shot glass
title
"... brevity is the soul of wit ..."
- William Shakespeare

Michelle S. Lee


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Baser Life

After her babies fall asleep and her husband lies alongside her, she lies
bare in the stillness of a space shadowed with sex, seven years and photographs
of who they were then, recently, now, and tomorrow's laundry is piled precariously
on the dresser to shelve.

She spreads her mind into a man she met in the park muttering lines
for a play about shipwrecks and girls who want to be boys. She asked if she could
help even when she knew nothing about acting, and he said yes with eyes
bluer than God's. Then he took her hand and she came easily with him under

the trees and stood close enough to smell city on his skin and live
in it with him so deep she cried out for the girl she was, once. In the dark
she closes her eyes tight so she can see two people who met in words. I am
fire and air, she said to him. My other elements I give to baser life
.