I lost count of the bubbles today. I don’t have a clear concept of how long that long time has been–only that at this place, where the words “Welcome to Seafood Hut” drop limply from the cook’s lips when the door chimes and a customer enters, there is no other meaningful way to measure the passage of time. Sometimes, the cook’s greeting is timed simultaneously with the lazy gush of the filter, and the smaller bubbles throw themselves against my shell’s edges and cut themselves into seafoam. …

Unable to sleep (unfinished work, lab reports) (don’t ask, don’t ask), but tomorrow’s pickup day, so I make myself get out of bed to take out the trash. As I’m walking to the gate, I see myself, back from taking out the trash. He’s carrying a scale under his arm. I’m not (yet). I want to ignore him; I hope he’s going to ignore me. At least the moon is up; the moon is fat and yellow and full. If there are now two of me all over again, there aren’t two of those (yet (checking) ok). The air …

My community is bolts and washers. Alloyed metal is the fusion of two, just like me, but I’m alone in this aisle. Plumbing is what we don’t want to see; we put it behind cupboards or in the ground, but the heart is dependent on pathways and valves. I could stay here for hours if only the men in those orange aprons would leave me alone. Love is geometry, yes, but I’m overwhelmed by the possibility of so many angles. Well, not overwhelmed— I see the extrapolations, lines and their intersections, …

I make my coffee in the dark in order to prolong the delicious weight of sleep. The sun will rise soon but for now a thin tangerine light glows above Flat Top, where pitched roofs jut from the skyline and the radio tower blinks with red devil’s eyes. Yesterday’s flowers, the first of late winter, have already dropped yellow and purple petals on the sideboard. I move slowly to keep my dreams alive in my brain. An email, there’s always a dream email, with instructions I don’t understand. An …

It was the pants that caught my eye on the way to meet an old friend. Suspended in the boutique window, the fine wool drape's exquisite softness was meant to draw the attention of a certain type of man. I knew a man of this sort, though I hadn’t thought of him since college. I saw him there, a ghost through the window, his pale hands. How carefully he’d drape the pants over the back of the chair. How much he valued these things, his clothes, from the attention, the honor, really, that he paid …

I heard Sistah gifted Woama a size XXL tee, graphic anime printed like a schoolgirl’s, and a bunch of undergarments, white as chalk and milk, ones she bought at a Clearance Sale, unboxed them, unrolled them with care, and when she spread them on the floor with an unmistakable flourish, because she’d brought them all the way from New Jersey, Woama pushed an inky-blue melamine tray with deep fried fritters towards Sistah’s husband to please him, extract a grin, and started pouring chubitchi into a …