sixty-seven. [Let's not bother Freud with this one.]
Frank dreams of his parents’ house, the sound of clock chimes echoing through mostly empty rooms and flocks of taxidermied birds beating their well-preserved wings against the window glass and shrieking in time with the bells like the most morbid of cuckoo clocks. A vase of wilting tulips sits at the center of the dining-room table, leaving petals as scattered golden flashes against mahogany wood. He watches himself gathering up the flower petals and filling his pockets with them, leaving his hands coated in sticky specks of pollen, and in the background sits his fiancée crocheting endless loops of ivory lace.