by Chelsea Allen

1. The seagull eats your fries because:
            a) it loves devouring fries
            b) it loves devouring the world
            c) its mother doesn’t despise it for not being able to pirouette like its sister (who
            died before it was born)
2. You don’t turn to your husband beside you because you know he’ll be:
            a) on his phone
            b) on the rings of Saturn
            c) leaving you anyway
3. Your chair sinks into the sand because of:
            a) sand
            b) gravity
            c) both of the above
4. You walk into your hotel room and:
            a) put on a film
            b) call your daughter at the uni and joke about becoming a nomad
            c) sleep
5. Oh, Sabrina, Sabrina, where has she been all of David’s life?
            a) right over the garage
            b) right under his fucking nose
            c) Paris
6. If you took the evening sun home, your husband would:
            a) explain to you how it’s impossible
            b) flee
            c) tell you you’d brought the wrong sun after all–it’s so low on warmth; you
            should’ve gotten it when it was white hot
7. Who can get/could’ve gotten the right sun for him?
            a) the woman he’s secretly having an affair with
            b) your dead sister
            c) no one
8. When you walk alone on the lonely shore at midnight, you:
            a) watch the waves that are born and then die
            b) think of David Thoreau
            c) Think you are a ghost
9. You plop down flat on the sand and dream:
            a) you’re walking along the Seine in Paris
            b) you’re young again
            c) you can pirouette forever if no one stops you

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Chelsea Allen is in love with people and things past, mostly. Her work has appeared in The Citron Review, Furious Fiction, ScribesMICRO, Flash Fiction Magazine, and elsewhere. Visit her at https://msha.ke/chelseaallen.com/. Twitter: @ChelseaAllen03.