A Growing Collection of Oddities

Spinster Arrival 

At the Japanese lantern festival, the Spinster and I hip-bump in, psyched about whatever people think of us, two zaps of purple in life’s crazy shuffle, licking wasabi from our lips, ignoring each other’s hair, unpedicured or manicured, candid about our hard-earned frumpiness. “You are my badge of honor,” she says, holding my fingers. “You are my lantern in the wind.”

Taste

We talk about how dandy our curtains are. How embarrassing they’d have seemed to us fifty years earlier. Taste is the first thing to go, she says, sipping water like a bird.  Her aquamarine eyeglass frames shine in the living room light. We wish to remember how our home feels even when memory has gone. She coughs in the living room while I sing to the cats. We bake pumpkin seeds just so that we could smell them baking.

Chef’s Blend No More

Today, the light has made us both feel like running away. We wake up and we look at the morning and we want to run out of our bodies. The day feels so good and so young. We are so lazy and so old. We are older today, she says. I think that is a safe conclusion, I say. We make coffee and it hurts going down. Chef’s Blend even more bitter this week. I decide for the both of us that next week, I’ll try a different blend. I won’t depend on the chef anymore.

It’s waking this old spinster up, she says—the sun in her smile.

Bountiful Chins

Today, I can see the beautiful fullness in both of our bounteous chins. Your pancakes have done it, she sighs. There is pleasure in becoming as round as a cat. In the heat of the day, to lay around thinking about dinner. For exercise, there are slow walks on trails. And talking too much while remembering to breathe. Do you have dreams of your father? she asks. I try and remember him, just for her. What I can think about while awake is the time I stole a comic book and was caught. How for once, he didn’t get mad at me. That’s important, she says. Mostly, our talks keep circling. We walk around looking at pleasureful trees. We’ve given up everything and are thriving.

Beautiful, Expanding Cats

Our cats are watching us watch them. We watch them, free of all human concerns. We watch them lounging in the sun, warming to each other’s bodies. It’s sad having only one cat, we think, and that’s why we don’t. Sunny mornings are always just like this. We, being proud of them. We, being proud of our conversations. There is nowhere else to be, nobody to impress, no life left to live except for the life in our tiny house. Her turtle keychain, my dumb hats, a growing collection of oddities. Moth-bitten sweaters, toothpaste splotched jeans. Such beautiful, expanding cats.