Selenite Druse – Julia Hart Shikano
March 5, 2026
I am a work of fiction, she thought, escapist.
The language of his poem was written in hunger. Keyger had his dream of the velvet mask and golden cup, convinced it foretold a literary entanglement. Julia’s mind wandered, imagining the marble floors of a cathedral he mentioned. Keyger was trying to recall whether they had placed the gold cup over the left or right eye.
“Was the mask face up?” she said, contemplating four distinct scenarios with steady nods.
“Over the right side.”
Keyger wasn’t sure, committed nobly to facts still appears noble. Julia wondered why he and this dream woman would be praying with a gold cup on a church floor. She grabbed a Bible and tossed it to him.
“Your answer is in there. Read it.”
“You’re not hearing me. I don’t care what the dream meant spiritually. It was that red cloak and mask. It’s a cue. A future signal.”
She winced at his persistent spiritual foreclosures that barcoded his soul. “So how did you get this poem?” she asked, and read:
Selenite Druse
that’s it no gold cup no masks
no declaration I went out
because I felt called by something
like the fresh lines in my pocket
would find their own gathering
but I landed in a bar
and when I sat down
I turned and saw you writing
like a reporter on the shock
in my soul
I wanted you immediately you
made the room contract you
made the distance feel unreal
so we talked like it was ordinary
like nothing was happening
but my mind was fragmenting
into loops
into repetitions I could not stop
drusy spars
scombridae
fossilized
of the sea
“I am the sea,” Keyger interjected.
“Yeah,” Julia said, “and this muse, Brigid, at the Scarlett Lounge. That’s your twin flame? You got her number?”
Keyger wasn’t at all prepared to prove such things, and Brigid had no remarks for his poems. “It’s odd that I would meet her so. I hadn’t even thought to ask if she’d wish to have sex, now or later. I’m kind of surprised she shook my hand after coming back from the restroom. And, Brigid? At an Irish bar? A biddy-biddy bom bom journaling.”
“Yeah, you blew it. You’re also married, so I wouldn’t sweat it,” Julia said, sipping with an eyebrow raised.
“She’s gone. Back in Texas with the girls. I’m like several country songs gone for her.” Keyger flipped randomly through the Bible, opening pages in disapproval. “My psychic therapist also said I’d publish a book and meet this twin flame. The last five years were fated, but Pluto kind of cleared me out for this.”
“You’re a mathematician. Get out of this nonsense, dude. You’re a psychic or reiki session away from mystical shaman poet of San Francisco.” She turned toward his satisfied smile. “This is San Francisco—a revenge arc and autism are guaranteed seed funding. What’s your app idea?”
Keyger was reading his poem back. “Does it need more silence? Modulation? It could be my residue over the heart’s quotient, derived-a-universal-tensor-
“Is that wise with Mercury in retrograde?” she teased, pulling the poem back and appreciating his lapse in structure for once. “Who is this Brigid? She’s real?”
“A journalist. Great at knowing the angle right away. She listened.” Keyger went silent.
Julia waited for him to resume his thoughts.
“She listens.”
His forehead moved in pragmatic waves. Keyger had crash-landed somewhere in that night. Their eyes connected, and their heads shook.
“I told her about the girls. I wrote the poems about them being away in Texas and the starlight nights. I had only just shared them with my sisters, but she’s a writer. You don’t want to alienate that with a lie.” He smiled. “Right?”
Julia turned toward the porch. “Jeez, you didn’t. You can’t go out alone anymore. Trauma-dumping on some journalist about your marital issues is great material for tragic comedy. Your view on that whole thing right now is just incoherent.” She paused, then looked back at him. “Did you catch that?”
He nodded. “Maybe it’ll inspire her own writing. She’s a poet too, you know.”
Julia pulled his phone from his hands and put it on the table. He seemed confused.
“Funny that you get how that feels uncomfortable. This feels like that.”
“Eeek!” he said, picking it up. “I almost didn’t go in there. I just went straight down Clement instead of home. It really felt like I was headed to an art bar on a weeknight. That area is packed on the weekend.”
“You’re feeling fated, and finding a suitable listener doesn’t help. Just practice saying you’re wrong before you meet someone else.” She smiled with an edge, like a surgeon ready to perform a liver transplant. “You’re over 30. These babes will be disappointed you’re not out celebrating your latest exit.”
He giggled when she poked at his failures as if the wounds were fun. “Your family is gone. Your math isn’t mathing, Key.”
“Humor the idea. What does it mean if the universe clears out my life for a twin flame and thirty minutes later she shakes my hand for good?” The Bible pages flurried as he squeezed them with his thumb like a deck of cards.
Julia gawked. “You need a mirror. Your wife should’ve walked out of the Manhattan White Horse Tavern, but you had that youthful charisma then. It’s just you now. Go have a look.”
He squinted at the reminder of his wife’s painful tagline. “I thought that would be more writer-oriented. Blaine said it was famous for poets.”
Julia gagged back a laugh. “I meant that selfishly because she would’ve saved us all some headaches.”
Keyger smiled in glee. “What’s that? I’ve never heard you express that before.” He opened his laptop and started reading. “Was there a memory or something that stood out to you about her?”
Julia didn’t say anything. She walked back to the porch, unsettled by his behavior.
“Shared context,” she mused over the words like a cryptic map. “Check my logs, Key. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”