We All Want To Be Overdressed For The Afterlife
After Kelli Russell Agodon
A tapas bar, plate of sliced octopus, our anniversary. At a table nearby two women order a
bottle of Olivares Tinto. Suckers pink like mouth ulcers. I love it! says one woman. Dressed
in lemon juice and paprika. Your dad will kill you! says her friend. Fun fact: an octopus has
three hearts. Eight hundred pounds for a handbag? I watch you chew, thinking how those
suckers would once have flattened, conformed to the shape of your cheek. He doesn’t get it,
she says. You can always get away with shit clothes and a designer handbag! Before the
plate, this octopus swam in an ocean, its suckers letting it taste what it touched. But designer
clothes and a shit handbag? Fun fact two: They eat their own arms when they’re bored. The
women laugh like that’s the craziest thing they ever heard.
bottle of Olivares Tinto. Suckers pink like mouth ulcers. I love it! says one woman. Dressed
in lemon juice and paprika. Your dad will kill you! says her friend. Fun fact: an octopus has
three hearts. Eight hundred pounds for a handbag? I watch you chew, thinking how those
suckers would once have flattened, conformed to the shape of your cheek. He doesn’t get it,
she says. You can always get away with shit clothes and a designer handbag! Before the
plate, this octopus swam in an ocean, its suckers letting it taste what it touched. But designer
clothes and a shit handbag? Fun fact two: They eat their own arms when they’re bored. The
women laugh like that’s the craziest thing they ever heard.
Kathryn Aldridge-Morris is a writer from Bristol, UK. Her work has been widely published in journals and anthologies and was recently selected for the Wigleaf Top 50. She has won The Forge prize for Nonfiction 2023 and Manchester School of Writing’s QuietManDave 2022 prize for flash fiction. Website: www.kamwords.com.
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