Ania Payne lives in Manhattan, Kansas, with her husband, Great Dane, Husky, 2 tiger cats, and 2 backyard chickens. She teaches in the English Department at Kansas State University and has an MFA in creative nonfiction. She is the author of the chapbook Karma Animalia, which won first prize in Social Justice Anthologies’ prose chapbook competition. She has previously been published in Bending Genres, The Rush, Panorama: The Journal of Intelligent Travel, Whiskey Island, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.

Familj

Your IKEA father has allergies in the football-themed living room. An NFL rerun plays on the TV, so your IKEA father flops on the gaudy red couch. Particles of dust float into the air, and he sneezes thunderously, in that way only a father can sneeze. You want to tell him that there will be 700 more homeruns in the next baseball season because global warming has made the air less dense, but your IKEA father is asleep by the next commercial, so instead, you pick at your cuticles and leave the waxen skin in a pile on the goalpost rug.

In the Minimalist Kitchen With A Love for Bamboo, your IKEA aunt mimes julienning carrots. She wears an N95 mask and passive-aggressively chops with her invisible knife angled ever so slightly, making it clear she’s upset that you aren’t wearing a mask in IKEA. You won’t admit it, but you’re starting to wish that you had worn one, because men are sneezing in the display living room and you’re feeling claustrophobic from being around so much mouth breathing. Your IKEA uncle grabs a wineglass from the cabinet and pretends to slurp, leaving a soft smudge on the rim. Your IKEA aunt’s invisible knife flies even quicker. Your IKEA cousins, printed on a backyard scene through the window, hit each other with noodles in a pool, frozen in perpetual fun on a sunny day. They’ll never taste your IKEA aunt’s carrots, and you probably won’t, either. “Warming temperatures are making carrots bolt and bitter,” you whisper to your IKEA aunt, but she ignores you, or maybe she doesn’t hear you. You notice a rip in the paint of your IKEA cousin’s nose.

Your IKEA grandmother is insulted by a wooden hand model on the counter of the Serene Bathroom For Smooth Everydays because someone has rearranged the fingers to flip everyone off. She readjusts them into a peace sign, muttering, “I’m fixing this because I’m a nice person.” Your IKEA grandfather sighs and sits heavily on the Me-Time Bench. The left leg cracks and he jumps up, yelling, “Let’s get out of here; I’m not paying for that!” Your IKEA grandparents leave, holding hands. You imagine soaking in the clawfoot tub with your IKEA lover, submerged in bubbles of myrrh, while airplanes overhead buffet and pummel through manmade wind shear, and flight attendants try to calm travelers who want nothing more than to return home to their IKEA beds.

In the Dining Room That’s Ready For Everything, your IKEA mother sits at the head of the table, wishing there was champagne in her coupe glass. Your IKEA sister counts the strait grains in the table. She feels the burden of protecting her family and insists that if she can count every straight grain in the table five times, only this will ensure that the family makes it home safely. As your IKEA sister counts, you pick out compost bins and mason jars, fully aware that these items are flown in from China, probably on increasingly turbulent flights.

But you haven’t seen the sun or breathed fresh air in hours because your IKEA house is so large that you’re forgetting what the rest of the world is like, and who your real family is, and why you came to IKEA in the first place. Will there be a partner at home, waiting for you? You can’t remember. You hope that your IKEA sister finishes counting all the straight grains, because the sun will be setting as you start the long drive home, alone in your five-passenger sedan. But for now, in your dining room, everything is set.