|
Lucille's Tear
Lucille hobbled into her bathroom.
A yellow post-it attached to a perfume bottle on the shelf below the mirror caught her attention. She peered close
to read the message written in her husband's familiar hand: "Don't touch this bottle. It is part of an experiment
to find out how to collect and preserve dust." Gales of laughter burst from her, loud and clear like bells. "Ah!
I am a lucky woman," she sighed. Catching her breath, she stepped to her closet and pulled down a sweater
from the top shelf. Half to herself, she mused, "I am lucky." She thought
with affection of her husband asleep in the next room. "Thank you, God. Thank you for this life. Thank
you for creating the universe so that there could be life." She recalled, a little sadly,
her discussion with her son the previous day: 'As this universe expands, it is slowing down; cooling
down. In billions of years, it will all stop. This will all be gone.' "I hope you have created lots
of universes!" she told the ceiling. "I hope you are a collector of ... of emotions of all kinds."
She gazed into her eyes reflected in the mirror as she tried to list all the emotions that could
be -- love, rage, worry, pain, laughter. Is laughter an emotion? She imagined strange
beings evolving in an infinity of universes. With a knobbed finger, she wiped a ruby from her fifth eye. Ten
legs rippled as she hobbled into the bedroom to kiss one of her husband's hundred lips.
|
