We drifted junk with a sledgehammer looking for juice. Sometimes the rage.
I’d never heard of anyone having a second baby right after the first one, but everything was so strange in those early days of motherhood that I just acted on instinct.
We said, Heck, that’s really something.
I reached for my invoice, which Dr. George, holding it between thumb and forefinger as if it were a soiled diaper, dropped into my hand.
It all started with the curse of my tits. Women’s bodies are cursed. Everyone tries to look at them, everyone tries to ignore them.
Infant’s Name: A Delivery Date: August 1, 2002
He used to hold my hand on Commonwealth. I wonder sometimes if he ever still thinks about my mouth.
I know you shouldn’t keep wild animals as pets, but I’ve had the same spider in my bathroom sink for over two weeks.
You’re joking, I say, interrupting the steady bumping of the doctor’s bushy white mustache.
I’m dancing with my best friend’s husband, under the influence of his jaws and thighs.
Through the dusty window in my parent’s bedroom, I watched the neighbor’s cattle graze.
At twenty, the world is yours because you’re beautiful. But never acknowledge your beauty, or it makes you a bitch.
It was spring and the hills were irradient, like they had to get out all their green in one short burst before catching fire.
Mama sped along the highway, unbothered by bits of gravel that flew up from the front tires and struck the windshield of the sedan.
When Laika the space dog comes back, bulleted to earth in a tiny white escape pod that dissolves upon opening, nobody can believe it.
A man with a fistful of showbags said, “That cow sounds like a person trying to sound like a cow.”
Sex is not a thank you card in this house.
The land here is scarred and wrinkled.
Jenna says that he typically goes for redheads, so I run to Target and buy a box of hair dye.
The day does not conclude with the gentle exhale of the earth, but with Mother Superior flipping the hourglass over, again.