fragments

1.
he had an 88-key piano tattooed on his back and confided drunkenly to anyone who would listen that his deepest wish was to have a lover play Chopin on him during a thunderstorm.

2.
the dog with one eye knew nothing but pretended it knew everything. its owner named it Sibyl and every bark was treated like a prophecy.

one day the roof fell in

3.
rain on a Saturday. he sat in the window and lit matches, one after the other, timing how long he could hold them

4.
dogcatcher idle behind the steering wheel, chain-smoking. thunderstorm in his eyes and a caustic pain in his gut from all the coffee. in the back, the sound of claws against metal.

in the evening he stops by the playground and leers at the empty swings, the gold band on his finger chafing.

5.
ersatz moon over Menlo park! the spaces between the inventor’s idle hands crackle with the bated-breath leaping of electrons

outside, a set of flickering lovers waltz and then disappear

6.
he fell in love with a tornado and chased it across the country. wrote a hundred desperate letters and, when he got close enough, delivered them all by hand.

two counties over, as the sirens yelp, his wife weeps for something lost

7.
one day he starts collecting doorknobs, spends hours sitting at his desk, turning them

a lightbulb burns out with a startling snap and sizzles in the suddenly cyanotic dark

8.
a company of twelve, full-throated and laughing, buzzing with wine and good humor. one of them makes a joke about killing time and another smashes the clock on the wall to the floor.

“it just seemed like the right thing to do at the time,” he confesses, later. when he rolls up his sleeves, the detective notices the ten wristwatches he’s lashed to his arms, like phylacteries

9.
the veil lifts and everyone in the world is abruptly treated to the truth of their resurrections, can remember each life they’ve lived

the Mnemnosynarians build a church in the middle of the desert and murmur prayers consisting entirely of every name they’ve ever had

10.
when he showed up at the bar he announced that he’d scripted everything he was going to say that night and everyone thought he was insane until, at last call, he pulled out the pages and showed them what they’d said all night

11.