“Advice” first appeared in Prism 51:1.
Make the daughter slap the mother. Make the plates break. Make the tablecloths fly and the crumbs turn back into cake. Make the love turn into something solid and entirely impermanent, like ice. Make that day on the island in Lake Ontario, when she crossed the frozen water along a path marked by Christmas trees, central to your predicament. Make someone look into the jade depths as if it were an oracle. Make all the hair in the world fall out. Make everyone obsolete. Make French fries healthy and Swiss chard not. Make all the holes whole and the halves holes. Make a story true by not including aliens. Make a story real by alienating everyone. Make shit up. Make it and make them take it. Open their mouths: make them sing.
Julie Paul is the author of The Jealousy Bone, a collection of short fiction. She lives in Victoria, BC, and at juliepaul.ca.
