recoucou

Romain’s in Rome, doing as the Romains do. Maelle counseled Liz to le taper; on va voir. Meanwhile Marwan, previously and temporarily the holder of the key to my happy home, retains an impish power over me. I let him use my phone and risk missed calls from pompiers, I share my chères cigarettes cher… In the kitchen I play Joy Division on repeat. These days the sincerely sinister, most notably in “Nip/Tuck,” seems to me gauche, but something about this music strikes me obliquely as right. My most sober pleasure is deriving etymological jeux de mots, more or less recherchés, as a dangerous supplement to the ever-errant righting and rewriting of my senior essay.

My mother, whose primary mode of communication is phatic, writes me e-mails just as saccharine and impersonal as the local news. One such missive literally included the phrase “Now on to sports,” as if either of us cared about the World Series, followed by detailed information about the household pets. Pious Parker had a stroke, but according to Mom’s most recent report his recovery is “nothing short of miraculous”; he’s back to begging for zucchini. To lend some levity she jibed that the dogs have sent her to the ER more times than I ever did in those tumultuous teenage years, once upon a time, which was just once, actually, just literally one time.

I drink wine alone, which isn’t done. False rhyme, the gap between writing and speech. I’m having trouble with English homonyms, I can’t write “write” write. I spend a lot of time on false rhyme, true ones too, and tongue twisters: “Ta Katie t’a quitté, qu’attends-tu, t’es cocu!” and so on.