1. Best thing is mark it University of Tampa Greek Week!, use it for an ashtray but like the rest of us you’ve quit smoking. The skull could be used as a soap dish, a pencil jar—let others take care of practicalities.
2. Allow the skull to follow you around so it can see things haven’t changed much. Fathers and sons still don’t get along. How one’s feet do ache in the morning.
3. At Halloween mount it on a broomstick, put a cape on its “shoulders,” bob it up and down through the streets — don’t say I never did anything for you, tell it.
4. Force it to predict the future. Big question: will the world end at 2000?
5. If you’ve got a singing skull, don’t get it anywhere near goats.
6. If the skull has dentures, use them as castanets. Dance and wail the saddest flamenco so the skull takes pity on you, puts you out of your misery with a word to the proper authorities.
7. The skull like a snake will show you how to get along without arms and legs perfectly well.
8. How to cope with the past: what you want your skull to teach you. Good advice is never throw away anything you’ve accumulated—a certain mood might make you clean house too thoroughly. Notebooks from college, the basket of fancy buttons, the old and creaky friendship: trust what you’ve gathered, hoarded, loved.
Originally published in Cider Press Review, Volume 1.
