Handwriting

by Alvin Park

Sometimes she has the handwriting of a boy, when she is in a hurry and words come faster than they normally would or should and the smell of the ink leads to unconscious choices and broken windows that you can look out of and see semi-empty streets consumed by dark shadows standing upright at attention, shrieking away at headlights with no body and lights that turn shades of yellow when they glow through liquid bottles that are seconds, milliseconds, moments from hitting lungs, knives that butcher the cow while the calf looks on with half-open eyes and she cares about death but only when you can run a comb through it and stare into mirrors without flicking the switch so you just see the black of things shaping bodies that go unappreciated but there is that one who always needs the wall to steady himself whose words just don't matter as much as the fool's backwards language she entreats with the inside of her purse.