People Just Add Something; This Time the Thing Is a Mole

I went to Enid’s funeral and there was a mole on the coffin and it seemed
aware of us but unconcerned. Also – and not to underplay this – the seats
were made of moles and everyone there was a mole. After, I shook their
clawed hands as best I could and they said Fee you are the great-niece who
is always talking about moles! It struck me as odd how earlier they must
have paid someone to dig the big hole with spades.

Now around six months later all the mole hills fall flat at once, bespoke
sinkholes calculated perfectly by a podium of child geniuses. I think of
Debbie and her daughter calling to one another on the eventless, minimally
reactive surface of the earth, low VOCs. Things are repainted. The moles
have all gone. Maxim walks the new flatness complaining how in films the
gravestone is always erected too soon.

When I Was a Hammerhead Shark

I was always knocking my
eyes on the sides of kitchen units. People would laugh. By chance
we moved to an old town where a lot of the buildings had the
corners cut off for cartwheels. That helped. In my first job
interview in the new town the lady said I CAN SEE FROM WHAT
YOU’RE WEARING THAT YOU’RE NOT VERY INTERESTED
IN FASHION AND TO BE HONEST I WOULD HAVE
EXPECTED TO SEE A BIT OF MAKEUP. I walked out. The coat
hangers worried me anyway. Mostly I just got dinner ready, went
to work, whatever. This lasted about twenty-five years. I loved
how you thought I was smiling at you the whole time.

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