Microcosm

by Stephanie Wright

The world spins on an axis of contradiction. Take Mr. Caruthers next door, who never smiles in greeting but gave me dried hips from the late Mrs. Caruthers prized roses last fall to see if I could coax new plants from them. Take how we make war to achieve peace (do you remember that protester on Bronfenbrenner Street last year, the one with the sign that said bombing for peace is like fucking for virginity?), or how we laugh at the anvil falling on Wil E. Coyote but cry that the world is too violent. Our home, too, is an interstice of contradiction. No. 221 sees me at my most rigid and inflexible, but under your hands, I am as clay to a sculptor, my malleability explained only through the auspices of transcendence. Shape me while the world continues to spin.

6S

Stephanie Wright, author of The Rising, is a social psychologist on faculty at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, South Carolina. She and her writing can be found on Pen Pricks, LiveJournal, and her website The Hall of Mirrors.