiculous,” he said and pulled her into a hug. Without speaking, they pulled away from the hug and started walking around the room looking for pieces in the pictures they might have missed.

            They made comments back and forth about the work and, in the last room, sat on the bench in the middle and watched the strangers poured over their phones. This one’s mum just told him he was adopted, she said about one boy who stared open-mouthed at his screen. This other one’s checking to see if the lettuce is still in her teeth, he said nodding to the girl who bared her teeth to the camera she pointed at herself.

            By the time they left, Trafalgar Square was bathed in early evening light. The lion statues sat in their four corners guarding the people who still sat in the square with dull, black eyes. Before getting on the Tube, they stopped in the small pub they had frequented the last few years. Emily ordered a cider and Simon, a beer. They walked closely by each other in the cooling evening and he wrapped his blazer around Emily’s narrow shoulders.

            The Tube station was crowded as usual and they took the escalators slowly, opting not to rush down the left side as many businessmen and women did.

            “It’s what we do, you know?” Emily said as she held onto the railings on the Tube. There was nowhere to sit and she and Simon were squished into the corner by suited bodies.

            “What is?” he asked.

            “This. Fighting. Saying terrible things and then making up.”

            He considered for a moment. “I suppose. But is that what you want to be what we do?”

            “I know that things have been even harder lately, but what if we can change it?” With her free hand, she pulled at the strings of her sweater dress, which was coming undone.

            “Okay, say we stay together. And then, what if my work becomes even worse? What if my mum—well, what if she doesn’t make it? There’s always going to be something that’s hard,” he said.

            “You’re too smart for your own good. Damn, I know you’re right. But, seven years…” She thought about all that had happened. The days after school in Hyde Park, their first time getting drunk together, their first time alone after her parent’s went on holiday, their first—“And you do realize we live together.”

            “I know, I know. But this isn’t what’s best for either of us,” he said.

            “We were kids when we met. I don’t think I’ve really thought about us in any other way. I wanted you to run with me up the steps in the Gallery, can you believe that? Maybe I’m not all that responsible like you pointed out. But I do want to have fun. I want to laugh,” she said.

            “And you deserve that.”

            They got off at Russell Square station after switching Tube lines and stepped out into the quieter nightlife near Lansdowne Terrace. Everything looked the same, but Emily couldn’t help feeling as if she hadn’t really appreciated how nice the calm was.

            “Thanks for the breakup date,” she said and laughed quietly. She rubbed her eyes and looked out at the park, the paths splitting in different directions toward the opposite end. “I think I’m going to take the long way home if you don’t mind.”

            Simon looked at her for a moment and grabbed her arms. The kiss was short and tasted of the bittersweet memories between them.

            “I’ll see you at the flat,” he said.

            She nodded and walked away from him. By the time she looked back, he was already halfway home.

The Spiderman Myth

A gecko can stick upside down to a wall

even after it dies. When its large eyes

and scaly torso stop their bodily functions,

the tiny bristles at the bottom of its feet

still cling like resin on a pine tree.

Naturally, biologists ran experiments.

They watched them grip walls

and hang from ceilings like scaly bats. Like Spiderman.

500,000 bristles with spatula-like endings.

The kind of spatula you told your little brother to stop

licking or he would get salmonella. Sort of.

But they stick to any surface with the force

of Van der Waals, and the surety of science.

After the observations, tests, measurements, the biologists

called in the engineers who scratched the surface

of their heads, shrugged, and developed gecko tape.

The first phase of the experiment attached a small toy

to the edge of a window. You can guess which red and blue

man hung from his fingertips. The same one your brother clutched

while he stared at the screen wide-eyed.

The “authentic gecko force” was humanized,

the samples taken from their regenerating bristles

put in a Petri Dish. Then the breakthrough idea:

what if we could use this for good? An application to medicine

not the cheap tape that we’ll never exchange even to save

the environment. So when your brother

climbed the tree, his hands scratched and scaly,

and clung to the branch by the pads of his fingertips,

Spiderman was nowhere to be found. The points of contact

disintegrated like a young boy’s hope of a superhero.

So, what stitched the Spiderman myth back together?

Gecko glue, of course. Developed to bring together muscles

with the force of biology, the microstructures of nature,

and the shrug of the doctor when he said He’s lucky,

Doesn’t he know he’s only human?

The Sum of Its Parts

I.

By the time summer approached the outer edges of fall in 1975, the twin had already made a name for himself. Nights were long and, even when he didn’t dream, the characters of his stories often sat with him and talked. The twin, Adam Burns, was the younger of the two though not by much. His brother often appeared in his stories, but as a mortician or a homeless man sleeping on a bench. That night, Adam had spent most of the evening staring at a brick wall on the corner of 3rd and L Streets, N.W. The letter from his brother, Lance Burns, hung from the tips of his fingers like a cigarette. It was their first communication since the accident; Lance had said yes to the surgery.

II. 

Five years ago Lance Burns had been the twin with the greatest chances for success. He had spent most of the time in their double wide writing equations until the pencils either snapped in his fingers or were worn down to a stub. At this point, he could hardly imagine lazy Adam passing him up. That was, until their father broke his back at work and Lance, the oldest by a minute, was expected to take over his job. Years later, he wrote his response to his brother. When he licked the stamp, it tasted sour.

III.

November passed and the older twin met him in the ER. They spent no time on hugs.

“Thank you,” Adam said. It seemed the thing to say before someone gave you his kidney.

“I’m doin it for pa,” Lance answered and tugged at his starchy gown. Instead of answering, the older twin lay down again and closed his eyes. He pictured the character for his recent story and gave him Lance’s face and his love for solving problems.

Past Green Filtered Sunlight

I pause.

It pauses.

The mudskipper clings

to the roots and looks back

at me, a fish out of water.

It swims amidst the bramble,

A tangle of timber in the brackish water.

The root maze spreads beneath

the mangrove tree on tiptoes in the tide.

            Over, under, and around

Each piece of knobbed bark dry and papery

Like the wood that is emulsified and compressed.

The mudskipper safeguards the tree,

as I flip through pages

Two dimensional and paper-thin.