Ugly Fiction

She sat at the desk that was too big for her. Doing her best to seem appropriate. Life has maps only in the figurative sense. Everything is theoretical. Slinkies tumbling down shaky staircases. Gravity the culprit and the hero.

Time sputtered and ground against her flesh. A weary engine running on the fumes of a youthful rebellion long since abandoned. Life is a series of debits and credits. A long, long reverse mortgage. At the end of which you have nothing other than sacrifices.

It's just money changing hands. Poverty and wealth spitting and punching until someone rings a bell.

The road was soft as she began her run. It was years since she had loved. A foggy dream from which she'd never fully awoken.

The house where she'd grown up stood in the distance. A hungry stare in the fist of the sunset.

She kissed her daughter.

Growing up she never had imagined herself a mother. It wasn't something she ever aspired to be. But now that she was, it felt inevitable. As ripe as a fruit too heavy for the branch on which it had blossomed.

Yet oily with questionable consent.

She touched her daughter's head and did her best not to be scared.