nathan’s Reviews > Exit Zero > Status Update

Acknowledgements: I’d like to remember my Uncle Joe, a submarine cook—world’s coolest job. When I was little, he carved a radish into a rose. It was the most magical thing I’d ever seen, and still is.

A windless rustle, a certain un-sound.

The movement of a cat’s shoulders out of sequence with its forward motion pleases her. The cat slips on its way up the other bank. Her grasp is firm. She pushes a blade into its neck. A pink dawn, flurries beginning. The animal draped like a bride over her legs. Viola sits in the snow and drinks.

The reason the man in the truck, the stuck dress, and the tiger weren’t as wild as the wrong car is because they were acts that happened to us. Getting into the wrong car felt like something my mother and I enacted. Like we’d stumbled onto a mystery. That it turned out to be a simple mistake only made the mystery wider. But it was generated by us. Our conversation. Our love.

What’s more surprising is that you can have a private relationship with time.

“‘A yellow rose means infidelity and disloyalty. A pink carnation is I will never forget you. Be mine is clover. My heart burns is cactus.’”

I sank to the ground with her in my arms. I knew she would die and I was ready to shoulder that blame instead of proceeding. Her body seemed to be comprised of hundreds of independently operating parts. It has to end, anyway, I thought, ready to surrender to the unfairness, which would in some way be a relief. It was late afternoon. The seagulls were screaming. Who was I to deserve relief?

Has my mother’s thought somehow freed this tiger?

“Can a family be two people?”

.. a mother whose love got caught in her throat. I used this phrase because I wanted to continue liking the person, which I guess means I wanted to continue liking the world.