Sitting on lawn chairs at the edge of the world we eat sandwiches and watch ancient monsoons rip harmlessly across space, tantrums in exile. I sip cold milk. You swig from a flask, screw the cap closed counterclockwise, how they do things in this hemisphere.
You point to the birth of two baby seagulls in a spinning Ferris wheel. Their parents soar in bringing hot dogs without buns, carb-free. But life without carbs, what’s the point? Sinking my teeth into Wonder bread, I daydream of Oreo eclipses.
Our rig is parked behind us between two straight lines in the Cataclysmic Joy Seekers campground that we host, but we’re the only ones here. Gifts of bundled waxy logs sit untouched. Everyone got the date wrong or failed to care.
You hum “Hallelujah.” Close as I’ll get to religion.
I hear a distant train.
You say there are no tracks around here.
That’s when I rethink those two lines we’re parked between. Past lives colliding with the present. We let out our roller coaster scream.
Binoculars watch us from a blind one thousand wingbeats away, glinting reflections. Brother and sister seagulls finally take flight. Ferris wheel rotates, lights twinkle in space.
Guy Biederman is the author of Translated From The Original, one-inch punch fiction (Black Lawrence Press), and five other books of short fiction and poetry. His work has appeared in Bull, Flashback Fiction, Fictive Dream, MacQueen’s Quinterly, and The Woolf and appears in the Best Microfiction 2024 anthology. He lives with his wife on a houseboat in Sausalito, California, and walks the planks daily. www.guybiederman.com
The Disappointed Housewife 