This piece was originally published in The Inquisitive Eater Anthology, which you can now purchase online.
The Movies
The one time I blacked out at the movies was in middle school, during The Passion of the Christ. My mother had read somewhere that middle school is an important time for father-daughter bonding and besides, Dad had taken my brother to the movies once so it was only fair. We chose aisle seats in the far back. The moviegoers crunched their popcorn while the actor-soldiers beat the hell out of Christ. I felt the chemical butter scent settle wet in the back of my throat before my vision went grainy, narrowing into a shrinking static tunnel until the film cut and I hit the floor.
See, my father said after, placing my thin-blooded body on a bench in the lobby. Looks like you’re Catholic after all.
Mugs
According to the calendar my period was supposed to start a week ago but nothing feels like cramps so I am eating red things to entice it. My mother makes tomato soup. I drink it from a blue mug.
All of the mugs here are blue. The Polish church my mother takes my grandmother to was getting rid of kitchenware during a spring cleaning and she took all the ceramics. The church logo is on one side and faces outward when you hold it to your mouth, but that is because the designer assumed everyone is right handed.
Bad Luck
There is a spider in the closet where I work. Like the one in the bathroom, he too prefers the ceiling. I don’t expect him to but it’s only a matter of time before he loses his balance and falls into my coffee. I’ve seen him do several risky acrobatics, swinging across the curtains, whirling around the curtain rod. Each time I reach for the cup I look inside before taking a sip.
Everyone knows it’s bad luck to kill a spider but I do not know how to resuscitate one.
Cyanoptics
I want to read Água Viva but the cover is orange and that might be why I haven’t started.
The Book of Dreams is an ugly pigeon blue, but I forgive it because I know Jack himself is not that color.
Last year the problem was whether to paint my room Helium or Permafrost.
Today is Hemingway’s birthday.
One day at work I made a section in contemporary fiction for all the books that were blue. It lasted about two hours before they started changing it. The owner wanted bestsellers in the front and there’s not much you can do about that.
I also tried to do this at my other job, but as it turns out the majority of sex toys are pink.
How many trips to the grocery store have been made to buy blue food coloring for waffle batter?
What does it mean that no one can determine the flavor of Blue Moon ice cream?
First words, you said, are the most important. If a book had bad first words you wouldn’t make it to the last.
Kerouac, as it turns out, was a Pisces.
Lispector, Sagittarius.
Hemingway was a Cancer, which explains a lot of things.
The Water Bearer is the name that English gives Aquarius, holding the jug from which the waters of wisdom flow.
Fear death by water, said T.S. Eliot, Libra.
Like you, Yves Klein was a Taurus.
Intersexual Knock-off Bluet is the fifth tenth word down from International Klein Blue.
Although there is no Klein in the dictionary so I started counting down from Kleenex instead.
Then came the bad weather is the first line of A Moveable Feast.
In the Book of Dreams, the first word is Oh!
This is the difference with us: if the last word is good I will always forgive a bad first.
I ended up choosing Permafrost because Helium wouldn’t let me breathe.
Blood
I dreamt I bled down my legs in a bar, wearing only a skirt, no underwear like I do now because I’ve stopped doing my laundry. You finished your glass and held it empty down under me to catch the blood, and it fell slowly at first, the thin rivulets, and then the clotted dark matter, the kind you feel coming out, the kind that makes you aware it’s parts of you you’re losing, and I said thank you for doing that, that’s really kind. You said you were running low on iron and planned to drink it later.
Mommy Guilt
My other mother friends are doing a better job than me. They make bread when their babies are sleeping. I feel deficient. My mother says don’t. She says wsadź miotłe w dupę i zamiataj za sobą. Just stick a broom up your ass so you can sweep as you go.
Mila Jaroniec is the editor of drDOCTOR. She earned her MFA from The New School and her work has appeared in Playboy, Hobart, PANK, Joyland, Vol. 1 Brooklyn and LENNY, among others. Plastic Vodka Bottle Sleepover (Split Lip Press, 2016) is her first novel.
Featured image via Pxhere.
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