Aurora Sets the House on Fire
But first, because it mocks her, she kills the fat fly over
and over again. It’s wings leave
an iridescent smear on the French vanilla colored wall. It pleases her to no
end. Outside the sound of a basketball hitting the cement at eerily slow
intervals threatens to lull her to sleep, while she stands. She snaps back to
attention and remembers how she once read about a serial killer’s mother who
never left home without her big scrapbook, as if your life can be held together
with some glue and some tape, something she may have to resort to in the near
future. It’s curious details like this that spur her on. And the questions. She’d like to know
how she can stop raking at bloated desire with her bloody claws. Anybody? The avenue is full of other people’s trash and she
is up to her ankles in the different stories they tell all on the same day.
Listening went out of fashion years ago.
There are rivers that flow
with molten wax, but in the end, the heat, the burning and the light it gives
will have to be enough. Even
pleasure has a life span and she’s lived long enough to know, that it is
usually a short one.
Michelle Reale is an
academic librarian on faculty at Arcadia University in the suburbs of
Philadelphia. She is the author of four chapbooks and her work has
appeared in various anthologies. She has twice been nominated for a
Pushcart Prize. She blogs on social justice, immigration and migration
in the Sicilian context atwww.sempresicilia.wordpress.
This is writing!
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