Out there in that cold, infinite silence, I’d finally be free.
Leslie invited us to a New Year’s Eve party in her mansion in Sedona. I seldom have access to mansions, and at the invitation, my mind ran wild with images of spacious rooms, dripping jewelry, champagne glasses, and balconies that opened to mountain rock and night sky. Overwhelming but fun.
I have become a collector of imperfect antidotes: cream soda, pointillism, mealy apples, movies before HD, the outermost layer of a matzo ball tenderized by broth. I want to boil the bones of reality until they are as fuzzy and porous as they were when I was young.
It wasn’t so much at first. I even wondered if I had mistaken the pink spots on the toilet paper for something else. Maybe I was just seeing the skin of my hand through the thin tissue? Maybe, I thought, just maybe I had imagined it altogether.