Gone Lawn
a journal of literature
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Gone Lawn 27
Winter, 2018

New Works

Justin Dobbs

M


They were two who drank tea. They were two with hands that held the hats, with heads that held the hats. Two who spoke of dawn, who had cooked the eggs, who had overcooked the eggs and who threw them out the window and who had looked for the mailman and so forth.
One was M and she sat very still, M whose hands held hats a hat for each hand and these hats were made of straw but M had not chosen her eye color nor could she properly name the color for she had not much thought of her eyes nor saw much of her eyes nor she did think much of the eyes and she saw them often but with puzzlement and perhaps with bafflement but everyone could see and many had told her the eyes were green bright green and it was that simple but M's sister who at present was sitting beside her in the kitchen and had gray eyes always knew that to call the eyes green was not really accurate but what to call them she could not say.
The two slept soundly and never snored much. Oh they snored but lightly and evenly and their dreams were peppered with china, china cups and plates, demons too, but mainly china. Also tea and hats.
M always awoke before the other. But she would not wake the other. They slept apart. Far apart, at least ten feet, for they slept in the same room but upon different beds and one bed was long and the other wide and one was nearer a window and one was nearer the paintings but M's nylons fit her well.
A man and his cat were scheduled to appear. To come in, that was another matter. But they would let him stand before their door for a long period of time, to knock upon their door, to tap on the door, to rub his head against the door, to put the paws of the cat on the door, and to sit on the loveseat on the patio. But they had forgotten his name, or perhaps they had never learned it.
They had met the man beside the statue, the statue of a gigantic cat, that the man had made and set on the lawn behind his house. The sisters had come to touch the statue and the man had come to touch their hair. The man's name was very long and hard to pronounce but his mane was short and oily and he implored the women to find him a treatment for his hair, for he found while running his hands through their hair that their hair had a quality that even he could not describe, and he was beside being a sculptor a poet.
All three the wife saw all three through the window of the bathroom. And with her mouth she made a noise. Or rather it was with her mouth she let the noise escape. But the sound was only heard by her. Even so she was baffled by the sound and retreated to her bedroom. The woman was a nuisance but she was useful at least for collecting little rocks, shiny little smooth little rocks from the beach, from the sea.



Justin Dobbs lives in Seattle and can be found at his Medium publication, Experimental Fiction.