30
1. A red angel tears through the clouds like eggshells mâchéd into a chrysalis.
2. It stands on the air and speaks.
3. I step down off the porch, scoop up one of the cats, and carry it inside.
4. It twists out of my arms and bolts under the bed where I keep the miniature suitcases.
5. I put a pot of Coca-Cola on the stove to boil.
6. I can hear the angel outside sniffing. The suction of its nose drastically effecting the air pressure in the surrounding area.
7. I turn into a pool of sweat on the kitchen floor.
8. My utterly still surface reflecting the sky as seen through the skylight in the ceiling.
9. Now it shows a spiral like a hypnotised crocodile looking in the mirror.
10. Now it shows the angel being pulled into the spiral like a string of spaghetti slurped into the mouth of a whale.
20
1. I am building an elephant.
2. The trunk is made from a tree.
3. I cut down the lemon tree my placenta was buried under.
4. The rest is made from thousands of identical tiny pieces of grey plastic from a cardboard box.
5. I am sticking them together with superglue. It is getting everywhere.
6. Everything in the room is becoming part of the elephant.
7. I am a part of the elephant, stuck inside its ribcage.
8. I hope the elephant doesn’t remember this.
9. I hope the elephant looks like an elephant. (It doesn’t so far.) (Yes it does. Everything looks exactly like what it is.)
10. There is an elephant in my skull. It has grown too big. I am trying to let it out.
10
1. I am paying a craftsman to insert a casket into my chest.
2. I am feeling a feeling in my chest that I have never felt before.
3. For years I have had a black box in there. It fluctuates in size, sometimes stretching horizontally beyond the confines of my body, sometimes so small that I forget it exists.
4. Three days ago, it disappeared.
5. I didn’t feel the relief I had always imagined when fantasising about this.
6. Instead, there is now a hole in my chest.
7. It is tugging at the edges, trying to pull me into it.
8. When I die, dress me in a beautiful body and bury me in a casket made of mirrors, inside and out.
9. When I die, bury me in a disco ball.
10. I hate parties. I am building a casket around my head.