222
disconnect
A couple in the park: Man and woman strolling, he pontificates, gestures broadly, makes authoritative pronouncements about things he only half-knows at best, while the woman nods, murmurs, surreptitiously checks her phone.
faerie
The enchantment of pink blossoms floating around your head.
patchy
Blonde willows and raggedy weeds by the pond.
pistons
I understand the enjoyment people get from running, but not from jogging. Running can give you a feeling of freeness. Jogging has always struck me as mechanical, like you're a machine pumping up and down.
shocked
The park is artificial, so the lakes can be drained or filled at will. The fish might be stunned out of their habitual routes and find themselves on their sides, eyeing a terrible sun.
tableau
Facing north, heads uplifted, four turtles frozen on a sunny rock.
treble
And there he is again: The half-naked man, kneeling in the tunnel and playing the violin.
223
crackled
Street fair: Searing heat, grease, a sound system that shreds each voice that comes through it.
high-strung
Kids colliding in a bouncy castle as the parents hover outside, shouting warnings through the netted windows.
porousness
She steps on something and then inspects the bottom of her feet for holes. The possibility that a big hole has opened up bloodlessly on the bottom of her foot fascinates her.
soliloquize
That ridiculous and exasperating moment when you realize you'd been delivering a monologue to your computer's voice recognition software, and the microphone was off.
solitary
Each person in the room is in a mental prison. Sometimes sunlight comes in through the bars on the window, and they can imagine what it's like to be happy.
unsocialized
A clobbering, slobbering little kid.
vessel
I have one ear for her, and one ear for him, and they pour their grievances into each of my ears, because they can't bring themselves to talk to each other. And because they secretly hope I'll do the talking for them. I don't. (Not usually.)
