a six-year-old mess, like a Russian doll except we don’t match. But I don’t, the moment is over, I feel a few tears dribble down but the rush of them that I was swallowing is gone now. I’m just me in my body on the toilet, looking at myself in the mirror with my new short hair that is all messed up.
He’s asleep when I leave, let myself out the door and down the elevator and through the streets to my own apartment. It’s dark and there are no messages on the answering machine, the red light is steady. No one has called me. Patrick has not called me, and we were supposed to have plans tonight.
I stand in front of the mirror and I look at my body in this little dress I’m wearing, and my socks folding over different lengths and I try and forget that I just fucked a sixty-five-year-old man who only bought me one drink. I think about that whole dick fantasy, and I try to get myself to want to fuck myself. Here you go, I say, look at that fine ass, look at that body, you want to take her don’t you, you want to fell this girl.
But I just see some girl in a blue dress with short hair and sad eyes and I really don’t want to fuck her at all. She looks so tired to me. I go to the window and look out at the lights of the city which are every color and I stick my head out. It’s pretty windy, so it throws my hair back and I feel like a dogriding in a car and the wind is cold and brings tears to my eyes and I try to pretend they’re sad tears and sniffle a little.
The night is mostly quiet and I can only hear the sounds of things far away. After a while a cab pulls up downstairs. It honks and three girls come out of my building in little skirts and shiny hair and they get in the cab and they’re already laughing. The wind keeps pulling tears from my eyes. I’m poised like a gargoyle above them and I think about letting myself fall out the window and landing on the top of the cab to go where they’re going. Bending the metal of the roof until it presses down hard on one of the girls’ heads and she panics and yells at the driver who doesn’t listen. Help, she says to her friends, something’s going on, the car is caving in! They think she’s kidding but it’s real: there is a mass that is me on top of her, watching the lights and the sky pass me by in a rush, pushing down on that metal until I’m crushing her skull. My ass and her brain. My weight and her burden. I will close my eyes and feel the speed. I will feel the wind fill up my dress and pass through me in tunnels until I am so numb with cold, I can’t tell when we stop.
THE HEALER
There were two mutant girls in the town: one had a hand made of fire and the other had a hand made of ice. Everyone else’s hands were normal. The girls first met in elementary school and were friends for about three weeks. Their parents were delighted; the mothers in particular spent hours on the phone describing over and over the shock of delivery day.
I remember one afternoon, on the playground, the fire girl grabbed hold of the ice girl’s hand and—Poof—just like that, each equalized the other. Their hands dissolved into regular flesh—exit mutant, enter normal. The fire girl panicked and let go, finding that her fire reblazed right away, while the ice spun back fast around the other girl’s fingers like a cold glass turban. They grasped hands again; again, it worked. Delighted by the neat new trick, I think they even charged money to perform it for a while and made a pretty penny.Audiences loved to watch the two little girls dabbling in the elements with their tiny powerful fists.
After a while, the ice girl said she was tired of the trick and gave it up and they stopped being friends. I’d never seen them together since but now they were both sixteen and in the same science class. I was there too; I was a senior then.
The fire girl sat in the back row. Sparks dripped from her fingertips like sweat and fizzed on the linoleum. She looked both friendly and
He’s asleep when I leave, let myself out the door and down the elevator and through the streets to my own apartment. It’s dark and there are no messages on the answering machine, the red light is steady. No one has called me. Patrick has not called me, and we were supposed to have plans tonight.
I stand in front of the mirror and I look at my body in this little dress I’m wearing, and my socks folding over different lengths and I try and forget that I just fucked a sixty-five-year-old man who only bought me one drink. I think about that whole dick fantasy, and I try to get myself to want to fuck myself. Here you go, I say, look at that fine ass, look at that body, you want to take her don’t you, you want to fell this girl.
But I just see some girl in a blue dress with short hair and sad eyes and I really don’t want to fuck her at all. She looks so tired to me. I go to the window and look out at the lights of the city which are every color and I stick my head out. It’s pretty windy, so it throws my hair back and I feel like a dogriding in a car and the wind is cold and brings tears to my eyes and I try to pretend they’re sad tears and sniffle a little.
The night is mostly quiet and I can only hear the sounds of things far away. After a while a cab pulls up downstairs. It honks and three girls come out of my building in little skirts and shiny hair and they get in the cab and they’re already laughing. The wind keeps pulling tears from my eyes. I’m poised like a gargoyle above them and I think about letting myself fall out the window and landing on the top of the cab to go where they’re going. Bending the metal of the roof until it presses down hard on one of the girls’ heads and she panics and yells at the driver who doesn’t listen. Help, she says to her friends, something’s going on, the car is caving in! They think she’s kidding but it’s real: there is a mass that is me on top of her, watching the lights and the sky pass me by in a rush, pushing down on that metal until I’m crushing her skull. My ass and her brain. My weight and her burden. I will close my eyes and feel the speed. I will feel the wind fill up my dress and pass through me in tunnels until I am so numb with cold, I can’t tell when we stop.
THE HEALER
There were two mutant girls in the town: one had a hand made of fire and the other had a hand made of ice. Everyone else’s hands were normal. The girls first met in elementary school and were friends for about three weeks. Their parents were delighted; the mothers in particular spent hours on the phone describing over and over the shock of delivery day.
I remember one afternoon, on the playground, the fire girl grabbed hold of the ice girl’s hand and—Poof—just like that, each equalized the other. Their hands dissolved into regular flesh—exit mutant, enter normal. The fire girl panicked and let go, finding that her fire reblazed right away, while the ice spun back fast around the other girl’s fingers like a cold glass turban. They grasped hands again; again, it worked. Delighted by the neat new trick, I think they even charged money to perform it for a while and made a pretty penny.Audiences loved to watch the two little girls dabbling in the elements with their tiny powerful fists.
After a while, the ice girl said she was tired of the trick and gave it up and they stopped being friends. I’d never seen them together since but now they were both sixteen and in the same science class. I was there too; I was a senior then.
The fire girl sat in the back row. Sparks dripped from her fingertips like sweat and fizzed on the linoleum. She looked both friendly and
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