Prose
Do you want my story? Turn away. I have nothing to offer you. Nothing spurious. Nothing enchanting. I know stories can corrupt me, so I have surrendered them. I have become an ascetic. I have chosen an austere, circumspect life. I am no legend. I am no parable. I refuse to be a lesson. My greatest accomplishment is my anonymity. It is required for my line of work.
Helen sat on the toilet in her workplace bathroom with her black denim jeans pulled down to her ankles, checking her oxygen with an oximeter she had purchased over the pandemic. There was no reason for her to be checking her oxygen this early in the morning, except for the incessant worry that she could drop dead at any moment.
Mini was the first schizophrenic person I ever actually knew—besides my Uncle, who I only really knew of, and the people on Eddy Street that talked to themselves, who never really knew anybody. When I met her I was living in Daly City, renting a bedroom from a man I pretended to be Republican for; in the rental listing he stated he was looking for someone with “strong family values.”
This is a story about compost, and it ends—fittingly—with death.
It begins, however, on a Tuesday: the first Tuesday of the month, at six o’clock in the evening. Six o’clock in the evening on the first Tuesday of the month is a time which, if you were in the know, would signify to you that the residents of 77 Lilac Street are almost done with their House Meeting. Outside the moon takes its time to rise, cannot be rushed.
We named you Elisabeth after this street, Elisabeth Street—look where I’m pointing now—on the south side of the city, starting at Fifth National Bank—that’s the square building with the bronze cuckoo on top—and it ends somewhere around the big convention center—the glass circle building where they hold the dance recitals and the spelling bees—where it becomes Convention Center Dr. and no longer Elisabeth St.
