STACEY TRAN

COAST / RETURN

Put your tongue in the tunnel. If you want to eat spam, go across the street. Breakfast will come around again. You know where the rice fields are where your parents fell in love and fell out of love and now we are swimming in a long yawn. We try to displace the grossness of love. We fall back in. You know that the heat beams through your follicles and the sacrifice you made toward sense is a click, click, click away. A corgi walks by in somebody’s arms. Someone else said the same word you thought but it meant neither ‘dinner’ nor ‘afternoon’. Later in the grey air we wait. Replacing the face with the side street we missed. It is a different day now and the contagion still contains us although time zones are quite opposite. Never crossing. The space above the ankle and beneath the knee gets bruised with basil and we go up and we go down one floor by elevator because we are able to care, asking if ever we feel the desire just to look at words without reading them.

This morning while disregarding nourishment a girl got stuck looking at beach houses on the internet. She wrote the hard emails for a few hours before finally leaving the room alone. An open door brings intentional fuchsia. Her loitering breaths hang around with the hair that dips into a lake. She refuses wandering. She refuses answering to anyone. Perhaps she is mute and the only ocean she knows picks her up from the school she skips. What if ‘none’ and ‘very’ had the same name and we didn’t have to go through what normally comes first, forgetting anyway.

While in the bathroom painted black there was a mirror deep in my eye. I asked for your help to reach back there. Think about it, you said. If you think about it, you can touch the seagull with the kaleidoscope of your fingertip. In the city we sleep with the shadow of our mother’s hair over our eyes we eat only the rind of an orange and the seed of a lemon. We feed the dog inside us with a table filled with white birthday cake. It is little, and we laugh because we know the chord.

We don’t have to worry. There are three different levels of dove lives. I have a similar thing on my jets. Keep that fluff. I really only ever use a micromanager in bed or kayak type stuff. It’s like a tennis bar, a place to buy gloves, it’s a 2.0 lifestyle. Rolling like a busy 8 ball. It’s starting to get worse. Let’s go back to the guitar and get bulk cardigans. Don’t worry. The fact is there are hours. If you think about me thinking about myself, and my job, not because it’s great, but just because it’s something I can articulate, you know what I mean. I know what you mean. Especially at the beginning you know, it’s all shreds. It’s coming up laughter. Once you’re 4, 5, 6, 7 months in, the riddle is discerning. It’s a matter of time.

It’s gone. We’ll never see her again. I think if you’re able to make yourself useful on the side, it’ll be the greatest throb. Having that swimsuit will be key to buying that car. I don’t know how to do that. I’m not a co-worker. I’m a primary form. A) Don’t tell me what this is. B) I’m all wrapped up in this. C) It’s true. Sugar ruins the Benadryl affect. Mix an ax with Xanax and you get a glass of red wine on mohair. I feel like a year ago we were removed. Anything can go. She is a well and I never personally liked fiction. If anyone likes fiction they definitely thought about how to. I’ve seen it. I think she went to bowl. Except for my dog. Staircases and I just want a strum, cat whistles, and I want to see how long it would take you to interrupt me. I like it. It seems pretty comfortable to me. I don’t know anything about it. Besides, you don’t have Fridays. Awkward.

I would say no to Sunday. My reason is dipping my nose in the wizard’s denim. I would tell him there are finances every day. There’s being awake. I’ll give him a week, and if not, then, thank you. You know us too well.

There’s a sign for underwear. Give me the apron, I’ll put things on there, and you can show it to the chair. I’ve never had arms before. I just don’t know if there’s a way to feel the pain. There is. Are there fries or something, or Uber. Usually there’s a Thank God. The best way to eat food is to get it in your mouth. It’s not usually four stars. Not at all. He sits on his bed and jumps, calls it ‘admiring’.

Are your friends good customers? They’ve never eaten. When they saw what we had they had to come back. Totally. Let’s connect with somebody else. There’s a yellow pizza board outside confirming the neon gathering. What galleries know how to parallel park themselves? Might as well sit in a brewery. I’d say it’s an upward of years. Isn’t this the jam. Classics. She’s a raver on Instagram. Let’s grab something to go behind. He had his own career but he also had a rich mom.

So is that now you were hazing this lace? It was horrible, this business. We really wanted the Thai restaurant on the corner. We wanted it so bad. It used to be a recording room but now it is something else. She’s like, This is what I do. You’re not doing this. We would hear her landlord watering the yard. He wanted a tech lady, but no. She wanted her daughter to drag me in to the meeting, pristine, a walk into a house of records. She shopped for me. They wanted organza ceiling lights and they wanted to sell it. I don’t do that because it’s funny. If you’re at a park, it’ll be dead everywhere. There are people everywhere now but even if you think it’s a division of labor there is no space in the back. A fake speakeasy. I don’t want the whole sphinx. This is the last chocolate.

At the very last minute we got together to take down a door. One day we’ll know what we’re going to do. We’ll take flowers to the spot. We’ll take guitar pedals. It was too true to activate attendance as well as weed plucking. Before time was the obvious. Time’s always been a figure of speech. Our irregular day old crispness. Friends before they adopted me would discuss it for 20 minutes. Well, at least you’re going out more. This interests me because my dad grew up here. This whole block was a drug store when he was a kid. There was no food but there was a grocery store and a gas station.

I feel like you have to go home when you’re a person who’s always had fantasies about lying on your back at that house.

They knew my death.

I’m talking about fantasy.

I remember going in the basement of that house as a small child. I’m too scared to go home. You never know. You can’t win. I always forget about that, but I have lunch and then I come back. I don’t always feel horrible but I keep going for it.

We walk away from the movie set and this is the score.

Stacey Tran lives in Portland, OR. www.staceytran.com