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Circuitous

Margaux Williamson

on the phone with Grandma, we talk in circles—how are you, I'm good, how are you, I'm good—due to the shortage, the interruption in what was the extended chord of her mind, arrowlike, pulled taut, and plugged into infinity; it's a circuit now, the sharpness blurred and rounded, around and around, a relentless ring, staticky, steady, until a shocking, unwarranted cachinnation shines and spreads, her reaction to an unshared joke or some one-sided quip, or a memory fixing me, its receiver, elsewhere in time; I’m a child on the living room floor before the flickering, the outage, my tiny laughter, bright and clear alongside Mom’s, my uncle’s, my aunt’s, and there’s Dad, taller and broader than most, also laughing, louder than most, tossing Grandma over his shoulder, and she is a wisp, a light, whooping, playfully slapping his back like she’s eager for grounding, though we know she’s not—her mind is, was, a projector, large, illuminated, easy to read; so we laugh, and it’s riotous, sharp, visceral, crackling, and now, back from this charged reverie of hers, of mine, on the phone with Grandma, we talk in circles—




Margaux Williamson (she/her/they) is a queer reader, writer, and legal associate who works in advertising. Her work has appeared in Complete Sentence, Transients Magazine, EDGE CITY, and elsewhere. She lives in the Midwest with her wife.

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