A 3 and a 3 kissed and made an 8 by Daniel Aristi
Associate fiction editor Julia Kooi Talen on today’s bonus flash: The title and the last line of this wonderfully strange micro fiction electrified me. Brimming with a curious multiplicity, for me, this brilliant little piece of prose strikingly considers what we may carry in our “cupped, empty hands.”
A 3 and a 3 kissed and made an 8
—for Lala and Krish
Also, you ask who I am (and I am earth-old to your sky) and then you ask me what I call my nose—and I smile, “nose”—and then you show me your cupped, empty hands (that I want to bury my face in leaving the body to beasts & rain & time) and you ask what’s in them. “Nothing,” I say. Laughing, you come down like a guillotine:
—Ha! “Dad-nose-nothing”!!!
I know I already dislike the man in the boy who’ll give me pills.
Please stay.
Stay, and my love for you.
Daniel was born in Spain. He studied French Literature as an undergrad (French Lycée in San Sebastian). He now lives and writes in Brussels. Daniel's work is forthcoming or has been recently featured in Main Street Rag, Berkeley Poetry Review, and Cold Mountain Review.
