I am eight years old in rumpled shorts and t-shirt meandering through an urban cavern of white painted ceiling and walls. False lights fail to mimic the sun in that space full of wood and animals. The salesmen are tigers in suits, smiling, gesturing. The furniture lay scattered about the floor: fallen, dead things polished to a high luster.
Mom leads us through the uneven aisles of cultivated carnage and lurking predators. We follow her like ducks crossing a road. We stop by a dead thing in the shape of a dining room table. She is a lioness surveying the carved wooden carcass. We gather around her, a flock of sheep, a church congregation waiting for words of wisdom to fall from her lips like rocks to bounce off our heads. Concussions all around.
life in jello 