Flake

Abstract

Cindy King Flake Yeah, there were things I didn't know, like how you're not supposed to give newborns water, run your car with the garage door closed. How you're not supposed to drive 2000 miles on a spare tire, or how a lost filling becomes a broken tooth, then no tooth at all. And how loving someone to the exclusion of all others is always a bad idea. Like the joke hiding in the Rothko, like the alarm clock in your neighbor's apartment you hear each day at 6:00 a.m. Don't put butter on a fever. Starve a burn, feed an abstract expressionist. Some truths are best untold. The answer to the question is liverwurst. Many a great man's face has been stamped on currency that's now worthless. Don't microwave Melamine. It is an artifact of the 1960s. I too am an artifact. Just as the pharaoh became an artifact when he was lifted from sand. And you're surprised he was autophobic and buried with his concubines? My heart is made of shale. I heard a meadowlark singing and asked if she would move in with me. She may have said yes if it weren't for that thing with the alarm clock. It would seem, dear sir, that my credit score proceeds me. It will end in lost deposits—and quite possibly tears. That zero in my brain is being seduced by a one. My brain became a slow jam. Let's get it on. Then it switched stations and was wrapped in a prophylactic. 5 The McNeese Review I was fixing a sandwich at the time. We're not just taxpayers, we're all roses! My brain was kicked by another brain, which I borrowed from my neighbor (not, for the record, Mr. 6:00 a.m.) Does anyone else ever think that the heart's too near the armpits? Love stinks. All hail the woman of shale. It's just me. We all think the best of each other, don't we, especially those with guns in their glovebox. Some day that whimper will become a bang, at least that's what they tell me, and it won't be so easy to drown it out with 90 decibels of R&B. Here's the least, save the date, let's make it official. Check out this invisible ink. Be on the lookout for the woman of shale. Cross my heart, hope to die, this time I swear she's not me. King 6 Cindy King Man v. Himself The story is being disassembled for you and for me. Any flower of at least three petals will be reverse engineered. The tragedy still happens even if you tear out the last page. Even if you step into the lobby, the violence still occurs, even if you look away. Sometimes it happens off-stage. Just ask Antigone, Agave, Iphigenia— The plot has been drafted and erased so many times there's a hole where words are supposed to be. No one's surprised that it was all a dream (in fact, they're angry and tired). The promise of an ending, an optimistic illusion: cyptocurrency, non-fungible token, a skin your digital self can wear. Rain washes the wisteria. Eurydice, don't even think about looking back. The stone has already sealed the entrance. The only way is forward. The rain washing your car yesterday is selling flood insurance today. The best treatment for hubris is to be looked at through the wrong end of binoculars. There's a lesson here, a takeaway, if only the rain would stop, if only we could find a story and character fool enough to deliver it. King 8 ...