Category: Nikola
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Without Focus
Some nights, here alone in my house, the words I want to write flit about like moths at a bare bulb, and all I need do is reach my hand out and grab them. This is not one of those nights. I phone Nikola, wondering if he will be awake at two in the morning.…
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The Opposite of Subtle
“I sneaked into your house the other night,” Bez says. She is helping me to replace the photos in the frames on the wall of my living room. I like to rotate them out every few months or so, to keep the room looking fresh. “I know you did,” I say. “Nobody else stacks chairs…
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The More Things Change…
The smell of bacon cooking wakes me. I roll out of bed and wrap myself in my robe, then go downstairs to the kitchen to see what magic is being worked. “Good morning,” Nikola says as I walk in. He is standing over the stove, bacon in a pan, eggs already on plates on the…
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Visible Scars
Nikola has fallen asleep on the sofa, and I don’t want to wake him. He is sleeping so soundly and so peacefully, and for everyone, peace is so hard to come by, so no, I will not wake him. That would be a crime. He has a motorcycle, have I mentioned that? That is why…
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The Understory
“I was having the strangest dream,” Bez says. It’s dark in my room, and the light that slips in through the crack follows the curve of her shoulder, her waist, her hip, a path from top to bottom. I cannot see her eyes, but I know they are open, cannot see her lips move, but…
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Complicated
Bez is laying on my sofa in a thin yellow dress, the buttons undone from the top and down to a dangerously revealing level. There is a fleck of sky blue paint which nests inside the hollow of her throat, something she’s picked up from the painting she was working on this afternoon before coming…
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Super Bowl Sunday
I’m laying on my sofa in my underwear and listening to Prince singing Purple Rain. Do people still make fun of Prince? Do people still listen to him? I don’t care. It’s one of my favorite songs and one of my favorite albums, and I don’t care what people think about it. One of the…
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Poor Timing
I am sick today. My head is a throbbing ball of mucous, my eyes burn from fever. I am aching in every joint and just want to stay under a blanket on the sofa. This is poor timing, as tonight I have plans to have dinner with Nikola. He is very understanding when I call…
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Also Tesla
“My name is Nikola,” he says, his voice touched by a thick accent, something Eastern European that I can’t pinpoint. “Like the inventor, Tesla.” “Do you work much with electricity, Nikola?” I ask. “Hardly, no. I make things, but electricity isn’t usually involved other than to keep the lights on over my head. Please,” he…