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Explicable by Sabrina Stoessinger
After the panic of frantic hands and crooked legs. After the plane’s wheels turn to tar and sludge. After I remove my oxygen mask, I dig. My elbows touch each other now so I can only use my eyes. They shovel through the layers of disco lights and emergency hats. The smoke makes my eyes sore and I rub them on whatever I can find. I rub and rub until they are wet and swollen. I stumble through these pink slits. When I fall I float. I float over bumps and days too fast to count. When the nurse changes my flowers I tell her to stop and she forgets the vase she is holding. Everything drops and crashes. My hair is longer. The scars still fresh and raw. They tell me I didn’t have a baby, that I only have a trauma. I know I didn’t give away my trauma way up there, above the clouds. But the doctor insists that there were no lost babies, only suitcases and maybe I am missing one of those. I take that taxi that waits every morning to the left of the automatic doors. I ignore the driver’s questions and sing my favourite song over and over and over again because it is Thursday. The moustache at the counter asks me to describe my carry-on. He wants to know if maybe I can pick it out of the line-up full of suspects. I tell him it looks like that one there except with ten fingers and ten toes. And three teeth. My baby had three teeth. The moustache laughs awkwardly at what he thinks is my joke. I grab his yellow tie just above the snowman coffee stain and pull hard and quick. I use words from movies that are foreign and thick on my tongue. If we go back to the days when there were no babies everything locks. Everything fits. Babies complicate this reality, redefine those existences. If I remember my baby, fixtures and seasons evaporate into those very clouds that stole her. All content in SmokeLong Quarterly copyright 2003-2012 by its authors. Sabrina Stoessinger has many useless talents, among them constructing paper hats from IHOP placemat menus. Her works have appeared in Skive Magazine, Tuesday Shorts, decomP, Word Riot and Wilderness House Literary Review. Read the interview. April Matheson grew up in Fort Frances, Ontario, and is currently living in Winnipeg, Manitoba. She studies sciences at the University of Manitoba although she also holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from this institution. She has given up all hope on trying to make this bio remotely funny or clever in any way. Issue Twenty-Eight (July 25, 2010): Young Waitresses by Steve Almond «» Frank by Matt Baker «» The Life and Times of Dmitri Kulikov by Tobias Amadon Bengelsdorf «» Scapegoat by Thomas Cooper «» What You Could Catch Me Bumping by Craig Davis «» Complicit by Gay Degani «» What You See When You Think of Home by John Mark DeMoss «» In the Attic by Murray Dunlap «» A Flower Thing by Jen Gann «» Seahorse Sex by Molly Giles «» Gertie by Kyle Hemmings «» Vertigo by Ann Hillesland «» Rock by Stephanie Johnson «» A Shot of Whatever by David LaBounty «» Palo Alto by Paul Lisicky «» The Lake House by Michelle McMahon «» Hell Is a Headline by Emily McPhillips «» How I Liked the Avocados by Wendy Oleson «» Regrets by Bridget Pelkie «» What Passes for Normal by Michelle Reale «» Avalanche by Joseph Scapellato «» Last Seen Leaving by Laura Ellen Scott «» Explicable by Sabrina Stoessinger «» A Fistful of Buttercups by Nancy Stebbins «» My Maggie by Eugenia F. Tsutsumi «» The Ghost by Russell Whitaker «» The Strain of Collusion by xTx «» Interviews: Steve Almond «» Matt Baker «» Tobias Amadon Bengelsdorf «» Thomas Cooper «» Craig Davis «» Gay Degani «» John Mark DeMoss «» Murray Dunlap «» Jen Gann «» Molly Giles «» Kyle Hemmings «» Ann Hillesland «» Stephanie Johnson «» David LaBounty «» Michelle McMahon «» Emily McPhillips «» Wendy Oleson «» Bridget Pelkie «» Michelle Reale «» Joseph Scapellato «» Laura Ellen Scott «» Nancy Stebbins «» Sabrina Stoessinger «» Eugenia F. Tsutsumi «» xTx «» Cover Art "Wall Street Must Be Tripping" by Marty D. Ison «» Letter From the Editor |
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