“Would you like to hear something beautiful that happened to
me today?”
“Of
course, darling.”
“So
I jaywalked halfway across Venice Boulevard during rush hour,”
“And
no ticket?! Beautiful!”
“Yes,
it was, but that’s not it. Standing on the median and breathing each strip of
metal that brushed past me with the threat of rattling my bones to the point of
reverberation and eventual explosion, I considered taking one…one and a half
steps outward, for that’s all it would take. At this moment, my brain inferred
that I had actually stepped out, and the breeze of metal turned into a plow to
clean the traffic lanes of my superfluous skin and feeling…these things just
don’t belong on the road. So I heard, first my elbow, then my ribs, all the way
to my skull, shattering inaudibly (to the outside world, at least) like a
florist’s collection of vases falling to the floor: heaviest last, lightest
(least important) first, during an earthquake. I caught a breath of the metal
again and was alleviated of suicide by suicide. The fracturing made me feel whole
again, long enough to cross all the way to the other side.”
“That
is beautiful, darling.”
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