I woke up behind Supreme Lobster near the corner of North Avenue and Rte. 83 my mouth tripping through alternating aphasias. I sounded like a record skipping but every time you stood up to fix the needle the language would correct itself only to become confusing again once your ass met the alley’s creosote. You exhaled in frustration adding a layer of humidity to the striating ambiance. We were getting buried in invisible sediment.

I suggested getting two planks of wood, branches, PVC tubes, anything, along with twine, copper wire, coaxial cable or strands of your own frazzled, bedraggled locks to fabricate a memorial to our imminent passing. “We were here” it would say. “It would stay the day, it might even rage, you never know.” But you had no idea what I said and let the record skip.

Then I found a bowling pin and whacked you behind the left ear as you suckled our child at your breast. There was no way to tell if it worked until you woke up. And you’ve been asleep for some time. In anticipation I dream, as I’m entitled to dream, of when you wake up with the same condition as me. We talk to each other and understand each other, complementing or supplementing our conversations, dialogues and repartee as needed. Raoul, Jr. looks on in wonder, soaking it all in until his language skills mimic ours not out of nature but from necessity. Oh, the stories we’ll tell around Sunday dinner.


M.A. Banash was born and raised in Pennsylvania and has lived in the Carolinas for the past twenty-five years. He writes poetry and short fiction. His work has appeared in Poetry Quarterly, SurVision, The Blue Nib, Micro Fiction Monday, Crack the Spine, and The Cobalt.