I saunter slowly through the aisles of annuals and poppies, past flowering cacti and tiny Christmas trees following Michaelene in the Lowe’s Garden Center on a Friday night. It’s already dark, the cold wind swimming. Michaelene reaches an arm, long and slender, to touch the needly leaves.
“I want a live one,” she says. “Not one that’s dead.”
I follow her through the shadows, the unlit areas …
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I knew you were drunk last night. Not by the smell as much as the three times you called me beautiful. By the talk of babies and wishes to give me what I want. By the pink cheeks and the newly brushed teeth and the desire to be near me. By the closeness of your body against mine without being inside it.
And you insisted on …
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I.
That winter, I took up writing in an attempt to forget the countryside. My first play, carefully parsed out into eight acts, took place in a forest glittering with fresh sleet. The foliage dead beneath its luminous exterior. Faint music, then a long silence. Ophelia appears beneath a broken branch, seated on a tree halved by the storm. Her dress is ruined. Still, she looks …
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If people always knew when intruders had broken into their homes, no one would ever die this way. I grab a chef’s knife, the knife that slices through raw chicken, bone and flesh, and return to the living room where the moth persists at the lamp. There’s only one way to be sure. I’ll have to check.
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Perhaps because of the housing boom and bust of the early 21st century, American society is now more aware of the “near poor” or people who are just getting by. But when I was a teenager, normal-looking actually meant “just like everyone else.” No one knew I was hungry and poor.
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