On Saturday, diner day at Cozy’s, I’d wear my new mascara and order a face-sized breakfast. I’d whisper, “do we look rich?”
Grandma wore furs. She said things like “primo” and “I betcha.”
We were fancy together. Fancy. Fancy. Fancy. I’d fancy-chant till I was dizzy.
Grandma was how I learned to salt my pancakes. “To wake the syrup,” she said.
I began salting my eyelids, too, after I first saw her with the palette. Her tender strokes.
We lived with tense necks, seized by a brittle american hope.
Once a week we walked like kings from counter to booth.
*This piece can be read top-to-bottom or bottom-to-top.
[sarah] Cavar is a PhD student, writer, and critically Mad transgender-about-town, and serves as managing editor at Stone of Madness Press and founding editor of swallow:tale press. Author of three chapbooks, A HOLE WALKED IN (Sword & Kettle Press), THE DREAM JOURNALS (giallo lit), and OUT OF MIND & INTO BODY (Ethel Press, 2022), they have also had work in Bitch Magazine, Disability Studies Quarterly, Electric Literature, The Offing, and elsewhere. Cavar lives online at www.cavar.club and tweets @cavarsarah.
“in response to the viral r/askreddit thread…” placed 2nd in our 2021 CNF Flash Contest, judged by Heather Christle.