Migraine Nights

Carlita querida,

I hate trying to sleep. It would be nicer to be outside or by the ocean with a gas stove and a dog. Or the dunes, although there are wind-storms at night. Or a festival playground.

Are short stories always sad? Why are Latin American poems, even the good ones, so often entitled things like “Love” and “Pain”? It is bad. It’s sugaring a honeydew when what’s called for is a little salt. Like tangos. Tangos have irreverence.

My grandmother and Pablo played racquetball on the semi-boardwalk by the beach when they were old. They drank boxed wine at lunch out of juice glasses and kept a cat and a dog without really noticing them.

I have five pink candles.

Cherry-pits present a logistical problem: what do you do? Get a special dish for them?  Bring the trash can over? Use a napkin? The woman behind me at the grocery store was scandalized at how much I paid for cherries. So was the cashier, who said they’d be on sale next week and that he’d moved back home to care for his sick mother at age 27. (That’s how he said it, “age 27.”) The woman gave me her Safeway card to use.

Tonight I unleashed a class of writers onto eharmony. By this time next week there will be fourteen fictional characters searching for mates.

The men of my grandmother’s generation wore unfortunate swimsuits.

Goodnight.

M