Emily Dressler
Truncated Duolingo Lesson: English - Basics (Is this what you call survival?)
Topic: Choices and Finding Meaning While Trying to Seem Easygoing
1. Translation Exercise
Translate to Find Any Meaning:
“Is this what you thought your breakfasts would be like?”
Your answer:
[“Have I trapped someone into domesticity? Are you sure we live here together? Why is it that every man I’ve ever loved says they never saw themselves getting married?” ]
2. Multiple Choice
Select the correct translation for “I feel alone in a crowded room”:
a) I am good at observation, and I am fine with the personality I’ve cultivated.
b) I might have chosen differently if I had known what any of it would feel like.
c) Doesn’t everyone feel this way sometimes?
d) Someone should have fought harder for their desired outcome.
e) Is this why you love me?
Your answer:
[ e) “Is this why you love me?” This is the right answer, it’s true. ]
~
We Deserve This
If we were on a cruise ship,
you’d be the greasy little shit who kills
his family and stuffs them into suitcases
thinking that nothing matters
when you’re unmoored.
I’ll give you a nametag that reads
“greasy little shit” so everyone knows
what kind of baggage you’re holding.
My daughter still finds wonder—still!—in the musicians
who kept playing as the
Titanic sank. It was their only chance
to accompany an iceberg—the most diverse
range in chamber music—
and an elegiac effort not to live
without art.
And now?
Who will be the one to keep the cruise ship
Wi-Fi signal strong so the toneless
muzak of Katy Perry or Ed Sheeran
ushers our falling bodies
into the depthless sea, the black of night
like a cup upturned?
Emily Dressler lives in Northeast Ohio. She works as a proofreader at a global advertising agency. Her fiction, flash fiction, and poetry has appeared in Villain Era Lit, the Citron Review, Okay Donkey, and a small smattering of others.
