Red Clocks

by Leni Zumas

And at this point, what else can she do? You could stop trying so hard. You could love your life as it is.

they come from the desire to recur. Give me the chance to repeat myself.

“The comparing mind is a despairing mind,” says the meditation teacher.

Penny is a teacher of English and an inventor, she says, of entertainments.

Affronts to vanity worn as badges of the ultimate accomplishment.

She used to go months, years, not thinking about it. Then something (the smell of cherries, the word “soon”) would remind her.

Compare and despair.

She knew—it was her job as a teacher of history to know—how many horrors are legitimated in public daylight, against the will of most of the people.

If not for her comparing mind and covetous heart, the biographer could feel compassion for her fellow criminals.

Kook. People like to throw around labels. Kooky. Don’t let them define you. Kookaburra. You are exactly yourself, that’s who.

By walking, she tells her students, is how you make the road.