100 Proof

The air disappeared then, and the restaurant dimmed. She sparkled until that moment, then faded in the vacuum created by what he had just said.

“It’s not what I meant,” he said. But he had already interrupted dinner, and she felt a bit faint.

We asked nothing, said little, danced more than we walked. The clock moved so slowly as to roll backward. A tire rolled alongside the road, a frog jumped, the music skipped then started up again.

We felt magic. We were never in that same place twice.

When boxes scatter across a room, it becomes clear: this is not ordinary safekeeping. Floors tilt, glass cracks, water spills out of unexpected places. We try all the usual remedies, but in the rending comes the transformation. Best to let it happen, because at all times, unpacking into a soft, new place can only begin after everything that came before has been sealed with tape, bound with wire, and replaced by dust settling in its wake.

Every morning until yesterday, we slipped through the water like ghosts, cutting the fog that hugs the surface. We found peace, and solitude even while we sliced the water side by side.

Both of us want to return to that moment just before we realized our paddles had caught not seaweed but baby. Both of us want to close our eyes like him, ignore that his lips, eyelashes, earlobes had been eaten off by something that recognized it only as food.

I don’t know when we’ll return to the water. I don’t know when we’ll open our eyes again.

She loved him with her while heart*. Not the whole of it, just the pieces available while she waited for the right person to come along.

It was easier that way. Her whole heart, then, didn’t break at the weight of his need, his desire. The little parts could withstand the force of it, and she could tear away from them, if necessary. She could leave them behind, float above them, observe them on the floor.

And after awhile, it ended, and her heart moved on to someone else with whom she could while away the time.

There was nothing ordinary in her closet, which is why it was so hard to throw anything away. The dress made of wire and sea glass, the shoes made of impossible angles, a silk coat that changed color with the wind—each one is a memory, she thought.

She settled on the closet floor and wrapped herself in the coat. Somewhere on her street, a black dog barked. Somewhere in her city, a juice glass shattered on a tile floor.

It was the rabbit that troubled the whole situation. It refused to move, staring at her from its heaving body. Its heart beat so thoroughly its fur rippled.

She would have left then, carrying her slower-beating heart with her, but the rabbit was in her path of egress, and she didn’t want to scare it more than she already had.

It was a long night, quiet as paws. She settled in with her anxiety. She wished the rabbit had been a dog instead.