Hex

by Rebecca Dinerstein Knight

Tom doesn’t drink for this reason and lives instead in the self-intoxicated state of medieval unicorn daydreaming, his substitute vice.

His natural state is mid-faint, and it takes a lot of effort on his part to concentrate, but when he does, his focus is arresting. It’s the cloud eyes. He’s got such inviting, colorless cloud eyes.

“We lived long together a life filled, if you will, with flowers. So that I was cheered when I came first to know that there were flowers also in hell.” WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

She could, at a glance, provide a man’s kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. I pictured her standing beside Linnaeus, both of them wearing white curly eighteenth-century wigs. Mishti would say to him, “Hey Carl,” and he’d coo, “Ja Mishti,” and show her his Swedish flowers.

“I’m not ending anything Nell you alarmist librarian. I’m beginning the part of my life in which I like living.”

There is something awful about watching a man get what he always wanted.

How am I supposed to sleep when I have such a library of heinous imagery to project for myself on my eyelids?

“As validation.” “I have validated you.” “As approval.” “I don’t approve.”