Viola – Sebastian Malloy

Archive by category "Viola"

Cinnamon

There is a letter from Viola in the mailbox this morning, amongst the junk and the bills. It is too cold outside to read it at the top of the driveway, so I wait until I am settled in near the pellet stove. Dear Sebastian, I picked up Boone and the bunch at the airport, and did you break them? They won’t stop talking about ice and snow and temperatures low enough to shatter teeth and bone. What arctic hell are you living in? Don’t answer, it’s rhetorical. I am including a few poems for you in the bottom of…

Black-Eyed Peas

“Happy New Year,” Viola says from the other end of the phone line. “I thought about calling you at midnight, but I figured you’d be asleep.” “Midnight my time, or yours?” I ask. Viola is in San Francisco, on the other side of the country from me. “Oh, mine, definitely.” “Yeah, my ringer is definitely off at three in the morning.” “I figured,” she says. “Thought that as long as I got you on the first day of the year, that was an acceptable alternative.” “Well, I appreciate the call either way,” I say. “It’s the least I could do,…

Twenty Year Storm

The rain is pouring outside, Biblical and a little unsettling. It pounds against the window of Viola’s attic, and the window rattles in its frame against the wind that whips down from the atmospheric river currently pummeling the west coast. “Well,” Viola says. “Guess we aren’t going out on the roof today.” I raise my mug of coffee and take a sip. “I know I’m not. You’re more than welcome to if that’s what floats your boat.” “I’d need a boat if I went out there,” she says. “Goddamn weather.” Viola has an old blue love seat flush against the…

A Dead Man’s Gum

“So,” Viola says. “You know those carnival rides with the swings? The ones that spin and spin and raise up, and you’re going forty miles an hour in a stomach-churning circle that’s supposed to be fun, but really just make you want to vomit on everyone that’s standing down on the ground in line to ride the thing next?” “Oh sure,” I say. “I know what you’re talking about.” “So that’s the thing my Uncle Harry died on.” “Well, shit,” I say. She nods. “Shit indeed. Chains broke on it when he was up in the air. Seatbelt stayed buckled…

Headphone Girl

Black headphones against a dark background

“I’m setting fire to my Twitter,” Viola says. “It’s too much of a fucking mess. That whole place is imploding so hard that it’s going to suck into itself and black hole the entire thing into another dimension.” We are sitting on the roof of her house, just outside her attic window, in a place most people would consider dangerous. We are not most people. It’s cold out, and gray, and an icy wind is blowing, but there is still a plague going on, even if most of the world is pretending that there isn’t. Up here, we can take…

Antediluvian Banker’s Boxes

“I used to write poetry,” Viola tells me. “A million years ago, before I got old and fossilized.” “You aren’t old,” I say. “You’re just a baby.” “I’m the same age as you, Bastian. We are antediluvian.” We are in the back yard of her house, seated in wrought iron chairs around the matching iron table. We are not masked in this time of plague, which is fine. The both of us are vaccinated, and we do not go anywhere, do anything. This is the world now. We make do as best we can. “I have a banker’s box in…