Emily Zhang

At the end of the bar: laughter. The man is swirling his drink. He is saying this is what life is — life is a long ride in a taxi and the meter keeps climbing and at the end your driver asks the rearview mirror if he should let his wife keep the dogs when he leaves her — life is a footrace and the starter is waving his gun telling the runners to just hold on while he works out a problem with the trigger — life is a puppet show written and directed by a third grade teacher who routinely cries in front of the break room coffee maker — life is a prison — a circus — a sandbox — life is a public pool and the lifeguard’s the one who’s been pissing in it — life is a long stay at a two-star motel on the same street as the American Academy of Elvis Impersonators — life is the first word spoken by a baby who will grow up to be a maker of luxury doorbells — life is hell — is heaven — is the waiting room before the waiting room before purgatory — life is the internal monologue of the astronaut using his favorite toilet for the last time before leaving the planet — life is the anti-gravity that supports a helium balloon haunting the corner of a poorly-lit ballroom — life is — (they are still laughing at the man’s drunkenness) — life is what a man has forgotten when he tries to drive his roadster off the road and he won’t chicken out this time — going fast and getting faster — not like last time when he remembered the size of the baby’s hand and took his toe off the accelerator — yes life is what he remembers when the shape of the ward-woman appears in the road and his headlights turn her into a long shadow and he slams on the brakes — life is slamming the brakes and getting out to embrace the woman in scrubs — life is the woman kneeling down to touch the broken yellow line saying it leads somewhere — it leads somewhere — life is hearing yourself say it does, it does, it absolutely does.