A Fraction of the Whole

by Steve Toltz

for a quick glass of champagne to rinse the taste of holocaust from her mouth.

concealing small thrilling breasts like hard-boiled eggs.

When we finished the kiss she said laughing, I can taste your loneliness—it tastes like vinegar.

We drank for another hour & I mutilated many of my most coherent thoughts by putting them into words.

Above all I will strive to raise a being that understands itself.

To have a child is to be impaled daily on the spike of responsibility.

Clock’s ticking. A nine-month gestation period just isn’t enough preparation time. I pray the baby won’t be premature—undercooked people are trouble.

hot—surely we have deep capacity for change but our 80 years doesn’t give us ample opportunity.

You have to cram infinity into a handful of lousy decades.

Maybe definition of having lived full life is when every citizen in the hall of selves gets to take you for a spin—the

Bent over baby & looked but really wanted to peer into his skull to see if any evil or cruelty or intolerance or sadism or immorality in there.

hold—this baby is me prematurely reincarnated.

One day I think history will judge me badly or worse accurately.

The most disturbing element in that unpleasant little book was his assertion that I was possibly a premature reincarnation of his still living self, that I was my father:

and I felt free to eat my cornflakes without hearing over and over again why man was the worst thing that had ever happened to humanity.

The doctor was very pleased, he said. That’s a tip for you: never bother asking after the patient; it’s a waste of time. The important thing is to discover how the doctor is feeling.

When you obsess about your appearance, you notice just how many reflective surfaces exist in the cosmos.

The outside of him may have been more presentable, but the inside shrank down a size.

I found to my shame that I had all but lost interest in my son as a person. I don’t know why, exactly. Maybe the novelty of seeing what my eyes and nose looked like on someone else’s face had finally worn off.