Nice Things

I want to remember some nice things.

Melissu and I are goofy at work. She taught me the way to shorten "son-of-a-bitch" -- swan bits -- and "shut the fuck up" -- "SHUGH" (the fuck) "UP!" Once, she gave herself a haircut right behind the desk. Bent all the way over the trash can and snipped some off.
She had told her Steven that the reason, she thinks, that we're goofy together is that I am thinking all the time, and that her way to give me a break from thinking is to pull stunts and talk funny. I think that I think a lot, but I don't remember if I told her about it.

One summer vacation in Branson, Missouri, cicadas had crawled up the trunks of the trees, out of the holes they had been born and lay dormant in. Their shed exoskeletons still hung to the bark in droves like delicate insect ghosts. My cousin, Becky, took some of them and filled them with silver. She made perfect replicas,no more than an inch long; the silver bound to every joint, appendage, mandible, and palpus.

Last week I walked to the store to buy myself a bottle of wine. After the store, the air felt so nice and I didn't want to go home yet, so I kept walking west through the neighborhood until I was all the way out of Browne's Addition. I came to the valley ridge above people's park. The river lazily carved its way twelve or fifteen stories below me. There was a footbridge topped with concrete, a sign on it saying it was the oldest in Spokane. I walked to the middle of it and leaned over the edge, the bridge sides coming up to my waist. Sparrows dove madly down by the river, the sun was starting to set somewhere behind the clouds, and a train passed on the tracks above and behind me. Orange and red Zephyr in front of a slate-colored sky.