happy future slime tutorial

for Joanna and Keeril, my kinda-sorta godparents.

You live with me in a townhouse that smells like glue. Our kid has hit a slime phase and we are encouraging people, so there’s borax on your record player, dye spots in our dishrag. Traces of slime are everywhere: it’s tacked onto the chore chart, fingerprinted on their Topps cards, crusted on my Shabbos candlesticks. Baking soda, spilled into the loveseat, dusts family game night in gentle powder. It’s everywhere, in everything. In anti-cavity bubblegum toothpaste. In the pinkish indents on the bridge of my nose. In your sotto voice for the night light hours and in how, as our child turns a glossy page of Junk Collector School, you look over at me with the weight of our world in your eyes. We cannot believe that we are here, that we have made it. It’s all-permeating. Inescapable. In the smell of their enduringly ketchupy lunchbox. In each bump in the night, in each musty morning kiss. In our walls, in our air, in our hands. In our eyes.