![]() I slide my hand away from my face to find myself seated at a white-clothed dining table. ![]() Just as I think that the asymptotic point of emptiness is about be hit and the snow globe about to shatter, all becomes still. Time evaporates into mere wisps of smoke. I shield my eyes as the the delicate landscape around me falls away with dazzling spectacle, as if the universe had reached the limits of its expansion and come crashing back in. Furniture shrink into specks of dust and walls fold in on themselves. Wavering, rubato’d notes recede into the vibrations of bamboo and vocal chords, and playing cards fly back into my hand and into oblivion. Sunlight streaks over the ground before vanishing too below the horizon. I slid my fork under it and lifted it into my mouth.Īs soon as my teeth crack the peppercorn, the stars fade away. ![]() Now there remained a single peppercorn, pitted and monumentally black against the last remaining piece of tofu. The contents of my lunchbox had steadily disappeared as I traveled. Surrounded by a gated lawn that is boundless in the darkness of night, I crane my head upwards at the infinite tapestry of pinprick stars that mesmerize me from above. The crystals of my breath begin to reflect the freezing of my fingers and toes, and I am pulled back to my family to warm up. ![]() I am touched by the long, golden afternoon rays of sun that skip gracefully across the snow. I am breathing the smoke-filled air of a neighbor’s house after getting off the school bus and realizing I didn’t have keys. I am shaken with laughter as three slick ace cards drop on top of the pile before me. I am wet with tears that drip from my face to the hands desperately dancing over the black and white keys below. I am floating among the songs of flute and voice that ring constantly between the shingled walls. I am entranced by the sounds, the spaces, the fleeting slivers of memory that flutter around me. I sit for a moment in the snow globe I have suddenly found myself enclosed in. The opening to the right of the dining room frames a spacious living room, where a pale gray couch is an observation deck for the coffee table in front of it, the well-played upright against one wall, and a TV diagonally crammed against the other. The tall windows on the left side of the dining room look over a sizeable backyard where there once stood a pool that I don’t remember and an unsturdy swingset I remember just a little more. The pepperiness is stronger this time, and so is the recollection that accompanies it. I turn to the container and fit another peppercorn between the prongs of my fork. ![]() Instead of evoking alarm or disgust, though, this bite brings a wisp of warmth. The flavor of meat with that unmistakable peppercorn tinge fills a mouth that has been vegan for years, void of the pop of soy that has come to signify safety. Sizzling, chopping, and the running of water emanate from a kitchen just out of sight. A humble golden chandelier casts a warm glow over the white-clothed table below. At first I think it is the taste of the spice that I await for, a sharp, pungent numbness that grips strongly and reassuringly at the inside of my mouth, but when it arrives I realize that it is something else. My teeth crunch down on the cooked but still gritty peppercorn. With a piece of tofu, I scoop it up and deliver it to my mouth. I rake a fork through the small glass container in front of me and find a peppercorn, a small black ball amidst the green and brown of my meal. ![]()
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