Fire Hazard

Hi readers! Here's another excerpt from Second Day Reported. Thanks for reading!

I had my routines, sometimes a comfort, sometimes a noose. who knows when protection becomes a prison? In my childhood home, the windows were surrounded with long black bars . Vaguely Spanish-looking, Mother said they were both a safety measure and fire hazard.

My perfect life would be in New York City, and I would live in a penthouse apartment at the top of a large skyscraper by myself. Possessions minimal, I would come home from a day at the office and fix myself a drink, scotch over ice and sip it slowly. In my fantasies, I drank alone, the world outside where I could watch it, medicated.

But actual life did not afford such privacy. Only in nightmares would I find myself alone, running from building to building on empty streets full of menace. In daylight, I stuck to the standard rape-haunted schedule most women follow without knowing it, replete with warnings about where to go and when. My fantasies of ivy-league campuses devolved into a third-rate state university where female students, it seemed almost weekly, were cautioned not to walk alone at night.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Each time I play a song it seems more real." Robert Smith

Cocktail Hour
Drinking memoir suggestion: Visiting Life Bridget Kinsella

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Wednesday!