Taking Shape
Writing from Quebec. Translated by Melissa Bull.
Wail
Babies wail. It’s not at all like crying. It’s more of a breath, escaping. Justification. More radical than crying. They wail to remind us that they can’t manage on their own.
I wailed. Sitting my swivel chair. I’d read words that cut to the bottom of my stomach and I emitted a raw, phlegmy sound—a complaint, a lament, a foghorn, an SOS. I wailed, conscious enough to be surprised to discover that sound within myself.
Teeth
He said: Look at my teeth, they look like a cityscape! I might have blushed. Teeth are actually pretty intimate.
Jaws
It’s not so much the sugar. It may be the fat... It’s less conceptual than you might think. It’s the texture. When you bite down and cream squirts into the convex roundness of your cheeks. Yes, that. Substance. It becomes fodder; it rouses the ...