punching cupcakes

it was the only thing tessa could do to keep from getting in her chevy luv pickup truck and driving through the night. he had gone to boston. she had never been to boston but she knew she didn't like it. she had met too many guys in bars from boston to think otherwise. he had met one guy in a bar from boston and with that, he left, leaving behind more confusion than she knew how to deal with. so here she was in her kitchen, punching cupcakes.

it had been wendy's suggestion. wendy was good at coming up with absurd yet effective means for dealing with "the heavy," as she liked to call it. when wendy had run over her neighbor's teacup pomeranian by accident and subsequently wound up in the midst of a dead doggy lawsuit, she dealt with the stress and the legal fees by learning how to knit. then she started up an online doggy sweater store and eventually quit her job at "the trap," as she liked to call it. despite all the drama, she never seemed to lose her perspective. this, among other reasons, was why tess had wendy as #1 on her speed dial.

so the night he left her while she was baking his birthday cupcakes, she pushed the "1" with her frosted finger and said "he left." wendy was over by tessa's 5th cupcake. she felt sick. wendy took tess by the messy hand and said "look, I always knew he was a giant douchepopsicle. I must confess I'm not surprised. the only thing you can do now is head out into the world laughing at one more joke life has told you." and with that she picked up a pink sprinkled cake and threw it up in the air, and as it began its arching decent, she punched it, hard.

anyone, no matter how low, would be lifted by the sight of an exploding cupcake. tess laughed and grabbed one herself and did the same. it was amazing - with each cupcake she smashed she felt better, lighter, more hopeful. that night they punched all 48 (minus the 5 she had already eaten). they cleaned the kitchen until it was morning and then they laughed together cupping mugs of coffee. wendy went home to sleep and tess started making more cupcakes. wendy was right and tess was fine despite her disaster. tess knew she would eventually forget all about boston and the man she once thought she knew.

maria has such soft lips

if it were that easy, we'd all be doing it. be doing what? monty wondered as he held the crumpled paper. what did it mean? who's sloppy hand had written this cryptic note? he needed to find out. he needed to know what wasn't easy and then do it. he had found the note lying in a ball behind the bleachers during recess which he most often spent alone. he liked hanging out back there because that is also where maria matthews made out with her boyfriend cody. maria developed breasts in the 4th grade and cody had his left lobe pierced. it made sense to the 7th graders. but what didn't make sense to monty was why maria would want to kiss someone with such a pathetic mustache? cody's mustache wasn't anything like uncle leonard's. sure, from far away it looked like a proper enough mustache to pass - but up close it looked like dried chocolate milk. rancid. I mean, he understood why aunt linda liked leonard's stache - it was thick and wild and mean and monty could totally comprehend the desire to shade one's lips under it. but cody's? it was lame. it looked like a lazy caterpillar with no intention of ever becoming a butterfly.

maria has such soft lips - the exact color of his number 2 eraser tip he had noticed one day in english class while writing a thinly-veiled poem about maria titled "mary's lips". monty did not have a mustache or an earring or a razor carver kick scooter with trucks. what monty did have was a burning desire to be monty and nobody else. if only maria was into short honest boys with curly hair who wouldn't reach their full physical potential until age 28. couldn't she stick it out with him hand in hand? it would be worth the wait. that much he could promise. as for the rest? monty was confident he would figure it out in due time. he wouldn't grow a mustache until it was a proper one like uncle leonard's. that much he knew for sure.

manami's hands

as she left her apartment, manami touched the smooth wooden railing like it was the back of a lover. and as she ate her lunch in the park, she ran her hand through the cool grass like it was the head of a child she was hoping to bear. she stopped in a perfume shop along the way to smell the fragrant mouth of a bottle as if it were on the nape of another's neck. she walked home in silence, her hands in front of her waving at strangers while her eyes studied her feet. she didn't want to fall. she had fallen when she was 9 and broken her jaw - her hands failing to protect her. it took so long to heal. and when she was 13 and he touched her in places that were not ready, her hands hid by her side. she never forgave them for that. and now, too old to crawl on obochan's lap, she curled up in her bed searching for warmth. she studied her hands holding them up to the light squinting at the transparency of illuminated skin. she did not trust them. and as she traced the years of her empty palm she realized how tired she had grown of this battle. "why?" manami whispered to her sashiko quilt. "can't my eyes look where my fingers are pointing? can't my head hear my heart? can't my breath breathe its beating? can't I wave and say 'hello! I want to love you with these hands and everything else that is me'? I am ready," manami said to her hands. "I am ready to fall."

electric blue motorbike

she has set her gaze on a quiet boy who rides an electric blue motorbike. always she has looked haphazardly at the world of men, dabbling here, drowning there. she has made her share of mistakes and she has shared her share of sloppy kisses. but it has only been now that she is taking aim with the purest of intentions. she wants to ride on that bike. she watches him, a new sense of calm she is only now learning to appreciate. it's simple really, good things usually are. she wants the wind in his hair to tickle her face. she wants to steady herself with the pressure of her thighs on his. she wants a life that has been going ever so slowly ever so safely to jump on the back of that fast moving motorbike. she is hoping he will pop a wheely. she asks him for a ride. he hands her a helmet. she shakes her head no. she is going to give trusting a try.

bernicia burns

it was late at night when people are sleeping. she was wide awake. she was thinking about pablo picasso. picasso was pablo's mother's maiden name. pablo thought picasso sounded so much better than ruiz. she agreed. she was thinking about using her mother's maiden name instead of the one he had given her. flores was so much better than burns. bernicia flores--would that sell books? would that write books? maybe if she changed her name, she would be able to start writing. maybe it was all the centuries of patriarchal oppression that was stifling her voice? yes. first thing in the morning, she would walk the 37 blocks to have her name legally changed to bernicia flores. but then she thought, I could have it changed to anything. and then suddenly, bernicia burns missed her mother very much.

dear inspector gadget

dear inspector gadget,

do you have a gadget that will make my mother talk less? it's not that I don't love my mother, because I do love her very very much. it's not even that I don't like a lot of the things she's saying, because I do, she has a great many things to say. it's just that she says so much, too much I say. as if some button needs to be pushed but is broken. perhaps the best gadget would be a word filter of sorts that she could talk through. like a knowing net it would catch all the excess. let's say an average of 61.3% of the words that tumble out would be caught in this filter. the rest, all things I want to hear. words of wisdom, encouragement and love. all of the worry and guilt and mumbo gumbo cut off like fat from the meat of the matter. my mother, she just says so very many words and I don't think she needs to say nearly so many. what gadget could you recommend?

your #1 fan,

stan francis

christina

we own her we think as we walk west down wilshire towards the tar. I step in gum. they keep walking. christina has no idea we are coming. I yell to my forward moving posse in their matching outfits, I'm stuck. they return to me to scrape and ponder the inconsideration. and on we move again, my left heel sticking slightly as I walk. we are getting close and I am formulating my sentence - my sentence will join the ranks of great sentences. I am hoping together we will deliver something weighty and wise. we are walking in silence and I wonder what they are thinking? I am thinking I need this and that should be all that is needed for the getting and I should get this because it is mine for the taking. christina has promised for how many summers that we could meet her famous father? it's time, we've waited too long. we're not getting any younger. we will be freshman next year.

a rabbit and a hat

he wished for his pen to run out, but it didn't, so he kept on writing. every sentence embarrassed him. he knew he would read over what he had written once and then destroy it. he didn't want anyone to read it. he didn't want anyone to know how much he liked magic. how much he dreamt of growing a long beard and hitting the road with a rabbit and a hat. his jokes, the ones no one laughed at, why did he keep telling them? and the tricks, weren't they just another pathetic attempt at making up for the lack of real magic in his life? maybe he could perform a trick where he unsawed himself in half, made himself whole? he was so sick of feeling the lack. no amount of practice was going to make her appear. it's just him and the rabbit shitting and pissing all over everything. he wished for his life to stop stinking, but it didn't. wishing by itself is not enough.

more like the tree

for the relief of her unbearable urge, she decided to get a snack. to make herself feel better about this caving in she decided she would walk to get the snack thus burning a portion of the calories consumed. she already felt better. she walked past a bush bursting with folding flowers and she looked at the fluff filling the cerulean sky. clouds she found she loved almost as much as snacks (though not quite as much it should be noted). how many calories are in a cloud? she found herself wondering. what does a cloud taste like? what would it feel like to lay in bed with a cloud? catch a movie, eat a pint? would the cloud cuddle you back? she always found herself toying with such thoughts, like, does alphabet soup ever want to spell itself out? and what would it say? "don't eat me!"? as she was thinking of other things the letters might want to arrange, she tripped on a root that had forced itself out of the concrete. "ouch" she said. and then she thought, did that hurt the tree as much as it hurt me? to be safe she said sorry and gave the tree a gentle pat. she noticed how firm it was. she looked at its slender branches. and then she wondered why she couldn't be more like the tree. the tree didn't struggle with wanting too much. why did she?

ice cream fight

the last argument they had ended in an ice cream fight. not the fun kind where you throw ice cream screaming laughter, dripping sticky, licking bits of dulce de leche off your chin. this ice cream fight was not that kind. this ice cream fight consisted of her screaming and him drowning out the hate with the rich and creamy coldness of chocolate chocolate chip ice cream. he is starting to get fat. every time she starts the yelling, he walks to the kitchen. he muffles her voice with the crunching of chips or the fizzing of soda pop. he hates the stomach aches, but he hates her hateful words more. so much sugar sloshing around in his belly, he's drowning himself with sweetness hoping to escape the sour of a love gone horribly wrong. how did we end up like this? he wonders. me chubby, her breaking things. we used to be so in love.