Berkeley Fiction Review

Pillow Practice

Promise me you won’t write a poem about me.

I am Iris, I thought. Iris is me, and Iris is in the wrong lane.

Don’t worry, I said, you’re the sea, and it’s impossible for the sea to drown. There’s nothing big enough for you.

The hall closet candles are white, ten inches long, and shaped like penises.

Talk to me. Make me feel male.

That was the summer that Tim had a left hand full of broken bones.

He was from a generation for whom superstition and folklore were interwoven seamlessly into history.

Terrible things have happened. Your expertise is required to set right the unhinging of our world.

I am a connoisseur of places to sit.

We both paused and stared at the screen in time for a bomb to burst, engulfing everything in white.