Post-silent Treatment

(The following is fiction.)


We've just dropped him at the office. He took with him a lunch and the choke-hold on our voices.

"Don't you think the mountains look like a green blanket thrown over some junk," I say.

My daughter squints through her sunglasses. They are pink with little mustaches. "I can see it," she says. "It does!"

"They're not junk!" my son protests. He's five and to him words have singular meanings.

"Stuffed animals then."

My daughter gasps. "I can see the folds. It's exactly like a blanket."

"They're not junk!"

"You're right. Bad comparison."

We talk about metaphors on the drive home.