The quiet girl next door is found dead from too little air. I loved her from a distance, from an upstairs window.*** “All god-fearing men sing like gorillas in the rain,” says Sister Maureen, who is slowly going senile.*** Mother brings home a pig and decides she can neither kill nor stuff it.*** “Is there a man on the moon?” asks Sister Maureen. Her eyes dilate behind her wire-rim glasses. “Yes,” says freckled little Lisa, who denies she wets her seat, ” he wears large round glasses and eats too many bananas. And that makes him constipated. So he switches to blue cheese with holes and imported frog legs.”*** I get the idea from The Twilight Zone– to escape from someone in your dream, try levitating.*** While the world snores at night and sometimes forgets to breathe, I grow sideways.*** If you stand still in the sun long enough, you’ll hear the world burn from within. –Sister M. *** A misfit girl with braces promises me we can elope and live on just avocado and seaweed. *** Sister Maureen leaves the order and becomes homeless in Calgary. She’s arrested for shoplifting.

Kyle Hemmings has been published in Right Hand Pointing, KYSO Flash, Burningword, and elsewhere. His latest collection of visual art and text is Amnesiacs of Summer from Yavanika Press.

Photo by Andrew Spencer

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