bathtime again
Downstairs, I run a bath for my daughter. I kneel down to check the water. When I rise, the old woman is standing in the doorway. She is hunched over, watching me. “Fuck.” And then she’s gone.
water
stench
Over the holidays, there were a number of points when I noted a pungent smell in the little hallway at the back of our kitchen — a cloying stench, like rotting fish. (I do not care for this little hallway. It feels off to me, somehow. There is a mirror of it upstairs and the one gives me a vague… Continue reading stench
in the shower
...as I’m washing my backside, someone peeks in between a seam in the shower curtain — old and wizened, though I cannot tell whether it is a man or a woman. They roll their eyes up at me, almost comical, and purse their mouth in a silent “Oooo...” ...and then I wake with a start, my afternoon nap ruined.
frantic spider
...the spider struggles against the pull of the water as the tub drains, a thin filament of almost wire-like web cast out like a dark line . . . it clenches like a fist in the water, and I feel the tug of the web and pull my hand away, leaving it to it’s fate...
a jar of mud and other fragments
...gathered around the table, we trade anecdotes and witty replies . . . just a bunch of guys hanging out, who also happen to be famous — all except me, of course. I can’t believe I’m here, can’t believe that everyone just assumes I belong... ...he’s lying in the shore, dozing in the early evening breeze. The surface of the… Continue reading a jar of mud and other fragments