qarrtsiluni

I’ve been calling every automated line: MovieFone, Time & Temperature, the Suicide Hotline. It’s a problem — the pound key on my handset is missing. Like the vermouth; used to, it was present. These days it’s only a one-count, swirled around in the glass, then discarded. Or even just the bottle passed over the lip of the glass… what would be left on the surface splits, runs. Legs. Whispers. Lace.

And the paperdoll chains I keep trying to cut out… for some reason they just won’t hold hands. Lose their heads. Like the faces in the wall; look in the wind. All these scraps of paper, just parts. Off the hook, they call me. ?! Who, after heaving a 400-ton block of stone 10,000 feet up the mountainside, would have the breath to answer? Someone carved the features; maybe they are deathbed professions. I don’t have the key. Most people leave a note.

by Tricia Anne Baar

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