WE BUILD THINGS, WE FALL APART — SELENA LANGNER

When the tinnitus starts, it will sound like crickets. Soon, everything will be crickets, but I won’t mind, because it will remind me of my father, and it won’t matter that all the real crickets have been lost to paved-over streets, because I will carry them inside me.

But for now, I am ten, and I am building a scrap-wood longboard in a dilapidated half-shed, and my father is sanding two-by-fours for somebody else’s home beside me. The bandsaw keens. Plywood splinters into my skin. Nails nestle the calluses on my bare feet. I spread epoxy with my fingertips and the fumes stain the air saccharine, and I breathe it in and hold it in my lungs and think that nothing this sweet could hurt me. Nothing this sweet can hurt me.

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Selena Langner lives on the prairie with her husband and their six very excellent chickens. She likes to make things. You can occasionally find her on Twitter talking about projects at @SelenaLangner or online at selenalangner.com.