05 MAY 26

“You guys are really going through the apples this week... I hope you’re actually eating them and not just throwing them at stuff...”

**crickets**

There’s no time to deliberate over produce cemeteries though... whether they be stomach or the side of my car??... those fractions won’t multiply themselves... but neither apparently will Yali...

“MOM!”

“Yes Yali... what happened?”

“I WAS ON THE VR AND IT WENT DARK AND I CRASHED INTO PATIENCE’S MIRROR AND NOW IT’S BROKEN!”

Well... it lasted something like half a year I guess... splintered right across the top in neatly sliced layers... that heavy floor mirror Patience uses to practice dance... Yali finds the broom and dustpan mumbling to himself... something about comparing his life to Job’s...

It’s late afternoon... we’ve been a few places and seen a few things and bought a few things since the morning... now I’m sitting on the studio parking lot under a cold rain communicating with Oxbear who’s with the boys at the resale shop... about secondhand suits and tacos...

Blue-evening is falling in quickly with the rain... Oxbear and I spend a few catching up in the kitchen...

“Mom!”

“Yes Yali...”

He’s stuffed himself into a too-small cow costume and a suit vest swinging back and forth from Puck’s pull-up bar in the kitchen doorway his shocking red sneakers blasting precariously close to a stack of clutter on the counter...

“Can you look up a bear suit for me?... I need one!”