picnic

Today she is all skirt, boot and hair on her way out to the park, a basket in one hand, a pair of Solingen scissors in the other. Sunlight and wind jostle each other, each one trying to be the first to greet her as she steps out the door; the light wins, just barely. She flashes teeth at the world, and the air, beside itself with delight, runs over her pink gums and around and around her shapely uvula.

She walks barefoot in the grass of the park, knowing that the grass itself will push inconveniences out from her path. Trees shade her with an air of nonchalance, but they are just as infatuated as the rest; they are simply too dignified to express themselves in more obvious fashions. Foreign bacteria dare not interfere with the normal functioning of her body, and her very gut fauna exert themselves strenuously in her behalf.

In a wide clearing, far from the shrieks and giggles and creaking swings of the playground, far from the petulant bourgeois of the tennis courts, she sets down the basket and opens it. From it she pulls hundreds of photographs, one after another. She snips them gently, but with an intensely hateful expression on her face, and casts the shreds to the wind. The wind obligingly carries them to the grass, which sends snails and shrews to digest them. The dirt absorbs their excretions, sucking them deep underground.

Soon the basket is empty, and the bowels of the earth are filled with a black and white sludge: her leftovers. It's acidic stuff, to be sure, but for her sake, the planet is willing to put up with a little stomach trouble. And now she can eat just fine.

© 1997-2001 Narciso Jaramillo third person | dyslexikon | nj's face