WHEN SUDDENLY I FEEL MY HEART FLUTTER UNDER MY FLANNEL SHIRT, OR KENTUCKY RAIN

A country music star who writes sweet, tangy love songs is distant with his wife. He’s close with his dog. His wife wishes he’d write a love song about her. He sits down to write but the only thing that comes out is distance. The dog senses trouble and runs away. Driving home one evening the country singer sees his dog in someone else’s yard, playing fetch with a man who sells software for a living. The software salesman is in love with his wife but not with software. Sensing trouble, his wife runs away. Just then, the country singer feels a song coming on. He writes the words on the back of a receipt for Zoloft. Out of a clear blue sky it starts to rain in Kentucky.

LUCKY LIKE THAT

Most days I roll out of bed butter-side up. Today someone told me to expect a special delivery. An hour later I owned an air fryer. I’ve been in love my whole life. It waves me down from across the street. It arrives at my table like a complimentary dessert. I don’t know. Maybe love is a warming oven. Maybe it’s a torch dropped down a well. I wait for it, I follow it. Sometimes my love and I we lie in bed together with no other purpose but spending hours and hours lit up like lightbulbs. We write on each other like blank sheets of paper. I draw a shape my love has never seen; my love colors me a shade I can only describe as more-than-blue. I read in a magazine that some spiders are attracted to the smell of mint. Mint! I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. So many spiders out there hoping to chance upon such a delight. I feel lucky like that, like a spider with its mint.