Watch Out For the Antlers

I'm eating walnuts, which look like tiny brains. But you know what looks like deer antlers? The deer antlers in my apartment.

Krista warned me that I'd better drag them out of the cabinet; that before I knew it an unsuspecting evening guest would prop open the door, take one look at the herd of them, and run out the door in his boxers. "But Krista!" I protested. "It's like a secret hidden treasure!"

I shuffled them from place to place in my house until I can get the guy up the street who drives an old VW van with eyelashes painted on it to help me turn them into a chandelier or a set of sconces. Finally, I decided it was time they came out of the closet. These gorgeous old bones are spread out on a dresser from so many animals who dropped them (and were collected by the man on eBay I bought them from). It occurs to me that this is perhaps pertinent information to provide to suitors: "Yes, I've purchased animal parts over the Internet."

They're beautiful: and yes, melancholy. In an apartment full of pink, girly things, they are strikingly masculine. They are foreign to me, and yet they feel like skins I've shed myself. On the other hand, the box they came in--KLAUS' MEAT HAUS--well, that looked better in the recycling bin.