Maturing
By Allison
Landa
She stands at the top of the stairs, the knife in her hand pointed the
wrong direction. It’s not supposed to be toward her. It’s supposed to be aimed
at him. Him, the one who shares her eyebrows and squint if not her height. Him,
whose DNA makes her short of temper and long of nothing.
Later in life she will laugh at herself, quip that she was about to
commit hari-kari. What was I, Samurai Night Fever? She will scoff at the
point of the blade, how it nearly brushed her rotund stomach. At least I had
padding. Humor, of course, not so much hilarious as real, plucked from the
personal headlines that we call memory.
Memory, which will shield from her the details of stained carpet and
cat-piss smell. She will remember this place as sadly, slumpily beautiful. A deceptive caretaker,
memory. In fact the place is not beautiful. It is sad and slumpy. That is all.
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