Which is a joke to myself as I drop two, six, ten gelatin shells onto a buttery plate. Which is to see this morning ritual as more than it is, measuring out my life in powders instead of a poet’s coffee spoons. But let’s make believe the gelatin caps are little space pods, where for a second or two the odyssey begins, and for a second or two I am on the mend. Which is to say when facts are tough to swallow, what remains are escape pods made of empty air, whirling away into a trash can’s black hole.
Fall Contest Editor’s Pick. The structure, the way Tara chose to tell this moment’s story, grabbed me from the first use of “which.” How she is playing with words and with facts, shifting realities in the retelling and in the moment, and how she pulls the reader into it—all so well done. —SB
Tara Dugan lives in Massachusetts. Her fiction appears in Litbreak Magazine, her nonfiction in The Millions, and her self in various Pioneer Valley bookstores.