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White Legs


by Tina Barry


I imagined you, a grown man in a tiny kimono, its obi no bigger than your navel. Your hand with its perfect oval nails, cupped a bowl—eggshell thin and pale as a dew drop—while you poked toothpick-sized chopsticks into fish porridge and sperm-shaped beans, lotus roots carved with clunky holes like a mouse's drawing of Swiss cheese. If the mouse were to render your legs, they'd be white and as skinny as soba noodles, stretching to the top of the page. The mouse would laugh at the way the noodles sliced the paper in two and congratulate itself for using the negative space so wisely.

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