There is a hum and my phone skitters an inch or so across the table, bumping into a pastel yellow beachhouse perched on wooden stilts above a vista of scenic rolling dunes.

It’s Marc, asking if I’m down for brunch tomorrow with his cousin who’s in town for a music festival.

With a sigh, I text back to say I can’t afford to keep going to brunch in the middle of the week, by means of the waffle, dollar sign, and sad face emojis

I know I’m going to catch a lot of flak for this, but I don’t care, because PEOPLE DESERVE TO KNOW THE TRUTH, and I’m not going to CENSOR MYSELF just because there are some things that THEY don’t want us thinking!

Dear Sir or Madam or most likely a disintegrating heap of bleached bones,

The editorial board of the Libri Paginarum Minimarum Herculanei thank you for the opportunity to review your submission, but regret to inform you that we cannot include your piece, “Ten Reasons Emperor Titus Will Be Nothing Like His Father (Titus Will Definitely Crucify Me for Number Eight),” in Volume XVIII of our publication, which, incidentally, no longer exists and has not existed for some twenty centuries.

I remember
the hour we lost.
It was April,
and the hundred-year-old trees were being born for the first time again.
I felt,
so briefly,
like I had control over time,
although of course I was only doing what I was told, like everyone else.