Desiree Ducharme

The lipstick was gross. Sticky yet dry, a bitter wax in ‘Fire Engine Red’. It was orange. I was an expert on Orange thanks to my gang on Sesame Street. Grover and John-John did a side by side analysis of red to orange just this morning. The lipstick was orange. Miss Not-the-Teacher was instructing me to kiss the paper, “with your mouth.” She was making weird shapes with her mouth as she said, “mouth” and pointing to the center of the page. There were a lot of rules about where one should and shouldn’t put their mouth. Paper was on the “no” list. I was only three but I knew you weren’t supposed to put paper in your mouth. Between her insistence that the lipstick was red and wanting me to put my mouth on paper, Miss Not-the-Teacher was losing credibility by the second. How does Bizzy stay here with this strange woman?

Equipment: Sun, Sand, Surf, Towel, Bikini

Ingredients: Cookie, Seasonings, Oil

Set temperature to 85 degrees F.

Rub Cookie with oil and seasonings to taste. For best results, marinate Cookie in oil and seasonings for 15-30 minutes before placing in sun.

Place towel on warm sand two feet above hide tide line at approximately 33.0478 degrees N, 117.2979 degrees W.

Bake on towel in sun for ten minutes on each side.

Brine Cookie in surf for 30 minutes until cold then return to towel.

Place Cookie in sun until dry. Baste with oil & seasonings. Repeat process until Cookie is golden-brown and delicious.

For best results, baste Cookie every hour or every time you brine. Process may need to be repeated for several days before browning occurs.

If Cookie burns, remove from sun and rub with aloe.

It was a terrible misunderstanding that started with a misspelling. Knowing you are the victim of vocabulary is of little comfort or redress when you are chained to the wall of a dungeon awaiting your pyre. The knowledge does not sate your hunger. It does not ease the aching cold in your bones or soothe the burns on and beneath your skin. The truth does not stay the hand that holds the hot poker or dull the pain in your ruined, nail-less digits. Your mother always told you words had power, which is why reading is forbidden, but you didn’t listen. You ignored her words and set off to find your own. Now she is dead. Your father is dead. Your farm was burnt to the ground and you are soon to follow. All because of a book and a regional spelling variant.

September 1, 1996 (CE) Oakland Science News- Marine Biologists Discover Giant Squid Population Beneath Alcatraz Island.

San Francisco Bay- Marine Biologists performing a routine biodiversity assessment in the bay found a large population of squids thriving beneath the erstwhile prison. They reported their findings in a joint announcement with the EPA, Scripts Institute, and CFFLISTO (Committee For Finding Lost Shit In The Ocean) on Tuesday. The team of three scientists and two divers were aboard the Hella Fish, a boat owned and operated by Jacques Alouette. The group had been listening for whales before entering the water when they heard an unidentified transmission. The source of the transmission was coming from the island of Alcatraz or more precisely, beneath the island. Team leader, P. Blossom of Elegast Labs, requested Alcatraz Island shut down all power and electronic communications. In a surprise move, the Parks Association complied. The island went dark for several hours, the transmission continued. “It had to be biologic in source. So we sent the divers down.” The divers returned with several photos showing thousands of squids living beneath the island.

You are the center and the circumference. The center of you would presumably be some atom behind your navel. Somewhere in the center of that atom is a whole mess of subatomic particles and so on and so forth. It works the other way as well because you are also the circumference. You don’t end at your skin, you extend infinitely outward with your sphere of influence. Across great distances and between the smallest of spaces, you exist. You are both of the earth and on it. Same subatomic particles at the center of you are also at the center of the earth. Just as you extend beyond your skin, the earth extends beyond the crust. It includes the wind and the sky. Beyond the edge of the sky, earth’s gravity influences spheres across the universe. You are both the center of the universe and the reason the universe exists. This is a heavy burden.