i
The morning you were made to leave she sat on the front steps, dress tucked between her thighs, a packet of Marlboro Lights near her bare feet, painting her nails until the polish curdled. Her mother phoned– ‘What do you mean he hit you? Your father hit me all the time but I never left him. He pays the bills and he comes home at night, what more do you want?’ Later that night she picked the polish off with her front teeth until the bed you shared for seven years seemed speckled with glitter and blood.
ii
On the drive to the hotel, you remember the funeral you went to as a little boy, double burial for a couple who burned to death in their bedroom. The wife had been visited by her husband’s lover, a young and beautiful woman who paraded her naked body in the couple’s kitchen, lifting her dress to expose breasts mottled with small fleshy marks, a back sucked and bruised, then dressed herself and walked out of the front door. The wife, waiting for her husband to come home, doused herself in lighter fluid. On his arrival she jumped on him, wrapping her legs around his torso. The husband, surprised at her sudden urge, carried his wife to the bedroom, where she straddled him on their bed, held his face against her chest and lit a match.
iii
A young man greets you in the elevator. He smiles like he has pennies hidden in his cheeks. You’re looking at his shoes when he says ‘the rooms in this hotel are sweltering. Last night in bed I swear I thought my body was on fire’.
Warsan Shire //
Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth
seafoam*
Fearow