FIIGU

Fuck it, I’m getting up, I thought to myself

at 4AM. I’d been tossing and turning 

since 2:30. I love a good acronym. FIIGU 

resembles FUGIT, I thought to myself. 

As in “tempus fugit,” I better get up.

But I didn’t get up. I lay there and thought 

of Tolstoy, that scene from Anna Karenina 

where Kitty and Levin write only the first letter 

of each word in their questions and answers 

about love. A little like reading each other’s minds. 

Then I thought of how reading Tolstoy was a little 

like counting sheep. And I tried calling to mind 

what Levin’s first question was (counting on Tolstoy 

to put me back to sleep). It was a long question, 

I remembered that much, not easy to decipher 

from the first letters only. Something like: 

TMDDYLMOWIJKM: Tell me, darling

do you love me or was I just kidding myself? 

And her reply was short, something like: TFB:

Tempus fugit, baby. And he got the message 

and they got married. Fuck it, I’m getting up, I thought,

because now I was thinking of my own failed marriage,

how we never understood each other, no matter 

how much we spelled things out. Which made me think 

of Siberia, that vast, frozen, unforgiving landscape

from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean

in the east; from the Arctic in the north to Mongolia

and China in the south. And I was thinking 

how do you spell Kazakhstan anyway, when finally, 

thank you, God–TYG–I nodded off at around 

4:30. Then woke up at eight o’clock, late for work.

Flash Issue 8