We Could Be Rats

by Emily R. Austin

At the time, I had no idea how few days like that we get. When you’re a kid, you assume you’re just getting a taste for all the memorable experiences life has in store for you, but the truth is, most people don’t spend countless nights running through the streets with their friends. They spend a handful of nights doing that if they’re lucky.

I always imagined fanciful things like that when I was a kid. It was a trick I used to make life more stimulating. When I bit into fruit, for example, I pretended I had never eaten fruit before. I imagined fruit only existed in fairy tales, and that by some miracle I’d found a wild orchard. I would rip the barcode sticker off an apple, press my nose against its skin, inhale, and bite as if I were crunching into something enchanted.

All I’m trying to get at is that I have felt enormously happy. I cackled around town, drank myself gay, loved a doll, and watched snow plummet from the sky.

There are things I would have liked to see, like the northern lights, or beluga whales.

We ambled all the way across town, stood in that cornfield on the edge of the city limits, looked up into the night sky, and pretended we were gnomes.