It’s chocolate: it’s cake with false filling
made with modified milk ingredients.
So please, ditch the paper doilies, darling.
Don’t try to impress the ladies, the gents.

I want to steal the hat off of your head,
but not with criminal intent, promise.
It’s to learn the words you’ve not yet said,
and the thought persists — but I resist.

You’re not the only one: I wear a veil
that’s starting to rip where your fingers trail.

The motionless girl who sat slumped on a three-legged stool in the corner, her wild braids hiding her identity, was a thief. Her skirt, woolen, was stolen from sheep. Her shoes, leather, were stolen from cows. Her body, wooden, was stolen from trees. She was surrounded by inkwells, reams of papers, and feathers that visiting birds had molted and left behind.

The wells were untouched; the papers, vacant; and the feathers had never been dipped.

The girl did not have the agency to speak, but had so many words that she wanted to say.

The girl was natural and unnatural, made of organic substance, but created by a man.

The girl, who was dead, was alive, though she had been left behind by her craftsman.

The boy lived in The City where plastic grew from factories and metal embellished pathways. His body was flexible, his clothes were made of synthetic fibres, and his head was close-shaven to hide nothing. He experienced life through images rather than words and carried a virtual pet in his pocket for companionship, as there was no one else to love. Beep, beep, he fed the pet. Boop, boop, the pet responded, because it was “happy.”

The boy left The City because he never spoke a word while living there. He produced plastic dolls, and once a fortnight money was deposited into his bank account for his efforts. Plastic lasted forever.

The boy returned to his childhood farm for a vacation, where producing individual wooden toys was no longer a profitable endeavour. Clientele were not willing to pay for masterpieces, so the boy had easily left his living poppet to experience the city. She had always sat on the stool in the corner chatting, smiling, and writing in a notepad whenever he worked on his greatest project: a life-size marionette. (He never asked to read her words, and didn’t particularly want to.) When he left to work on the cushy plastic assembly line, he said goodbye to his poppet and his unstrung marionette. His poppet had left the farm out of despair, but her leaving was far more permanent than his. She had died from sickness of the heart.

The marionette sat propped up on the corner stool ever since his poppet left the seat vacant, and that’s where she was when the boy entered his workshop.

“Are you here, poppet?” His voice was scratchy from disuse.

There was no answer. When he saw the marionette, all thoughts of his poppet evaporated. He became infatuated with completing the wooden marionette and set to work stringing the wires into a wooden cross. When he tied the final knot, the wooden doll came to life and took her first step. He was surprised by her self-initiated movement. “You can’t move on your own,” he said with authority. He held the cross above her head, pulling the strings taut, and she moved as he moved. Her strings danced under his command as expected. The marionette moved like his poppet had in a bashful series of steps. However, when the strings hung from the cross loosely, the marionette’s movements were her own.

When he realized that the marionette was possessed, he dropped the cross; the doll did not collapse under her own weight. The cross fell against her back softly and she curtsied. “I’m glad you have returned to visit me,” the marionette said. Her words echoed through her hollow wooden limbs. “I’ve been waiting for you all of this time.” His lips dipped into a frown. He had never waited for anyone. She continued, “You never replied to the letters I wrote to you.”

“You can’t write,” the boy told the marionette sensibly. “You can’t think.”

“I was a writer of sonnets, combining structure and sensibilities. Smile, darling, because I wrote them for you.” Her voice was lofty, floating about their heads in smooth ink script on weathered paper. Her words became touchable poetry. The letters ripped apart as he reached into the air to put the pieces of paper into his pocket.

“I’ll read them later,” he dismissed her. “I swear, I’ll savour your words, but for now, I want to hold your hand.”

Beep, beep. His virtual pet was hungry, but he ignored it, taking a hold of both of her hands and looked into her unblinking painted face. He admired his craftsmanship. She was a piece of work. One hundred points.

“I didn’t think it would be like this,” she said, turning her head to look away. “You aren’t looking at me as your poppet. You’re looking at me as your puppet.” The paper that floated around them curled and wrinkled until they settled on the floor. He didn’t listen to her words at all; he twirled her around in the wood shavings, tipping over inkwells and soiling pure papers and feathers. He released one of her hands and took the cross from her back, and they danced and danced and danced.

He let go of the cross once he believed she had learned the box step; he wanted her to do it of her own free will. Her feet continued the motions, but her voice wavered and the paper poetry ceased. She whispered, “In dreams I’ve danced with you, but our bodies were both made of wood.” She lifted her cross and snapped her strings with the splinters on her arms, and crumpled into a pile of wooden limbs.

The boy returned to The City and took care of his virtual pet (as he still believed there was no one else to love). The girl, who was alive, was dead, and waited for her love to appreciate her (though it’s probable that he never would).

However, Roger noticed a jingling sound coming from his pocket and tarried in order to ponder what it could be. His pockets typically did not make any sort of noise beyond the normal wrinkling of fabric. He halted in the middle of the sidewalk, disrupting a power-walker directly behind him who had no indication that the boy was planning to stop.

The man was very tall, but Roger did not look up to meet the eyes that belonged to the high-end walking shoes. Roger imagined that he wore a cross expression, and it was probable that he did not like when young boys tripped him.

“Excuse me, sir,” Roger said politely.

With a huff and a loud, “hmph!” the man attached to the shoes walked away briskly. Such an experience was enough to startle timid Roger, who was, after all, scared of the principal and Canadian flags.

Roger nearly forgot about the noise, and pulled the inside of his blazer’s pocket out, spilling three copper coins onto the cement. “Pennies!” Suddenly, the impending school bell was not quite so important since ideas of what his mysterious fortune could buy filled his imagination.

He picked up the coins and stuffed them back into his pocket. He glanced up at the school which was not so far away and said out loud, “There are so few people out here, so I must be early! In this case, there’s no reason why I can’t stop at the convenience store across the street for some penny candy.”

Since the power-walker was already far away due to his strict exercise plan, his words weren’t heard by anyone except a small, fluffy dog tied to a lamppost who said nothing in reply. And since there wasn’t anyone to stop him, he stepped off the ordinary sidewalk, off the ordinary curb, and made his way across to the extraordinary store of sugar and dreams.

Roger pushed open the door and a bell cheerily dingle-dangled to alert the owner that a potential customer had entered. “Welcome!” a gruff voice said.

Roger wasn’t quite sure what the protocol was for greetings since he had never entered the store without his mother or father. He placed his thumb in his right pocket and hung his fingers over the school crest that adorned his pocket in order to hide it from view. “Good day, gentleman,” he said, imitating a suave host from a television show. His voice shook when he spoke. “I’m interested in your most delectable penny candy.” He had read the word ‘delectable’ in the first grown-up novel that his parents had given him (which he hadn’t quite finished reading yet).

The shopkeeper leaned over the counter to stare at Roger and Roger in turn shrugged back in his blazer. “Un,” the man grunted, pointing a round, stubby finger toward a display of sugary goods. A giant sign that said five cents disturbed Roger.

“I thought these were penny candies? Why do I need to have five?”

“You didn’t say how many pennies,” the man said, and with that, Roger took himself and his pocket filled with exactly three pennies out of the store. The identical dingle-dangle of the door seemed much less joyful when the jingle-jangle still rang from his pocket.

Roger left the world of extraordinary and returned to his ordinary one, walking the rest of the way to the school. When he reached the front steps, he looked up, up, up. The red and white flag waved, urging him onwards, so he nodded to himself and pulled the handle of the door with courage to meet his fate as a late student.

When the door would not budge, he didn’t know what to do. He walked from window to window, peering inside to try to figure out what was going on. He feared that the principal or one of the many mean teachers would be staring back at him from behind the glass. He sat on the highest step in front of the door and cried, “Why am I not allowed to come inside? ”

Hours passed as Roger sat with his head on his knees, until he noticed a schoolmate Jimmy pass by on a skateboard. “Hello Roger,” Jimmy said, and Roger waved back, a flush on his cheeks at his realization: it was Saturday!

Roger played with the coins while he walked back to the ordinary bungalow, and the boy flinched when his mother chided, “Where have you been young man?” upon his arrival.

Unable to confess to his mistake, pink-faced Roger said, “I walked around looking for a place to spend these three pennies.” And for the lie, which was much worse than the silly truth, Roger’s mother found a place for the pennies to spend their time: a piggy bank without a rubber stopper. Poor Roger would not be able to spend them until he breaks the ceramic pig, and by then, three pennies would seem too juvenile (and somewhat worthless) in contrast to the larger coins which would actually afford him his extraordinary convenience store candy.

Saving money was somehow more taxing than saving face.

I say “appeared” as if I had no idea what had caused the influx of mess.  But really, I have no one to blame but myself.  It was my idea.

Last night, Barry and I threw a dinner party with four of our mutual friends from work.  Altogether, the six of us formed a group of perfect couples.  Or rather, we sat at the rectangular table, Barry and myself sitting on opposite ends, with smiles plastered across our faces pretending we were perfect couples. We drank cocktails and discussed irrelevant politics while smoothing over the details to hide our ignorance about the subject.  It always works for me, and it worked last night too.  Barry didn’t say much because he didn’t want to have the party and was cross with me.

Even so, we smiled brightly, because we had been using whitening strips.  They worked wonders since we had ignored the television set’s warnings about the deterioration of teeth enamel.  (We aren’t supposed to believe everything we see on television, remember?  We can pick and choose what we want to see and hear with so many channels at our disposal.)

The party went smoothly until Glenda, with her hair swooped on top of her head and secured with an artificial bird barrette, spilt her fifth cocktail on her date Elmer’s brand new suit.  His happy-happy smile disappeared and a frown took its place even though she quickly stood up to wipe the spill with her napkin.  Elmer rose too and surprised everyone in the room by lifting his plate from the table and pushing his leftover food off the porcelain surface and onto her taffeta dress.  Glenda felt the need to retaliate so she took the plate from his hands to send it crashing across the room.  Dylan and Abbie, who are the most boring people I know, didn’t say anything and sipped their drinks, watching the display with mild interest.

“What is a few broken dishes among friends?” Barry said with an awkward laugh.

I gave Barry a disapproving look and he stared back at me.  “Their coats, Barry?” I said, irritated, and he finally took my cue and grabbed the guests’ items from the hall closest.  I waved our company out the door and locked it once they all had left.

“Your friends are crazy,” I told him before we went upstairs to bed last night, and he grumbled that they were my friends too.

In reality, those four aren’t really friends at all, but we feel social obligation to host each other periodically to maintain ties.  As I watch the basin of the double sink fill with suds and adjust my gloves, Barry appears behind me and says, “Thanks for not throwing a dish at me so far.”

“At least she missed,” I say, and smile.  “I’ve got much better aim so it would be more dangerous for you.”  I scrub at a dish that hadn’t been rinsed the night before due to the chaos.  I’m a little happy that one dish was broken so I have one less to cleanse of rock-hard food debris.

Barry turns on the tap and fills the second sink with soapy water.  “Pass me one,” he says, and I give him an equally tough dish.  He scrubs alongside me without the benefit of pink fluffy gloves.

“Sometimes I get exasperated and want to give up on this,” I admit.  It’s true, relationships stress me out.

“Yeah, dishes are tough. It’d almost be easier to buy a new set,” he says.  “But I like this dish set, even if most of the plates have gotten chipped over the years.  We all have our problems.”

I pull my right hand out of the sink and grab his left, pink glove and all.  “I’m glad you feel that way.”

“Hey, your hands are all soapy!” he protests.

“So are yours!” I say.  We stand in front of the double sinks, an equal share of space for both of us, and watch bubbles dissolve as soapy water drips onto the floor from our interlocked hands of skin and plastic.  We don’t mind at all.