most days it would try not to look at its clothes. there was the night it spent at a friend’s house where it puked in the bathroom and spoke to the glass door of a dryer. where it saw it swore a mousetrap catch only the pregnant mice. where it heard from a wall the names of those against making a ******* from a smashed spider.

year baby was the year the strippers fled tanks and were later shot safely from cannons. the year it suspected déjà vu of bringing food to the same stomach.