Fox Parts

I've seen the same fox a few times on the way to Josh's work. It looks like it's waiting for us. I want the fox to mean something, but I guess it doesn't. Sometimes, there are deer in the same place as the fox, and once, I saw a bobcat there, too. It's just a park, but it has all these animals in it, right there in the city.

Someone's going to tell me there aren't bobcats in this city and I'm going to tell them there are. But don't ask for a picture, because I didn't take one.

As for foxes meaning something to someone, there's a man in town who dresses like a yellow fox everywhere he goes. When I see him, I try not to make an event out of it even though it's a very special occasion. The man is not like a fox in any way. He's maybe more like a fox on the inside. He wears jeans and t-shirts but also fox parts and makeup. I would like to know if he wears fox eye contacts, but I've never looked him in the eyes.

We had some mice in the kitchen this summer. Two of them. Abbi named them Chester because we thought there was only one. I set out some live traps, but Chester was uninterested. When Abbi left for Oxford, I put out the meaner traps. I don't have problems killing mice. I feed dead mice to my snake every two-ish weeks. Before my snake eats the mice, I have to thaw them in warm water. I like how simple that is for me and the snake.

My great-uncle died. We used to visit him every summer when I was a kid. He lived in Tennessee. Once, he lived in this big, old house with his wife and her daughters. The house had so many rooms and it seemed like they were always changing. My cousins and I went into a room once and there was a hospital bed with an old woman hooked up to some machines. No one told us to look out for that. I don't remember who the old woman was, but her bed was sitting in the middle of this huge room. I think there was a piano and a chandelier in the room, too. Everything is bigger when you're scared. My grandmother tells me that house burned down. She has different memories of her brother, of course.

Last Christmas, my family got me home even though I resisted. They rented a car for me. I drove on ice the entire 600 miles. No one knows this, but I was on the interstate going down a hill and my rental car spun across the median and into the opposite lane of traffic. I've only ever thought I was going to die in a car.

When I got home, I stayed at my grandmother's and so did my great-uncle. Our bedrooms shared a wall. Sometimes, I could smell my great-uncle smoking a cigarette early in the morning. I would wake up and feel like a kid. My grandmother's house is the house I started growing up in. My grandmother bought it when we moved. There has never been a house that smelled more like home to me, like cigarettes and soap.

Speaking of home, I'm more and more tangentially related to people from my home town than I ever thought I'd be. I'm now "related" to some people I crushed on in high school. That's how it is, I guess.

I looked for the fox again this morning, but we were thirty minutes late, and the fox has a morning routine, too. It wasn't waiting for us. There were just people and their dogs, and they were standing around like they might see something other than each other.

High Praise

I had two stories go up over the weekend. One on amphibi.us and one on decomP magazinE. They are depressing stories. People seem to like them. People I don't know and people I do know.

Other things that happened over the weekend: drunkenness, sexiness, sadness. In that order.

A family member revealed something to me about her future. She is ill and her life will never be the same. Everything I do seems so small.

Today, I saw a man released from prison with time served. He posed for a cell phone picture. I want to know what he was thinking. I almost said, "How do you feel about posing for a cell phone picture?" But a bus drove by. The man watched the bus go. It was a big moment for him, I think. (I shouldn't guess at what he was thinking. Other people know him better.)

I'm obsessed with ginger beards right now. There are some men who don't have red hair, but when their beards grow out, their face is on fire. This one poet has a ginger beard. He's too skinny, and he tweets too much, but I don't care. He's a total fox.

I never participated in a circle jerk in high school, but it seems appropriate that the circle jerk I participate in now (the online literary community) has replaced jizzing on a cracker with jizzing on a book the size of a cracker. I'm talking about xTx's new book NORMALLY SPECIAL. It's a wonderful book. It deserves all the jizz people are piling on it. I had to read each story out loud, which is a good thing. They were like devastating fortune cookies that way. The book is now in its second printing. You have been given another chance.

I'm surprised when people my age refuse to eat certain foods.