1. To unclench is to admit defeat. Defeat of what? What’s let of the apple. It’s open sacredness. Or is it un-clinch? Whatever it isn’t a cinch.

2. A core is poor. Which I abhore. So why not let go? It is the end of the show.

3. But a core demands an Encore. Applause into Applesauce. My mouth knows no bounds and neither does may appetite. I have raped this apple, devoured and ravished its insides. To take it anywhere, such as the trashbin signals an attempt to rid myself of any evidence of my crime. I must pay for my crime. I must pay and the core must stay.

.

What if I stopped telling stories? Even to myself? Even if the stories made me feel good? What would happen?
Would I hear crickets? Or just that buzzing in my ear, always in the background?
In that case, without a story, there is nothing really to hear. What if the crickets I heard did not come with a story. Or the ringing in my ears.
Does not having an audience and not being an audience mean I still exist?

IWhere would I be without my stories. I’d still be here, of course. Right here.

1. I don’t like to hear things that make me feel bad.

2. My ears hurt.

3. I have to pay attention.

4. I have respond to what has been said, and I don’t want to.

The day dawned like any other. Futile attempts were made to shore up the cousins for their final exit from my life.
In particular, it saddened me to that the oldes, Toddly, had been my favorite, until after midnight when his fangs drew nigh and the trunk of his body pummeled mine, beautifully bruising me by the morning light.

You are bagged, packaged, ready for consumption. It is with great regret that we must consume you.

1. To be safe and to have her family safe.
2. To tie up and fold and categorize and otherwise organize the ideas floating around in her head that, when she ponders or at least manages pluck a single for inspection it does not dissolve like a snowflake in her hand.
3. For a door. Not one that locks up and keeps her and her family safe, but one that opens to a new, rommier, well-decorated space.
4. A child who loves her and who at least wants to be behave but can’t beause they have their own swirling ideas and pluckings to do.
5. Love for humanity. A big word–no, Two Big Words: Love. Humanity.

In the nick of time, a game comes along that spearheads what you’ve been doing without balls. You play the game, you win. Mostly. For hidden in the beer or sprinkled in the nachos is that knowing that the game is only temporary. Afterwards, there is down time. Time for reflection. Some angst. Remembrances of scoring. But hardly any love beyond winning.

That was fun, I said, as I lay next to you, feeling Faulknerized with innuendo, watching the stream of conscious stains of sweat on your person.

For these cakes before you are the forgotten desserts of your youth. Saccharin ne’er-do-wells for your current circumstances. Which finds your mouth and teeth searching for the way. Go with those sweets, use them as utensils, as weapons, to ward off the bitter fruits before you.

Always a waistside falling, bequeathed through the decades by a fair lenten but thriving menace known as Max the Cat From Hell. His impunities are too long to mention but his claws are not. I bare the scars of his wrath and menace. But there were also his profound faux paws at parties. Juicy portenaus, quibbles over lonely biscuits that I laid my hands on first but which he insisted belonged to him. He fought for these moments, lived for them, basked in his victories, both Stateside and Abroad.

We traveled horribly together, don’t you know, from the tabloids?

Therefore, in an effort to bypass this most ferocious of beasts, it is with a heavy heart that I announce our separation. We will continue to have the utmost respect for each other as we move forward. And we ask that the public respect our privacy during this horrendous time. And it is with a heavy heart that we bid a Saucerian adieu, the folds of sheets we’d romped in are washed and have been donated to the Smithsonian, and we are now left wtih ambling doubt, a precocious prenuptial agreement to revisit and a big fat mess to clean up.

Respectfully,

Kitty and I