1. My mother says, “Taking out the trash is a man’s job.”
2. She says, “A man shouldn’t be afraid to get his hands *****
3. I wonder if she left my father because he wouldn’t get his hands *****
4. The first man my mother dated after the divorce was a garbage man. I still remember the gifts he would bring, the reclaimed objects that were always just a little too broken for my mother to love.
5. I have my father’s hands, a writer ever since I learned how prose could dribble and ooze from a page like the sweetest honey. I couldn’t wait to run my hands through it.
6. I have the eyes of my mother, ever since I learned the beauty of a man willing to get his hands *****
7. I am still so shocked when I confuse myself with the garbage that I have become so accustomed to removing.
8. I am willing to love men who would hold me if only to take me to the dumpster when they’ve finished.
9. I am 19, and I am scared to tell my parents that I don’t want to get my hands ***** for a girl, but that I feel comfortable getting my hands ***** with boys.
10. I worry that my scent betrays me. That it rises like some profane incense from my plastic skin.
11. My father asks me, “Is there a girl you’ve been seeing? I can give you advice about talking to girls.”
12. He says, “You know, you could have any girl you wanted.”
13. I wonder if my father left my mother because he thought he could have any girl he wanted.
14. I imagine the look on each of their faces when I tell them about this part of myself that I couldn’t throw away. Look at me, still talking about it as though it belongs in a landfill. As though I belong with it.
15. I wonder if, next week, it will be their love placed delicately by the side of the curb to be caught in the teeth of a trash compactor. If they will mourn me like I once saw them mourn broken china. Valuable once, maybe, but now, beyond repair.
Jul 22, 2018
Jul 22, 2018 at 10:50 AM UTC
With empty gullet preparing to swallow;
Saturn took up his son in deep embrace;
Neptune not knowing what would follow;
Saturn hungry for the taste.
O the malady that overtook him.
A father’s love; a child’s scorn.
His siblings’ chances looked grim;
His broken body taken and torn.
But Rhea, in her wisdom and compassion, had her plot laid.
In the end, Saturn’s mania, satiated by that naval stone in place of youthful flesh.
What monstrous path would you find next?
Jun 28, 2018
Jun 28, 2018 at 11:42 PM UTC