Last Seen Blogs
Text
Edited cover letter
I proofread and edited this cover letter for a tech position:
0 notes
Text
Benefits of adopting a senior cat
Written for Team Cat Rescue Toronto
I think we can all agree that kittens are pretty great. But kittens become cats, and like fine wines or Meryl Streep, cats only get better with age. So why are senior cats frequently left by the wayside when people go to adopt?
It may be that some older cats have medical issues – but any cat can have medical issues, regardless of age. Plus, veterinary costs may be lower when you don’t have to pay for fifteen years of visits. While older cats may not have as long to live as younger cats, your time with them becomes all the more precious and fulfilling. Here are a few key reasons to consider choosing a senior cat:
Older is wiser.
Senior cats come with a lifetime of experiences. Usually, this means that they’re already trained and socialized. Senior cats are well-mannered because they’ve had years to learn what behaviour is acceptable and what isn’t. They know to scratch their scratching post, not your curtains, and sleep on the couch instead of the kitchen counter. They know to do their business in their litterbox and not your sock drawer. Furthermore, they already know whether they get along with dogs, other cats, or young children. If they like everyone, that’s great! But if not, they’ve learned the skills to cope with adversity if Fido gets too friendly.
They’re mellow.
Kittens are cute, but those little balls of fluff are also little balls of energy. They need to play a lot. When they don’t get their playtime, young cats can become destructive: think shredded paper, knocked-over objects, and extra-litterbox adventures. This is stressful and leaves with you less time and energy to actually enjoy your cat.
For a senior cat, the pace of life is much slower, and you get to join them in their golden years. Older kitties have already had years to get their ya-ya’s out. While they still need a little playtime, they are less destructive when left alone and are happy to spend most of their time resting. This makes them a much more relaxing presence in your home than a younger cat, and you can cuddle and watch Netflix to your heart’s content.
You know what you’re getting.
When you adopt a young cat, it’s hard to know how their personality will change with age. Sometimes the sweetest kitten can grow into a moody teenager and a grouchy adult. Luckily, senior cats have been through all those tricky phases and they’ve had time to figure out who they really are. Because older cats already have fully-formed personalities, it’s easier to pick a senior cat you know will be compatible with your household. For instance, if you know that a senior is consistently good-natured and patient with kids, you won’t have to worry about them turning mean and taking a swipe at your toddler.
They’re grateful.
Some senior rescue cats have been abandoned by people they thought were their families and kicked out of homes they thought were theirs forever. Some senior cats have never had homes at all. They are desperate for a place to live out the rest of their years with a loving family. When you adopt a senior cat, they seem to know what you have done for them. You get all the love they’ve been saving up for years, just waiting for the right person to receive it.
Please, consider fostering or adopting a senior cat. See the benefits for yourself – enrich your life by saving theirs!
0 notes
Text
Words and Music: A Modern Marriage
SMC342 (Literature of Three Nations: Ireland, Scotland, and Wales)
Spring 2015
According to Walter Pater “all art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.” Referring to one or more of the texts on your course, make a case for or against Pater’s argument.
Through using its qualities in other art forms, authors can manipulate music to enhance and transform their work. Walter Pater’s claim that “all art constantly aspires towards the condition of music” does not account for the purposeful inclusion of music to enhance a writer’s work. Pater wrote in 1877. This does not negate the validity of his opinion, but it does lack decades of discourse and ideological development – including that on modernism. Pater’s theory follows in the footsteps of Gotthold Lessing, attempting to categorize art into clearly delineated parameters. What Joyce and Beckett demonstrate, however, is the nature of art to spill over into other media rather than simply to emulate music. Pater even seems to acknowledge this when he comments that “each art may be observed to pass into the condition of some other art.”[1] Jon Green calls the relationship a “marriage” that creates “musicalized prose” in Joyce’s work, which is a far more accurate description. [2] Words and music collaborate to form a single unit, something that is not quite prose and not quite song, yet not quite poetry and not quite opera. They are not separate, but they are also not part of the Wagnerian technique of Gesamtkunstwerk. The reality lies somewhere in between. The musicality of Joyce’s “Sirens” and Beckett’s Watt and Words and Music all prove to be a combination of words and music that can convey more than words or music alone.
James Joyce’s work is laden with allusions to music and lyrical prose. His musically influenced approach to writing, especially in the “Sirens” episode of Ulysses, demonstrates an optimistic attempt to marry words and music. Firstly, the structure of the chapter is meant to be like that of a fugue. The marriage of musical structure and literary structure supports the text and elevates it to a condition more enhanced than a fugue or text alone. Secondly, as Professor O’Callaghan described in lecture, the “embedded energy” of music within the words lends the text an extra layer of meaning and interpretation.
Professor O’Callaghan suggests in her article “Reading Music, Performing Text” that it is in the performance of “Sirens” that literature and music come together, commenting on the multiplicity of words and performance.[3] She mentions other scholars’ use of the word “overture” to describe the opening of the episode, but notes that this definition can constrain the reader; rather, the opening is a score and the rest of the episode is its performance.[4] By simply calling the opening section an “overture,” scholars impose musical ideas upon text rather than letting the words and embedded music speak for themselves. This can cause readers to miss the full experience of reading and performance that makes up James Joyce’s work. Scholar Jon D. Green explains Steven Paul Scher’s theory of “verbal music,” or music that is presented through words.[5] The reader performs the music in their imagination, producing sound in physical silence. By viewing the episode as a literary and musical performance, the reader is able to participate in making the music of the novel.
In Samuel Beckett’s novel Watt, music is also woven into the text. It is not through form and musical allusions, however, but through rhythm and theme that Beckett incorporates music. Beckett was not of the mind that words could achieve the condition of music, or that he could achieve that with his words. Rather, he viewed both as methods of expression that would never fully succeed. Beckett’s writing is hypnotically rhythmic, and the story centres on a man losing both his senses and his sense. Perhaps the most relevant – if not most poignant – passages, include the ‘frog music’ episode, the song in the ditch, and Watt’s speech patterns near the end of the novel.
The frog music episode contains a rhythm timeline for the croaking of three frogs.[6] Beckett’s timeline reads like a score of music, or at least a score for the percussion section of an orchestra. Rests are carefully planned out, and the frogs only croak simultaneously at the end. In this passage, as Professor O’Callaghan stated, silence is equal in importance to sound. In the absence of simultaneous croaking, the frogs are isolated, each croak surrounded by silence. The rhythmic focus is representative of Beckett’s prose, and the isolation of noise conveys the feeling of failure to communicate that exists throughout the novel.
The song that Watt hears from the ditch on the way from the station is written into the text. The lyrics are written along with the rhythmic notation in the text of the novel, while the musical notation for the soprano part is written in an addendum. The rhythm of the song mirrors Watt’s exhaustion of every possibility in various hypothetical situations. Rhythmic emphasis changes every few measures, but the rhythmic patterns do repeat themselves eventually. The melody is a series of the same descending notes. Beckett defines the song as a “threne,” or lamentation.[7] It makes sense that the rhythm plods repetitively and that the notes descend in a simple pattern; it is meant to portray grief. Without the music, the reader has little or no idea what Watt is hearing, only – if they looked at the addendum – that it is a threne. When the melody is played, however, the reader realizes that the song reflects the repetitive rhythmic properties of the rest of the text.
Watt’s speech patterns are a combination of his failed hearing, his general trouble with communication, and his desire for mathematical precision. These three qualities can also be attributed to the novel itself. The novel, with its general absence of recognizable musical allusions, gives the reader a sense of deafness. There is no sound or music that can accompany a reader in their head as they read through the novel. As with the threne, it is only with extra effort that the reader can access the sounds Beckett meant to portray.
The novel is in some ways a statement of failure and trouble with communication. Watt really loses his ability to communicate effectively with others, but no one else in the novel seems to be very good at it either. This perhaps ties into Beckett’s ideas that words will ultimately fail us, as will any other attempt to understand this world, whether words or music, or even musical words. Each of Watt’s speeches contains repeated sections that open and close each speech. The speeches in this way resemble a mathematically precise musical structure. The narrator also says of Watt’s speech that it was musical, and that “euphony was a preoccupation.”[8] With the isolation of sound, the failure of speech, and the failure of music to be represented in text, Beckett demonstrates that one is not trying to be the other; rather, both ultimately fail.
In Words and Music, Beckett acknowledges the limitations of words, but also seems to herald a collaboration between Words and Music. Words and music are both comforts of Croak. Croak does tend to favour Music, asking Words on occasion to yield to him. Music is humble in his success and suggests things for Words to try, but at times he gets carried away in an “irrepressible burst” of his own brilliance.[9] At first it seems as though Words aspires to be Music; he tries to sing and follow music’s advice. Upon closer reading, however, Words is staunchly attached to being a separate entity from music. The events of the play are a cycle, repeated every night, and Words begins this night speaking and attempting to quiet down Music so that he can work. All the same, both Words and Music must attempt to collaborate in order to please Croak. Katharine Worth more concisely phrases the question she believes Beckett poses in the play: “might music be combined with words to tap springs of imagination inaccessible to words alone?”[10] Beckett, for all his comments on the failure of words or the failure of music, seems to say that it is possible. Words on their own can fail, and music on its own can fail. Sometimes music can express something that words cannot, yet words can carry the idea of music. Words and music working together can also fail to please, as Croak shuffles away from even their collaboration at the end of the play.
Forms of art are more like primary colours than rigid political entities. While they do have distinct characteristics, they can be blended to create new colours that contain both. Red does not aspire to be blue. Purple is not a failed attempt of red to transform itself; rather, it is a synthesis of two colours. Similarly, words to not try and fail to be like music. Words can coupled with music to create a different sort of medium altogether, one that either preaches optimism or failure, and one that can affect the reader/listener in ways that perhaps neither could on its own.
Bibliography:
Beckett, Samuel. Watt. New York: Grove Press, 1953.
Beckett, Samuel. Words and Music. In “Cascando”: and other short dramatic pieces by Samuel Beckett. New York: Grove Press, 1962.
Green, Jon D. “The Sounds of Silence in ‘Sirens’: Joyce’s Verbal Music of the Mind.” James Joyce Quarterly, 39.3 (Spring 2002): 489-508.
Joyce, James. “Sirens.” In Ulysses, Annotations by Sam Slote. United Kingdom: Alma Classics, 2012. 187-212.
O’Callaghan, Katherine. “Reading Music, Performing Text: Interpreting the Song of the Sirens” In Bloomsday100: Essays on Ulysses, Eds. Anne Fogarty & Morris Beja. USA: University Press of Florida, 2009. 137-149.
Pater, Walter. The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry. The Project Gutenberg. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2398/2398-h/2398-h.htm#giorgione
Worth, Katharine. “Words for Music Perhaps.” In Samuel Beckett and Music, Ed. Mary Bryden. New York: Clarendon Press, 1998: 9-20.
Walter Pater, “The School of Giorgione,” The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry.
Jon D. Green, “The Sound of Silence in ‘Sirens’: Joyce’s Verbal Music of the Mind,” James Joyce Quarterly, 39.3 (Spring 2002): 489-490
Katherine O’Callaghan, “Reading Music, Performing Text: Interpreting the Song of the Sirens” In Bloomsday100: Essays on Ulysses, Eds. Anne Fogarty & Morris Beja. (USA: University Press of Florida, 2009) 148.
O’Callaghan, “Reading Music, Performing Text,” 140
Jon D Green, “The Sound of Silence in ‘Sirens’: Joyce’s Verbal Music of the Mind,” 490
Samuel Beckett, Watt, (New York: Grove Press, 1953) 137.
Beckett, Watt, 34 and 254.
Beckett, Watt, 164
Samuel Beckett, Words and Music, In “Cascando”: and other short dramatic pieces by Samuel Beckett, (New York: Grove Press, 1962) 30
Katharine Worth, “Words for Music Perhaps,” In Samuel Beckett and Music, Ed. Mary Bryden, (New York: Clarendon Press, 1998) 9.
0 notes
Text
Novel Excerpt
The day after he graduated from high school, Merle started his first job at a construction site. Each morning he left home with a hard hat and a lunch pail. Each night he came home with a stomach full of steel and eyes full of sky. His shirt reeked of sweat and his heart oozed that same sudoriferous pride.
Throughout the course of his first summer, he learned how to operate the backhoe, the big yellow one that could crumble concrete like a sugar cookie. He learned how to drive the crane, too, how to swing beams through the air in a slow motion trapeze act. He learned how to extract from the earth treasures of rock, bone, and tin. He learned how to sweep the earth under a parking lot like dust under a carpet. He learned how to make space for more important things.
When it was warm, he would take lunch breaks in the shade of the scaffolding, picking apart his ham sandwich with the dedication of an archeologist. Dismantling now for future construction. When it was cold, he would take his lunch breaks near where the welders worked. He wasn’t close enough to be warmed by the flame, but looking at it made him feel cozier, like maybe he was in someone’s living room and they would offer him tea if he was patient.
He loved his steel toed boots and his plaid shirts and his overalls. He loved his tool belt and his hard hat and his protective gloves. He loved his wrench and his hammer and his bolts. He loved his job. What he built reminded him of sunlight and mountains, indescribably bright and indescribably massive. He tried to reconstruct nature from his memories and from his dreams: a skyscraper was a forest of metal, the site pitted with moon craters and muddy lakes. Girders were clifftops or clouds, suspended one hundred feet in the air.
He could spread his muscled arms and fly like a hawk, his face lifted up toward the sun’s embrace.
0 notes
Text
An Ideal Campus
For the Ryerson Student Affairs Blog
When I was fifteen, I figured out that I was transgender. I was a guy suffocating in an all-girls’ school – a school that didn’t even have a GSA until the semester I graduated. There were no mental health resources and no spaces where I felt safe being myself. I clenched my teeth until graduation, when I would finally be able to break through my closet-cocoon and spread my wings at the University of Toronto. When U of T coughed me out four years later, my wings were crumpled. I looked for support at Ryerson and George Brown, and I found it – sort of.
U of T offered limited peer resources and no administrative support. Ryerson and George Brown offer limited administrative support and some peer resources. Firstly, an ideal campus would have peer resources that are geared more towards activism than event-planning. U of T has a network of college-specific LGBTQ+ groups that are united under the LGBTOUT umbrella. I was an executive for my college’s group during my first year, but was discouraged by the focus on social events at the expense of policy discussion and peer support. This is a common issue at multiple post-secondary institutions, and one that is incidentally mirrored by Pride celebrations. In some queer communities, there is an easy trap of partying too hard and discussing too little. Celebration and socializing have an important place in any community, but partying does little to make changes in university and social policy – changes that are needed now more than ever. This focus on social events (which are frequently sexualized, boozy, white- and gay- cis-male-centric) can isolate members of our communities who need the most space and support. Queer and trans people of colour – especially Black trans women, asexual people, people with addictions and mental health issues, people with disabilities, people with low socioeconomic status – all these often-intersectional populations need more substantive peer support than can be achieved by social events. We need educational panels, we need peer counselling, and we need an administrative framework to support these initiatives.
An ideal campus would also prioritize administrative support for addressing the concerns of queer students. While I found some community at these schools, I found no space to raise concerns about unfair treatment or professorial awareness of queer issues. For instance, my George Brown name change was reversed without warning, and my birth name was visible to anyone who wanted to contact me. My Ryerson e-mail name change was also gone with the wind after a Ministry of Education audit. Transitioning can be torturous. I had a professor at U of T who refused to use my correct pronouns because “they would distract the rest of the class.” There were no resources to help me address this issue, so I had to drag myself to that class and suffer in silence. Some of my friends at Ryerson have experienced similar issues with their professors, but had no way to hold the faculty accountable. One-on-one confrontation can be terrifying, while official human rights complaints can be an insurmountable challenge. This leaves students feeling scared, disenfranchised, and dreading class hours. George Brown College’s Equity Centre has a mediation service, where staff members can assist a student in challenging discrimination by faculty or peers. The trouble there is that few students know this service exists, and the staff cannot advocate on behalf of the students; they can only be present. Disciplinary or educational processes should be in place of all faculty who hurt their students. Additionally, the onus should not be on students to seek solutions, but on the school to prevent these conflicts in the first place.
One way to create a campus that fosters understanding is to make equity training necessary for all faculty, not just for those violating students’ rights. There should be a culture of mutual learning and support in our classrooms, a culture that values and prioritizes the voices of oppressed groups. Laurentian, Lakehead and the University of Winnipeg recently made it mandatory for students to take a course in Indigenous Studies. This is a great idea. Similar to equity training for faculty, there may be concern about unwilling participants becoming resentful. I believe, however, that as foundations of equity grow sturdier, open-mindedness will be more encouraged and rewarded with understanding. Curricula in all programs should more inclusive, especially in humanities, social science, and community service programs. This means including and highlighting readings from marginalized voices. For instance, sociology and gender studies courses rarely focus on trans women of colour, who bear the dual brunt of racism and transmisogyny. When not hearing from oppressed groups, it is important to acknowledge the societal positions of more privileged authors. Equity means not using slurs and stereotypes in lectures, even “to make a point.” The use of trigger warnings in classrooms is a contentious issue at present, but an inclusive curriculum means having that discussion and listening to survivors of trauma. An ideal campus would routinely respect students’ names and pronouns, perhaps by normalizing name- and pronoun-checks before every class (regardless of faculty) or group meeting (regardless of the group purpose). An ideal campus would create space for students to voice their concerns about unfair treatment. An ideal campus would create policy change where change is due.
Schools need to empower their students to help change policy, rather than collect tuition and keep squeezing. An ideal campus would foster and encourage policy change, rather than take credit for students’ ideas and use them for good publicity. The campaign for non-gendered bathrooms, for example, was a Trans Collective initiative that has since been obstructed and co-opted by the university. As administration continues to push the completion dates far into the future, the school crows about how inclusive it is. Similarly, mental health services at both Ryerson and U of T suffer under an attitude of “well, at least we have them,” while wait times for counsellors are staggering. For universities and colleges that want so badly to be known as “diverse” and “inclusive,” these places need to put their money where their mouthpiece is: drive forward with non-gendered washrooms, hire more counsellors, let students be heard.
This is because the strength of universities is with their students. I found community, support, and love at Ryerson’s Trans Collective and George Brown’s Transformers program. The peer-run equity centres try their best to support marginalized students, but are frequently stifled by the university. Why has the RyeAccess office gone so long without a motorized door? Why was the Trans Collective office relegated to a closet-sized space? Why are the Good Food Centre and the Racialized Students Collective closed over the summer? Students do not stop needing these resources just because the university doesn’t fund them. An ideal campus would acknowledge these needs and fill them, to help us help each other. Not enough money? I promise, we don’t mind having fewer balloons at Pride if it means that our hungry peers get to eat. An ideal campus would listen to us and reflect our priorities. An ideal campus doesn’t exist yet, but if the universities hear us, maybe we can build one together.
0 notes
Text
Animals and Autism and Me
For the Unpuzzled Project
My lizard looks at me from his hammock.
“What, are you sour?”
He gaze is steady, and he’s near the glass.
“You’re sulking because I made you eat vegetables,” I say.
Barely blinking, he slides off his hammock to go hide out under a log.
“I knew it. You’re such a whiner.”
My lizard is a bearded dragon named Beatrice and he’s almost a year old. He’s my only roommate and he keeps me very good company, even though he’s spoiled. When I moved off campus this year, my mom asked me if I got lonely without other people around. The short answer is that I don’t. The long answer is that people tucker me out like nobody’s business, while I can spend as much time with animals as I like. Since I got my ASD diagnosis, I’ve learned that many other autistic people are like me.
When somebody hears that I’m autistic, I inevitably get the question, “So do you like Temple Grandin?” Yes, I do. This question bothers me a bit because they’re trying to show me they know about other autistic people, not because they know how much I relate to her. There are other famous autistic people who might come to mind: Daniel Tammet, Susan Boyle, and Courtney Love to name a few. But I’m not a mathematical savant or musically talented. I love animals, like Temple Grandin, even though I haven’t accomplished much yet. For that reason I’m kind of glad she’s in the go-to question. Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to reply so certainly.
Animals have been my special interest since I was very young. A special interest, for those who might not know, is something close to an obsession. We spend time, love, and effort learning about whatever our special interests are. Some of them are short-lived, and some of them are life-long. Sometimes they’re trains, sometimes they’re names, sometimes they’re the French Revolution of 1848. And sometimes they’re animals.
When I was a small child, my favourite picture books were the ones about animals. At my first sleepover I got upset not because I missed my family, but because I missed my stuffed animals. When I started out writing, the first stories I wrote were all about animals. When I was eight I had a dog-themed birthday party and learned as many dog breeds as I could. To this day I can identify dogs from a purebred corgi to a cocker spaniel-golden retriever mix. I can spend hours at a time watching documentaries about the ocean or about crocodiles, sometimes even forgetting to eat. I have a moth collection and I love looking at butterflies up close. I like ugly fish and weird bugs, venomous snakes and spiders that could kill you. I love Texas horned lizards because they can shoot blood out of their eyes. I love all animals. I love them not only because they encompass all the beauty and absurdity of nature, but I also because I feel close to them.
See, people speak languages I don’t understand. Of course there are many languages I don’t know, like Arabic or Icelandic, but there are also languages I’ve never really learned. For instance, I don’t know how to gain information from eye contact. I don’t know what someone means when they make a hard line with their mouth. I don’t know if somebody’s okay by the way they say “I’m okay;” I just believe what they tell me. I don’t know how to politely tell someone not to hug me, ever. But I can understand Beatrice, and I always know where I am with him.
Beatrice is predictable and his rules are straightforward, which makes me comfortable. His beard turns black when he’s upset. He puffs his beard when he’s intimidated or when he’s doing his morning stretches. Sometimes it’s because he tried to fit too many worms in his mouth. He closes his eyes when I pet him close to his bedtime, but keeps them open when I pet him during one of his adventures. His adventures include running into walls repeatedly, hoping that one day he will go through. And you know what? I can even understand that.
Animals will always be among my best friends. They speak their own languages where songs have specific meanings, and the way a tail is held conveys everything you need to know. These are vocabularies that I can access. I frequently get lost and exhausted during human interaction, but I could spend hours taking care of animals and not get tired the same way. I don’t know if all this is true because I’m autistic, but I know that’s certainly a big part of it. I wouldn’t change it if I could: I can feel at home as long as there’s a cat on my lap or a dog nearby, and most importantly, I can trick my lizard into eating vegetables.
0 notes
Text
Flash fiction
Like you, your home is no longer healthy or young or handsome. Shrivelled and choking, its arteries are clogged with plastic. Disease seeps like turpentine through its congested hallways. Your kitchen, a swamp of take-out containers and Oreo packages, smells of decay. You don’t remember the last time you could see through your bedroom window. Your curtains are heavy with shame; they have swallowed enough dust to turn from white to brown.
Hundreds of newspapers have fused with your carpet. The past fifteen years are spread across the floor in unreadable headlines, the stories shredded and urine-stained. Recessions, wars, mayoral scandals and UFO sightings. Just kitty litter now. But some areas the cats won’t even touch. There is a missing floorboard in the pantry where a cockroach metropolis seethes like the ocean. The half bathroom is also untouchable, every surface caked with an unholy and mysterious crust. The toilet stopped flushing in 2010, one year after your daughter made good on her promise and stopped calling you.
Your breakfast this morning is birthday cake. It wasn’t your birthday, but some kid’s at Chuck E. Cheese. You had been delivering boxes of corporate letterhead and felt you deserved a break. You might have sat down, but the animatronics frightened you. Here, you eat the cake cross legged on your bed, the only piece of furniture you can manage to keep clear. You have a middle piece that says “appy” in red frosting. It tastes like cardboard, but you expected nothing more. As you eat, a cat brushes behind you, mewing, before it jumps onto a stack of books you thought would have fallen over by now. You look at its gray stripes and tufted ears and wonder which of the originals bore this one. You lost track a very long time ago. You’ve lost track of a lot.
Last year, your sister came to visit on a mission for your soul, packing the heat of a blistery Jesus fever. Her chariot of fire blazed in your driveway with its left blinker still on. You tried to shut her out, but through the powers of Christ Almighty and a good lock pick, she got in. She didn’t stop crying until you lied to her that you would make a change. Her mistake was that she wanted to save you from hell, but she forgot where you already were.
By now the mailman knows not to knock, to leave your packages on the porch and to walk away quietly. Through the holes in the roof you watch the sun rise and set, the jewel sky so far away that you might as well be underground. When you were nine, your father threw a knife at you and laughed when you flinched. It’s not your fault for wanting to feel safe, for the double rows of books that fortify your cracked walls. Load-bearing clutter. You still feed the cats, even if you don’t know how many there are or where they’re pooping. Even if you have a graveyard beneath your rotting deck.
You’re too tired to hate yourself this much. Your social worker told you that you were ill, but this was before the state cut funding and you lost her too. Your last tie to normalcy is your truck driver brother because he is rarely here. He has never seen the inside of your house, preferring the anonymous embrace of the greasy B&B down the road. When he’s not across the country, you’ll take him out for coffee and you’ll pretend that nothing is wrong. He can’t tell that something is gnawing on you like a starving animal.
Your house is a sarcophagus. Sarcophagous, adjective (zoological) feeding on flesh, carnivorous. It ate your son, but your daughter escaped. And it will feed on you until there’s nothing left, of you or your cats or your fifteen years of junk that you can never throw away.
0 notes
