The Mystical Unicorn

your love is a sweet vortex and I'm free falling out of reality I speak my honest lies As long as we can keep up the pretence your glitter laugh is my momentary truth sweet pirate-breath pixie You know how Disney songs have that mental scale change,  and chimes and birdsong and falling petals in the background? Mae sounds like that.  Like sparkly things. Like dust glinting in sunlight.  Looks like it, too - she's got this lotion with glitter in it, and it makes her smell like a bakery -  so when she's talking to you  or listening to your mundane, unimportant, decidedly drab stories with absolute, undivided attention,  leaning in, eyes wide, she looks edible . Like the perfect pastel cupcake of Disneyland dreams: beautifully put together, wrapped in fancy handcrafted paper, tied together with some nonsensically cute bow tiny hand-cut sugar stars and hearts sprinkled artfully over flawless  frostin...

I bought jalebis from a mithai store today, a mithai store - not a roadside cart - because my mother feels it is safer this way. For six months after we came to India my mother boiled Aquaguard water so it would be safe enough for us to drink. For all of my life in Aurangabad - more than 12 years if we're counting my college vacations - my mother made pani puri at home from scratch so we wouldn't contract water-borne diseases. For all our years in India since my parents returned from dad's chemo my mother would wake us 25 minutes too early, even when sleep was more precious to her than it was to us, even though the school bus for 8:45 AM class came to our stop at 7:20 - which is no time to even be awake if you ask my sister - to feed us "real" breakfast in addition to an unnecessarily tall glass of milk before school, everyday, so she could give us enough fuel to last until recess and sustain our growing bodies through puberty. My mother made cream spinach...