Cleaner
by Siel Ju

Something about the noise makes me want to raze the place, build up a new world with steel lego blocks. Clean lego men who don't sweat. All polished efficiency. A quiet chrome aligned and arranged to fit. Manual labor like pushing paper, bricks in pristine rows, power tools with firearm silencers. Birds hop in and out of a shadow's precisely demarcated outline. The symphony of muted machines. Soundless joy.

Nicole Mysandwich

You pruned the weeping birch, though I distinctly told you not to. What do you know about landscaping anyway? And now look at it - it’s the saddest thing in our front yard. The “decorative, crenulated bark” that was so appealing to us when we bought it is falling off in sheets. A clergy of leafminers have ritually spread their blight;leaves that look like they’ve been burned crunch in my hand even though it’s the middle of spring.

Squirrels won’t be jostling the branches scurrying around in that canopy anymore. It’s dying, you know… and it looks well deserving of its stature.

Dig it up. We’re going to The Home Depot this weekend.