ozempic

WHEN I CAME TO my face was covered in frost. Big fluffy wintry flakes were landing slowly all around me, as if the starry sky was shedding pieces of the galaxy. My face was throbbing from being up against the cold, my lips tasted of street salt. New buildings emerged out of the blackness. I was aware that I was in an Estonian town, but I can’t say I knew which one. The building to my left was painted Swedish barn red, indeed it looked like a Scandinavian boathouse of some kind. Or maybe it had been converted into office space? On the right was more metal, more glass, more modernity. The lights were on in the red building; the lights were out in the glass one. But I was the only person anywhere. This part of town was vacant.

I stood up, dusted the snow from my jacket and trousers and began to walk. Somewhere closer to the center of town, there was a small park, with a frozen fountain at its center, and across from the fountain was seated a woman I know who was so pale that she too could have been made of snow and winter. There she was, waiting beneath a colorful umbrella, talking to someone. This someone, I saw as the park came into view, was Brynhild. She was there with her dog, talking to Miss Winter. But something had changed, Brynhild had slimmed down.

“Ahahaha,” I heard her laugh her vile laugh when Miss Winter said something that amused her. Then she scolded her dog, who was sniffing around the fountain. I wondered if they had been talking about me before I arrived. Or was that too conceited a thought? Brynhild was wearing a sweater, a pair of blue jeans. Her strawberry hair was pulled back and she wore sunglasses. But even though she had been on Ozempic or something like it, her buttocks had retained its shape, so that she resembled an hourglass, keeping time in this winter of our discontent.

I hid myself away, stood behind a lamp post. How could it be that she had lost all that weight, but kept her rear? Was this some new form of booty Ozempic? Maybe that’s what they were whispering about in their frosty corner. Booty Ozempic and all of life’s sweet impossibilities.