tales for Little Girls
"Is this what you imagined
when you thought you would never
grow old?"
trying to balance yourself between highs
weighing helium was never easy
but you never thought the acid
would make cement move in currents
still
that the grass you smoke
only makes you feel light
when you hover a foot from the ground
that a mile from earth is hard
especially when you're still afraid of heights
that your bones feel worn
you're realizing alcohol just strips you away
first skin
then blood
all the wet parts you thought
you could vacuum seal
and stack on shelves
are infected from exposure
"I'm sorry, sweet girl"
because sobriety doesn't balance
it weights on one side like iron
and once you start spinning
you never stop
as you see me
i realized that i
kneading mirror images with warm hands
(and god-seeing eyes to lead them)
had molded the lips between my cheeks
made them pucker, butter, mush
i was thirteen when i'd let them drop
to hang like heavy fruits hang on trees
as they fill with water and bend the branches
i had not known that mouths were malleable
under certain chemical reactions
like one part hot tears, two parts self-hatred,
activated by time
by the six years spent
searching for myself in the silver behind
the glass; pouting to make myself
more bearable, more acceptable
I did not know
I would find myself today
deformed. demented.
my lips
hanging limp, hotly parted
cocked half-open and spilling
lean lines of crystal drool
that twinkle in Your black eyes
and leave You at Your knees
as i pass You on tar and asphalt streets
i earned Your submission
when i gave You mine
Burning diesel, burning dinosaur bones.
Not to post back-to-back about it, but this is an exception:
We joined forces with Seattle Refined to commemorate & celebrate the life and lyrics of Soundgarden legend Chris Cornell with a new writing challenge.
If Chris Cornell touched you, write about it. Share your story, poem, tribute, anything about him. We will be putting together a book for the Cornell family, of the posts entered. All proceeds from additional copies purchased will be donated to suicide prevention. The most shared post will be read on air and posted on seattlerefined.com
Go to Seattle Refined in Portals to enter and read.
Thanks for stopping to read this. Go write.
-Prose.
when you delete my comments but i post them anyway
chainedinshadow
@Tylasmith I have been treated poorly by people of all races; that's life. And do NOT speak to me about not understanding racism; I have lived with racism all my life; I live IN THE DEEP SOUTH! And like I said, almost all of my friends are black. And guess what? They are disgusted with Black Lives. I don't have time to argue with you more, I'm sorry; I would also appreciate it if you used language that was more proper and less filthy.
32 minutes ago
chainedinshadow
@Tylamsith I have also been called a lot worse than "cracker" by many people; there are wrongs on both sides of the issue. And you're going on about people labeling others...and you are labeling me.
@Tylasmith I'm sorry, I had to delete your comments because you're getting out of hand and using inappropriate language. I DO know about racism, and I have seen the slums, and they were pretty much a very big part of my life. And you know what? Everyone is responsible for their choices. Just because your black doesn't dictate whether you end up in prison--what you DO dictates that. What IS the point of Black Lives Matter, because so far, they're missing the point, too. And if you deal drugs, guess what? You deserve to go to jail. Drugs ruin lives and rip apart families.
No, I said I deleted them because I do not appreciate people using the "s" and "f" word in my presence; it's foul, it's dirty, and it's base. And it only reveals what type of person you are. And you're not the type of person I have respect for.
tell to my face what i am, that's okay because i don't respect you either
I never labeled you what are you two playing the victim here never labeled you, and number one don't accuse me of shit because when u make an accusation u make an ass out of yourself , I am tired of you crying boohoo about what happened to you , you never been through no real shit ,
I am tired of your ass talking about the deep south and fuck the south, okay , I am tired you of telling me what your black friends said about black lives matter, they don't speak for all African-Americans, you don't know crap about racism, unless u experienced it , u have no idea what it is like to be a minority, why because you are part of the majority. I tired of you wearing like living in the deep south like a scar of war , or that it makes u expert on racism, life is all about the experience and the pain, the little shit that has happened to you is not even a big deal , you know why because you can still go out of this world and still achive your dreams , because why because your white, whereas the black man doesnt have the same shot at getting over the humps of hate and people being racism to him , because all the media and society do is treat black people less than we are , we were born into slavery brought out slavery only to be slaves of the media a puppet to what a black man should be or what any other minority should be because we fear maybe one day we end up like Trayvon Martin or where not black because we dont act a certain way or because of how much melanin in or skin were not black enough , or when your called a nigger because your black and you played the harriet tubman in a school play , or when your called a grease monkey because you got oil in your hair , or when a kid tells you to go get the tennis ball slave , or when your in the store and you calsuay slip your hand in your pocket and the store manager asks you to empty out your pockets and calls you a dirty nigga , or when your put in a program for bad kids because you stand up for yourself and people label you as the crazy black women ,
why are you bringing up drugs with black people, you lost me there-sterotypical i dk i am confused
I DO know about racism, and I have seen the slums, and they were pretty much a very big part of my life. And you know what? Everyone is responsible for their choices.
know you don't darling, a big part of your life, so your sitting down and watching it happen
@lonely No one even treats black people differently. If ANYONE is prejudice, it's the black people, who claim the whites hate them...which is bunk. Most of my friends are black, with the exception of three, and I do not treat them any differently, and no one treats them any differently. Even the ones who live in some bad sections of NY!! So, like I said, stop seeing something that's NOT THERE!
race blaming, dare i say racist , no one treats blacks differently ,I think your blind
es. People go on too much about racism between black and white, and that only makes it worse. The fact is this: the racism is NOT as bad as people make it sound; and with the media making everything sound worse than it is, people get riled up, and it only BECOMES worse.
racism isnt bad as it sounds , i thought you saw the slums( I have seen the slums, and they were pretty much a very big part of my life.)
of it so no noubt you say the negative affects of racism had on the people affected , and what it did to people and how it affected there self-esteem
milkmeat.
The consciousness is the first of the pains, before the pinching cold table, or the bandaged wound on my leg, or the nipples, chafed to burns. The consciousness sears, like brandings beneath flesh. It makes me feel disturbed; unsound, makes my stomach liquid, hot and viscous. I am between states, imagining reality as a lake I float over. I have a fear of touching the surface; of soaking, sinking, drowning.
My eyes are open. Dry. I cannot see. When I close them, tears spill down either side of my face. There is relief in the feeling, wet and cool. My eyes were left, exposed, like a car door left ajar in the middle of the night. An accident. Mistakes to be made-up for next time. In the months they were forgotten a film formed of eye goop and ceiling dust and bug shit. They sting when I close them, but it’s not as bad as it was last time.
I blink a few times before everything clears. I’m positioned on my back, staring at the ceiling. The flickering, humming fluorescent lights are set behind blue glass to remind me of the sky. I remember being pregnant, watching as my swollen belly grew towards artificial sun like a flower, as I lay, waiting.
It’s different now.
I sleep for months. I sleep for years.
There is a nameless machine attached to my breasts. It is clear on top, locked around the base of my chest. The machine has three vaults: drugs, food, milk.
The drugs and the food go in. The milk comes out.
I am capital. A machine. A cow. This is a farm. There are seventy-three other woman in the room, all being pumped. The sound is like chugging, with the sloppy echo of an ultrasound. We even look like fetuses, unborn, unconscious, feeding tubes attached like umbilical cords. Our lives are considered with the same weight. It is a technical attribute. Like the life of a plant, or a VCR. I’ve heard more argument for life in yogurt.
Two men walk in the room- I heard them coming. My heart raps against my chest. I lean my cheek against the chilled table, to see what they’ve come for. It’s not hard to find- one row behind me Ruth, sound asleep, has one breast popped like an overfilled balloon. It hangs suspended in the machine, but the blood and the meat dribbles down her skin, pours over the floor.
“Jesus.” Says one of them, when he gets close.
“Yep.” Says the other one, a veteran.
“How do these milk’ems sleep through shit like this?” Milk’ems. Milk “M”s. From milkmaidens, milkmaids, milkmadders. Nicknames, like summer camp.
I don’t hear if the other man responds. I hear the sloshing and ringing of mops. It smells like sanitation fluid, and blood. There is a sharp, lingering smell of iron. One of the men, the new one, slows his motion to a halt. He whispers, “How do you know if any of ’em wake up?”
The old vet chuckles. “You’ll know,” he says. There’s a moment of silence. “When they wake up, they always scream.”
I was twenty-six once, with auburn hair and what my girlfriend tenderly referred to as “moon tits”. We had a condo, concerned ourselves with low-risk investments, and craft beers, and attending community theater. I was her waitress; she was having dinner with her grandmother. She’d tipped me a twenty with her phone number scrawled on. Over lunch I found her to be a presence; forcefully herself and proud as stone. And she wanted me, so openly. I love her, so deeply.
I’d never had a girlfriend. Our lives began to run together like cream in water. Inseperable. Indiscernible.
I’d become unwhole.
“Have you ever considered surrogacy?” The doctor asked, idly scratching her neck. There was a pause in the room that made everything seem more sterile than it already was. She swiveled around her stool to face me. My raised eyebrows made her laugh. She was about my age, smart, and compassionate, and genuine, the way doctors should be.
“Mm-mm.” I shook my head, trying to assume her cavalier attitude.
“Well,” she started. She pulled a thick accordion folder and began shuffling through. “Usually, you have to be pregnant at least once before they’ll allow you to be a surrogate, but” she says, stopping her hand on one of the packets, reconsidering, “wait- you’re gay, right?” I laughed, nodded. She grinned and handed me the document.
“It’s an anonymous surrogacy program by-gay-couples-for-gay-couples, which also allows female couples the options of using the system as a sort of sperm bank-“
“And you’re supposed to push this?”
“No. I’m mostly doing this out of pure envy be-ca-use,” she led the paper away from me and leafed through it, handing it back with her finger pointed to its lower corner, “I had to go through ten years of med school to make this salary, and you’d be getting it in ten months.”
I stared at it, a heaping number. A white dress. A place near the shores. A bassinet, with our baby, sleeping soundly. I could not find the words.
“Anyways just consider it. Otherwise you’re good-to-go.” She clicked a pen and marked something. She smiles at me, “Want a sticker on your way out?”
“Lew, please” I’d insisted, rubbing my palms up and down her thighs in an effort to assuage her.
“No, baby, absolutely not. You’d never let it go- you tried to keep the neighbor’s fucking cat last week.”
“It was a stray!”
“It had a collar.”
“But the money, Lew, imagine if we had all that money.”
We’d argued about it all night, over drinks. Then the next night over dinner. By Thursday it had been forgotten, was resurrected as a joke on Friday night. On Saturday it was alongside other dinner party patters, and mentioned one last time on Sunday morning. By then we laughed softly, and let it slip away with the rest of the week.
By What God.
That Monday Lew was laid off.
The following Tuesday I was inseminated.
Postpartum. You lose more than a child. Your heart, your guts. You don’t know your way home anymore. You don’t have the nerves to ask.
“Milkmadders” is a term especially for the new moms here. It was us who went mad. We would knock our heads against the tables, howl and sob, pick at ourselves, our skin, our breasts. Their product.
At first they couldn’t get the dosage of meds right. In the first week five ended up convulsing, bones rattling over steel tables, the smack of jaws against concrete, teeth cracked. Three went silently, OD’d in their sleep. But then the last two made it the month.
The drugs were presented to us as an offer. If we thought we could bear the proposed three to nine months of pumping milk, completely conscious, we had the option. After seeing the results the first time around I refused, afraid I would slip away. Others accepted it, for that reason.
Of the ones who tried to stay awake, none lasted very long. Some made it a few hours, others, the day. I lasted three, before awareness in a room of beating corpses wore me in too hard. I was the last of them to go.
“It not for the babies.”
These were the words I woke up to, the first time.
I was groggy. The lights were off; the workers had left the factory. We weren’t considered alive enough to warrant the privilege. I’d never been in the room, dark.
It felt safe.
“Not for the babies,” the girl on my right whispered again.
I turned to her. Felt my growing hair soft against my cheek. “What’s not for the babies?”
“Not for the babies,” she agreed, quickly, aggressively, nodding.
“Hey,” I said, “look at me.”
She did. Even in the dark, I could tell her eyes were piercing. “What isn’t for the babies? Which babies?”
“Milk,” she said, shortly. My heart was beating. Please, no.
“The breastmilk,” I whispered, carefully, as though I were afraid mines were hidden between syllables, “The breastmilk…is not for the sick babies we made?”
“Babies aren’t sick. Healthy babies make healthy meat.”
“Meat?” no, no
“Meat to eat,” she sings. “Scream to sleep.” Her hand rustles in her pants as she laughs. She’s still pregnant, not yet machine nursing. She still has mobility. She slaps a paper she had hidden between her legs against my forearm. It smells of female heat. “Hold,” she commands. “Hide.” Then she screams.
Someone comes from behind the swinging doors to change out her medicine. I listen to the rustle, to the soft sounds of her body falling limp over the table. I’m afraid the worker will hear my heartbeat, hard and fast. He walks away.
I lay awake, mind spinning. She’s crazy, I tell myself. The lights come on the next morning. They make me feel exposed.
I unravel the twisted paper close to my face- I cannot hold it up to read, or even turn over. It smells brackish, musty, nostalgic. I savor the smell of sex and Woman. O, Lew, my heart cries out.
Then I read.
A label.
Adhesive back, the sticky worn to soft. Torn thin at the bottom.
Nutrition facts.
171 calories per serving. 11 grams of fat.
no.
“H. Sapiens Breastmilk” it names it, at the top.
Then:
$3.99.
My stomach drops to the floor.
you fuckers.
Livestock. That’s what we are. Animals. Our milk is a commodity. Women drink it on number-by-day diets, post-workout rituals. Children use it in their chocolate puff cereals, watch how it’s dirtied to brown by the dyes, pour it down the drain. They complain it tastes gamey. They are told it will make them strong. Drink. Me. My milk. Slurp the void left by my stolen kin. Taste the chemical reaction of my fear. Eat my son after you soak him in brine. Pick him to pieces with long sharp forks. Complain how his carcass clogged your garbage disposal.
I’d tried not to think of it. Which is why I screamed every time I woke up. I had not wanted to know. I wish I had not known. I will never go home. I am losing myself.
76 minutes in.
My mind is starting to go stiff, webby, caught in the machine sounds and the women’s slack faces. The tables. Shit buckets. Dust, drifting between currents of light. Settling on the linoleum tile. A miniscule bug, running through a crack. A tile. Dust. Lines. Lights. Tubes. Glass. Walls. Paint. Molding. Floor, again. Stain. Dent. Face. Face. Another face. My hair.
Auburn like my baby’s. His soft forehead.
His soft forehead.
His soft forehead.
His soft forehead.
His soft forehead.
His soft. I steady myself. I suspend the image. I can see it, even with my eyes trained on the floor. I don’t let it sink. I just hold it there. Then it begins to change, as slow and alarming as a creaking door. It touches me.
I scream.
What’s Behind the Door
The stranger knocked upon the door,
A creaking, wooden throb,
And someone on the other side
Unlatched and turned the knob.
Uncertainty, a soft, "Hello,"
And, "May I use your phone?"
The person on the other side
Appeared to be alone.
An observation taken in,
No pictures on the wall.
He pointed somewhere down the way-
"Go on and make a call."
The thunder boomed; the stranger stalled
As wires were cut instead.
The gentleman began to sense
A subtle hint of dread.
A conversation thus ensued-
"So what has brought you out?
The rain has flooded everything,
And wiped away the drought.
Say, did you walk, or did you drive?
Why don't I take your coat?"
The stranger slowly moved his arms,
A sentimental gloat.
The water from the pouring skies
Enveloped cloth and shoe.
"Say, would you like a place to sleep?
I'll leave it up to you."
The person on the other side
Discarded his mistrust.
The stranger said his tire was flat,
And shed the muddy crust.
"The phone won't work," he also said.
"It could just be the storm.
Perhaps I will stay here tonight,
To keep me safe and warm."
The patron of the house agreed.
He hadn't seen the wire.
The chilly dampness prompted him
To quickly build a fire.
"You have a name? They call me Ed.
My wife was Verna Dean.
She passed away five years ago
And left me here as seen.
I guess it's really not so bad.
We never had a child.
I loved that Verna awful much,"
He said and sadly smiled.
"No property to divvy up.
The bank will get it all.
Say, do you want to try again
To go and make that call?"
The stranger grinned and left the flame
As to the phone he strode.
Within his pocket, knives and twine
In hiding seemed to goad.
A plan was formed- he'd kill the man;
Eviscerate him whole.
The twine would keep him firmly held;
The knife would steal his soul.
A lusty surge erupted hence;
A wicked bit of sin.
The stranger hadn't noticed yet
That someone else came in.
About the time a shadow fell,
He spun to meet a pan.
The room around him faded out
As eyes looked on a man.
A day or two it seemed had passed,
And when he woke all tied,
The stranger gazed upon old Ed
Who simply said, "You lied."
Reversing thoughts, the moment fled
And Ed said in a lean,
"No worries, stranger. None at all.
Hey, look, here's Verna Dean!"
He looked upon a wraith in rage;
It seemed his little lie
Combusted in a burning fit-
He didn't want to die.
So many victims in his life,
Some fifty bodies strewn.
And now he was the victim; now
The pain to him was known.
The stranger fought against the twine,
And noticed by his bed
The knife once in his pocket left
A trail of something red.
A bowl filled full of organs sat
As Verna poured some salt.
She exited with all of them.
"You know, this is your fault.
We demons wait for just the day
The guilty take the bait
And play with matches one last time-
I simply cannot wait
To taste the death within your flesh;
The venom in your gut.
So now you know the way they felt-
Hey, you've got quite a cut!"
The person on the other side
Removed his human skin-
Before his wife came back for more,
He offered with a grin:
"Say, stranger, is there anything
You'd like to say at all?"
I looked at all the blood and said,
"I'd like to make that call ... "
Vida Futura
I died on July 22nd, 2016.
My mother cried and cried, and then she just stopped talking altogether.
My father spent two hours searching forum posts on how to arrange an international corpse transport and last-minute funerals in New York. He then spent the next five hours reading articles and marathoning through NHK videos about Japan from the food to robot restaurants to the train suicide rates.
My brother had a beer in a bar he’d never been to. There, he went through our intermittent text messages throughout the years and then deleted my contact information from his phone.
They each coped in their own way, as always.
The alpaca plush doll I’d given my mom my senior year of college sat on my old piano in the living room like a reminder that I had once been there playing for them, that I hadn’t been forgotten.
I woke up on August 22nd, 2016.
But it wasn’t in my bed in Queens. Or huddled in my futon in a cramped apartment in Tokyo. I was in a small, single room wooden house. I was sitting in front of square oak table. There was a window facing an endless green field like the one from Sound of Music. In the distance were snow-peaked mountains and the stone-lined reflection of a massive lake.
This was Vida Futura. Or at least that’s what it said on the welcome pamphlet on the table. In a cream-colored envelope was a ‘REASSIGNMENT CARD’ with an awful photo of me I didn’t remember taking and a contact card with a list of five names and phone numbers.
Faye Voestra, LIFE COUNSELOR — (555) XXX-XXX
Sophia Voestra, JOB COUNSELOR — (555) YYY-YYYY
Sherry Oshford, SOCIAL LEAD — (555) ZZZ-ZZZZ
Cyril Beeton, TRANSPORT LEAD — (555) AAA-AAA
There was a phone hooked to the wall and underneath that was a framed painting of a green field that looked just like the field outside the window.
There was no bed, no food, no water.
I picked up the phone and dialed the first number. The line rang three times before someone picked up.
“Welcome to Vida Futura!” an ear-busting voice announced from the other side.
“How did I get here?” I asked, staring out the window at the snow-peaked mountains. I fought back the urge to ask if this was actually some high cost mental hospital/rehab center in Europe.
“You’ve died! Congratulations!!” the woman shrieked cheerfully. I pulled the phone away from my ear, her shrill voice drilling into my head. “You are the newest resident of the green zone.”
I flipped through the welcome pamphlet but there was nothing but photos of nature and a two-page photo spread of people smiling in front of a fountain that reminded me of those terrifying old people tour groups in China. Above the people in bright white font read “Welcome to our family.”
I tried hard to remember if I had dabbled in any hard drugs the night before. But I couldn’t remember where I had even been the night before. Who had I been with? What had I eaten? There wasn’t a trace of hangover, no headache, no sour taste in my mouth; my head was the clearest it had been in months. Like I'd just woken up from a long and restful sleep.
“Are you still there?” the woman asked, concerned.
“Yes, I’m sorry. Um, Ms….” I glanced down at the contact card. “…Voestra? When you say ‘you've died’ does that mean…”
“I’m sure we will have many conversations from here on in, so please, there’s no need for formalities. Please call me Faye.”
“Ok, Ms Faye…”
“Faye is fine,” she insisted.
My hand tightened around the phone. “Sure, Faye,” I hated calling strangers by their first name, as if an suddenly we were on needlessly friendly, lets-get-lunch together terms. “Can you please explain what happened to me?” I asked.
Faye did not beat around the bush as I expected:
On July 22nd, I had been pushed into the train tracks at Hodogaya Station, into an oncoming Shonan Shinjuku expression train bound for Takasaki. Death was instant. As my body slammed into the first car at 160 km/hour, many of the commuters in the front car had questioned why that had not been them splattered over the front window. This was the second bloody accident that train conductor had seen in less than five years. My parents received a call at 9PM EST from an English-representative of JR company — right in the midst of sitting back to enjoy their nightly marathon of Chinese dramas, full tea cup in hand. Two weeks later, they received a bill for 6M yen to cover the cost of cleaning my remains off the train, tracks, and platform as well as damage to the front window of the car. My death was ruled a suicide, and that’s what they told my parents. No investigation was ever launched, and I was half-thankful my parents wouldn’t be caught up in a hunt for revenge for the last few decades of their life, only to find someone mentally unstable, drunk, or plain stupid. My mother hung up Buddhist mirrors around the house and spent her days staring at her Chinese dramas in her silent catatonic depression. She ignored calls from her sisters and made passing comments about seeing a ghost in her room, which made everyone else too scared to go inside. My father had started meeting any Japanese people he could find on craigslist to learn a language he never had interest in when I was alive. My brother started visiting them every weekend and talked to my mom even though she never answered him.
I took a deep breath, less sad than I thought would be. “So…if I’m dead, why am I here?” I asked.
“Upon termination of your past life, you were deemed Fit, so you’ve been sent here for reassignment.”
I heard a hollow tapping, as if Faye was drumming her finger on an oak table that looked just like mine. Her chair squeaked as if she were leaning back on an un-oiled office chair. For a moment, I could see a line of cubicles facing a massive 15th floor window looking out onto Tokyo Bay and Rainbow Bridge. Was this some scam to make people think they were already dead before they were harvested for organs? Where had I been going when I waited at Hodogaya Station. I couldn’t remember.
“How do people even get sent here after dying?”
“Unfortunately that’s not something I’m equipped to answer,” the chair squeaked again. “Trains, planes, boats, who knows right?” she laughed and I pulled the phone away from my ear again. “Let’s focus less on how you got here and more on what you’re going to do from here on. Stay positive! One in ten new residents attempt suicide in their first week in Vida Futura. Can you believe it? Already dead and… It’s just such a waste of precious opportunity! Most people love it here after the first month. Everyone here in Vida Futura is essential, and I’m sure you will also be great here.”
I looked down at the photo of the smiling people in front of the fountain and then closed the pamphlet. In ten seconds, I was sure I would have a full-fledged panic attack.
“There’s no bed or food or water in this house,” my voice cracked.
“Ah yes! I’ll get to that. No worries," the chair squeaked again. “Wait, are you worried? You sound worried. Shall we do some breathing exercises together? That will help you relax! Just count with me, heeeeee-huuuuu”
“No, I’m fine.”
“You don’t sound fine.”
“I’m fine.”
“But you don’t sound like your usual self.”
“How would you know what my usual self sounds like? We just met.”
She made a doubtful hmmm noise from the back of her throat.
“Are you sure you don’t want to just try it?” Her resolve was weakening.
“Yes, I’m very sure.” I was more irritated than panicked now. Maybe this woman was a genius at therapy.
“Alrighty then,” she cleared her throat. “So first off, let me explain the rules of Vida Futura. Don’t worry about writing them down, you’ll remember them right away, everyone does!
#1 — If you die in Vida Futura, you cannot return. Where you go, we cannot say.
#2 — Everyone must have a job. You will be assigned one shortly, based on your preference and skill sets.
#3 — You cannot switch zones without significant reason (this may include suicidal tendencies or civil unions with members in other zones)
#4 — Make friends, but avoid asking other residents about their past lives.
All the other details should be explained by your job counselor.”
“Why can’t we talk to other people about their old lives?” I asked, not mentioning that I couldn’t remember what had happened to me in the past week or even my own name.
“Past lives,” she corrected. “We call them expired memories here. While they were wonderful, vital components for living in your past life, they cannot sustain their shape and cohesiveness here. They will decay and be forgotten shortly. We simply suggest easing the process so you can more quickly enjoy your new time here.”
She paused, and I tapped my finger on the table.
“You’ll get your name soon,” she said finally.
At that moment, I thought how silly all of this was. Out the window, the sky was a perfect, saturated blue like it was in all those Instagram photos. Not a creature in sight. There was no clock in the room, but I guessed it was around noon.
“What was my old name?” I asked, trying to memorize the sound of my own voice. I tried to remember what my face looked like, but only a watery shadow with no solid lines surfaced in my mind that I couldn’t even begin to sketch if asked. This had to be a dream.
“I’m sorry but I don’t know,” she said. I knew she was lying, of course, she had to be, but it didn’t matter. I was convinced it would be over soon. The bubble would pop and I'd wake up shivering in my in Tokyo with the AC turned too high and the first blue of dawn edging in through my curtains.
“Ms Voestra,” I said, being petty. “Can I request my new name?”
“Unfortunately-“
“How did you get your name?”
“I’m sorry, but I’m not equipped to answer that-“
“Whole lot of stuff you can’t answer, huh? Not a very good life counselor, or was that just your poorly decided reassignment too?”
"I'm sorry, but if you-"
I hung the phone up and stared out the window again. The view was surprisingly relaxing. I tried to imagine the last thing I had listened to on my iPod, Madeleine by Konstantin Sibold, the space-like sound in the beginning of the song like an opening chasm of light or a black hole growing larger and larger. Wasn’t that closer to my vision of death? I thought I could hear birds chirping, but it was just silence.