a disturbance that echoes

there are pigs screaming in the elevator, and coming into the hallway outside my door. there is nothing i can do to prevent this, or fix it. it just happens every once in a while. my heart beats frantic and frightened. there is nothing worse than unseen screaming.

& don't i wonder why they scream, and what particular things are being done to them in this horror building. the job description did not require an endurance for screams in the day. a few days ago jim jumps out with the fact that they are used upstairs for skin testing, because their skin is very human-like, except without sweat glands. i am so sickened by this, by those hallway noises, by the entire process and product of these scientist labcoated men. i have the fight or flight hots to run far away from this door that conceals this sort of thing from me.

familiarity and remembered neighbors

did i mention that on the walk this morning a girl passed riding a bigthick motorcycle with the throaty and low murmured roaring, and she wore pink converse and flying skywise and fluttering from the handles were sparkly things like we used to put on our bicycle handles. badass and sassy she spun down the street, naturally so.

i used to have a banana-seat bicycle. mauve and with lavender roses on it. and handle-tassels flying and spoke-de-dokes plinking on the spokes and i held onto the handles when i rode in the street (never in the road, i didn't like the synonymity of rode-road when i asked permission; although it wasn't a street really, and i knew this). i remember craig watching me with my feet on the bricks waiting for that first trainingwheelless ride. his hands flapping and waving as he stared out from the coveted crabapple tree. craig, where have you gone? and where is your brother scott? their mother mona bathed them nightly to remove the dust accumulated from the sand box daily: my mother told me mona married her cousin and that's why both their boys were born autistic. but i envied them utterly, wished the clean and tall mona for a mother, and yearned for a house with an upstairs-downstairs like theirs, and a pretty immaculate lawn all green that spread out silent and serene from the garden beds.

thick as thieves

/

two found objects

doctor solomon: or, how i learned to stop worrying and love the media.

and also:

pie fight!