∞ tomorrows
Nora Ray
my neighbor is 130 years old. she’s pallid and wan yet robust and rotund. she has two avocado toasts in the morning and never sits down during the day. her dog looks like it’s older than her. it spins around its axis every day at 5 p.m. the neighbor listens to pop songs or crime audiobooks while doing yoga on her old purple mat. she only sleeps for four hours a day. she barely leaves her tiny house and barely changes her cotton candy blue overall. and i often stand there at my window observing; waiting for someone to call her so I can hear her voice. is it hoarse or is it smooth? is it even still there? because her eyes are not. but no one ever calls her, and the only thing she whispers silly songs to is a printed picture of her long-gone daughter. she wasn’t one of them—shit, one of us—even though my neighbor begged them to mutate her, too. they choose us strangely, they choose us out of whim; they take us to this neighborhood, they make us immortal. we beg them to metamorphose our fathers and sisters and cats and snakes, too, but they always refuse. and what do they want to find out? maybe the neighbor knows. i’ll ask her tomorrow—tomorrow that will certainly come.
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