Macroscopic Sacred Puzzles

The day my husband starts wearing glasses he begins a comprehensive investigation of all things optic. At 28, his corneas are seared by the miniature image of a juicy hamburger on a coupon. With gusto he admires the pyramidal composition of his screensaver—two monkeys aloft a tree limb—noting, for the first time, that the Dijon hued monkey is an infant.

My husband’s reverie for every organism and manmade structure is touching yet tiring. On a long drive, he rhapsodizes about the commanding font of highway signs. Later, he is rendered speechless by the lush spectral streak of sports cars torpedoing past us.

Back home he squints from behind his frames, scrutinizing our wall décor. One surrealistic black and white poster I’ve owned since I was eleven. It’s a graft of my adolescence. He winks at it—a gothic cathedral with city traffic filing down the pews.

Between his eyelashes, the investigation unfolds. No puzzle piece or link is wasted: every atom equals a garden.

 


Ursula_Villarreal_Moura-Ursula_Villarreal_Moura_Ursula Villarreal-Moura is a writer, editor, and book reviewer. She is the winner of the 2012 CutBank Big Fish Flash Fiction/Prose Poetry Contest. Her writing appears in CutBank, Emerson Review, The Fiddleback, Necessary Fiction, NAP, Black Heart Magazine, Lunch Ticket, and elsewhere.


 

Ursula Villarreal-Moura

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