Two hundred frames in, you decide the sketches
are too shaky once set in motion. You throw them
in the garbage, dump your spaghetti on top so
there would be no way to salvage them. This repeats
again, except the second time with a filter of
wet coffee grounds. Trace paper on top of trace
paper on top of light board—you decide that in
order to finish by morning, you’ll have to
shorten the story. Yes, that’s it. You’ll skip the part
where the bag of flour walks into the party
full of other bags of flour. There, the jock.
There, the princess. There, the wallflower. There,
the group of bags serving only as backdrop. You’ll
shorten the story because there isn’t time
to show this bag all alone, no other bags talking
to him. There’s not time to develop out this bag
of flour’s character. Let’s call him Harry. So you
jump to the scene in the kitchen, in the room next
to the party. You jump to where Harry cuts himself
open with a steak knife, white powder spilling out all
over the linoleum floor. Harry doesn’t bleed out long
before you sketch him scooping himself up into
a pan, pouring milk, raw eggs, sugar on top
of himself. You jump to the scene where Harry puts
himself into the oven, the part where the other bags
of flour smell something they don’t recognize at first,
where they walk into the kitchen, see
an empty bag and a cake on the counter
with a note that says I made this for you.
William Fargason received a BA in English from Auburn University, where he served as poetry editor of the literary magazine The Circle. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Eclectica Magazine, Sakura Review, and HOW Journal. He lives with himself in Hyattsville, Maryland, where he is currently a poetry MFA candidate at the University of Maryland.
