You call me into the bathroom like it\u2019s urgent, like there\u2019s a fire or a ghost. I come in holding my coffee.<\/p>\n
You point to the sink. \u201cThat wasn\u2019t there before,\u201d you say.<\/p>\n
It looks like a clump of hair and something else. Not alive, but not<\/em> not alive. A little wet, like it had thoughts once.<\/p>\n You say, \u201cDid you shave your legs recently?\u201d<\/p>\n I say, \u201cNo. Did you?\u201d<\/p>\n We both stare at the thing. Whatever it is, it does seem to be imbued with some significance.<\/p>\n It twitches. Or the light shifts. Hard to tell.<\/p>\n You back away, grab your phone, take a photo. \u201cI\u2019m sending this to my sister. She\u2019s good with curses.\u201d<\/p>\n I ask if we should just wash it down, but neither of us moves. Instead, we sit on the edge of the tub like it\u2019s a hospital bed.<\/p>\n You say, \u201cI don\u2019t like how it\u2019s looking at me without having eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n I say, \u201cI don\u2019t like how it makes me feel like we maybe forgot something important.\u201d<\/p>\n We both laugh, then fall quiet again.<\/p>\n Outside, the neighbor\u2019s dog starts barking. I reach for the faucet, and you stop me.<\/p>\n \u201cNot yet,\u201d you say. \u201cLet\u2019s just be here a second.\u201d<\/p>\n So we sit. Waiting. Like maybe it\u2019ll explain itself.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We were sitting on the curb outside the 24-hour taco place, sharing a burrito that was way too big for either of us to finish, and she asked, \u201cDo you ever think about the moon?\u201d<\/p>\n I said, \u201cI don\u2019t know, like\u2026 sure. Sometimes.\u201d<\/p>\n She took a bite and wiped some salsa off her chin. \u201cBut do you ever think about what it would be like if it wasn\u2019t there all the time? If it just, like, disappeared?\u201d<\/p>\n I stared at the sky, kind of hoping it might do something dramatic to prove her point.<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe that\u2019s how it is when someone dies. Like the moon\u2019s always there, but then, boom. Gone. And we just have to keep walking, pretending it\u2019s still up there.\u201d<\/p>\n I thought about her words for a second. I thought about Mom and her favorite David Bowie coffee mug still standing on the shelves. I thought about it breaking, or not breaking but simply, like, being gone. Vanished from the material reality of my kitchen. Like how I woke up one day and she simply wasn\u2019t there, along with her vintage jackets, her Polaroids taped to the fridge, her baby blue umbrella propped against the door, gone without a trace.<\/p>\n \u201cI mean, the moon\u2019s still up there,\u201d I said, not knowing what else to say. I took a bite from the burrito. \u201cI can see it.\u201d<\/p>\n She laughed, like she was used to this. We sat in silence for a minute, chewing, the night feeling both long and impossibly short.<\/p>\n Then she said, \u201cI should\u2019ve brought tequila.\u201d<\/p>\n I said, \u201cMaybe next time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It looks like a clump of hair and something else. Not alive, but not “not alive.” A little wet, like it had thoughts once.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":22954,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3530],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-fiction","writer-sarp-sozdinler"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22180"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22957,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22180\/revisions\/22957"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}MOONRAKERS<\/h5>\n