Strand
| STRAND a short story published in Conjunctions |
VIEW THE PDF AND READ THE STORY "Ten years ago, resolving to put M. and her presence in my life solidly behind me, I turned to immediate and practical solutions. I removed all souvenirs of our love. I burned our mattress, and our sheets and pillowcases. And when that still wasn't enough I hired a maid to bleach and scour my house. There were few other realistic options for eliminating the memory of M. and her devil cat soul, and her body of a summer lioness. But water does not wash everything away - it takes the firm hand of the tides, the assiduous application of pumice, the momentum of geysers for water to do its work. Cleaning requires being beaten against cold stones, and then boiled against hot rocks. And that is why I am so disturbed, today by the perversities of bleak and inauspicious fate - I have found one of M.'s hairs, angry and red, lying in my bathtub. AUTHOR'S NOTE: Once, while living alone in an apartment with only rare visitors, I came home to find a twenty four inch long blonde hair on my red sofa. I removed it with some distaste, only to find another one there a few days later. This continued for several months, as I became inexorably more distraught about it. Eventually, I witnessed the super taking off his hat - to reveal a two foot long blond ponytail. He'd been eating lunch in my apartment for nearly a year, religiously tuning in to I Dream Of Jeannie on my TV. - QAW |
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