Notes Toward a Private Understanding

This short piece offers a reflective account of an ordinary evening, tracing how attenti

I says, “Jack’s gone,” or maybe I’ll be sayin’ it later, hard to tell now, but Lakshmi don’t hear a lick of it and just keeps on wailin’ like a fire alarm stuck inside a fiddle, mock agony sloshing around like soup that’s been thinkin’ too hard. **BOOM!** Gloria Monday goes rootin’ around and finds herself another kitchen match—strike, sputter, resurrection—**fzzzt**—and relights the candle, ‘cause that’s how quiet gets made, apparently. Only then Lakshmi hushes up, sudden as a mule reconsiderin’ a fence. **SPLAT.**

I see, with what’ll later be my everlasting relief and maybe some heartburn, that she ain’t hurt none and has in fact already started laughin’ as Cricket works loose her hands and feet, which come back online like furniture that don’t trust you yet. **CLICK. WHIRR.** Lakshmi stands herself up off the table and ambles my way, resplendent in and plumb oblivious to her near-nakedness, wearin’ it like a crown, or a shrug, or a whoopsie-daisy at a church picnic. **POW!**

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**AUTHOR’S NOTE:**
Now listen. At this juncture the reader is supposed to feel *something*, maybe awe, maybe confusion, maybe a dull pressure behind the eyes. The candle here stands for light, or truth, or just sittin’ there burnin’. The underwear ain’t a metaphor, except when it is. I apologize for nothing and less than half of this was on purpose.
**END NOTE.**

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She moseys over to the window with me, still in her underwear, and it hits me—no, it dawns, no, it trips and tumbles ass-over-teakettle down the stairs—**THUD THUD THUD**—that at this exact minute I am closer to a live, mostly-nude girl than I’ve ever been in my whole previously unopened life. I stared. I will be starin’. I done stared. Time is soup. **SLURP.**

Gloria sees me seein’ and says, “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” which lands between us like somebody throwin’ a piano off a courthouse roof. **BANG!** Lakshmi ain’t in no hurry to cover herself up, just standin’ there takin’ her sweet time with it, while my heart is, technically speakin’, with Gloria Monday but my eyeballs are double-parked, stealin’ glances like a raccoon with a library card, at the girl who was nearly sacrificed, almost roasted, barely skewered, spiritually microwaved—**BEEP BEEP**—and now just stands there breathin’ like nothin’ ever happened, a phoenix made of underwear and poor decisions. **KAPOW.**