Mama always used hot rollers and wore nylons that came up over her stomach to cover her stretch marks. She’d take the rollers out, flip her head upside down, shake out the curls, make a big pile of fried and bleached spaghetti—or maybe linguine, because the spirals were a little thicker than spaghetti. Then she’d put on the Barbie pink Wet N’ Wild lipstick, slip into her work clothes, and head to the Chinese restaurant down the street for her shift.

Her life was glamorous, even though she’d often have a black eye or two, and even once, a neck brace. When she’d send my brothers into the Pony Lounge to ask the bartender if our daddy was there, I’d think, how lucky am I to be on this adventure while all my friends are stuck in bed? One day, maybe I’ll get to go into that place and see what kind of ponies they got.

There were other places like that, too. Like when daddy was around sometimes and not ‘shooting dope’, as mama said on the telephone to Aunt Jo, he’d walk me down to West Coast Video for two-for-Tuesday. Snow White and Pocahontas for me. And for daddy? Well, he would head through the silver streamers that led to the back room, the one for grown ups only, and I’d think wow. One day, maybe I’ll get to go into that place and see what kind of movies they got.

So I’d put my hair in hot rollers and get my black tights that went with my Christmas dress and pull them up real high on my tummy. Then I’d sneak into mama’s bathroom, look in the mirror, slap myself in the face a few times, and run her Barbie pink Wet N’ Wild lipstick across my mouth. Because being her, even if sometimes she got black eyes or cried herself to sleep at night, was like being a movie star.

And then when she started drinking, she was Marilyn fucking Monroe.

“I’m quite mad, you know.”

The Hatter stared into the blue eyes of a young woman. He and Alice had met many years prior, when she was just a girl. Now those eyes, still the same large Christmas ornaments they had been all those moons ago, had replaced fright with affection.

“I know,” said Alice. “I’ve known all along.”

“And I’m quite a bit older than you.”

“Why, yes. Of course I’ve thought of that. But you see, you’re stuck in time. One day, I’ll catch up to you.”

“Perhaps.”

“I’ll grow older than you. My hair will turn white, my skin will sag. The youthful girl before you will be no more.”

“Yes…”

“But my eyes? My eyes will always belong to you.”

The Hatter pushed Alice’s hair behind her ear, still golden and full of life. He remembered first meeting her, once in a dream. He had loved her in a different light then. But as her mind filled with wisdom, her heart with passion, and her body with womanhood, the fatherly love quietly, subtly morphed into something else.

He kissed her gently. First, on her head, smelling the fragrant tiger lilies she used to wash her hair. Then, harder, on her bow-shaped lips. He lingered a moment, feeling the coolness of her mouth, letting it spread like a cold cloth on a fever.

“Or perhaps Time will pity a hatter. Pity him something fierce and stop for you, too.”

“Perhaps he will. Until then, you can teach me to grow.”

Alice looked at the man before her. She couldn’t remember a time her heart had been so full. All around, colors swarmed with pastel exhilaration. The blue sky was a painting of Easter morning. Butterflies looked like they had been dipped in paints by clumsy children. The trees and the grass and the flowers danced to the music of her jiving soul. She was deeply, madly, in love.

The romantic relationship of Alice and the Hatter was one best enjoyed in secret. The folks of Wonderland had a real knack for outlandish gossip, so distorted from one person to the next that fact became fiction, and fiction became nothing more than a children’s fairy tale. So the two lovers often stowed away in a rolling field for picnics and love-making. They met so frequently that the field became “their” field, a place known to most but meaningful only to those who used it for magic.

In this field, during timeless hours, they shared their deepest wants and desires. The Hatter longed for a pardon from the Queen. He wished for a home on the outskirts of the kingdom, one to grow old with Alice. And he wished for the ability to grow old. After all, eternity seemed like a very long time.

Alice, not wanting to sound naive, listed off hopes and dreams from a life long ago. She told the Hatter she one day wished to be a teacher of children. “Math and Science and all that.” And she’d like a pet of some sort, but “definitely not a hare or a cat.” Although these things were once her truths, in the depths of all that made up the woman she had become, Alice’s only unvarnished desire was a forever with her Hatter.

But on this particular day, at this particular picnic, during this very particular time of year, Alice felt bare. You see, if time were counted, it would have been one year since the Hatter had first confessed he fancied her and Alice had returned the sentiment. It sparked a fire in Alice so robust and searing that she wished to unzip herself right down the middle and expose any secrets that lingered. So she decided to do just that.

“Hatter, my dearest?” Said Alice, absentmindedly plucking blades of fresh grass from the earth.

“Yes, my love?”

“I’d like it if we married one day. I’d like it very much.”

The Hatter had been in the middle of pouring a rather large glass of peach wine. Alice’s words jumbled his brain a great deal. So much so, in fact, that it did not communicate with his hand quickly enough, and the sweet liquid spilled over the goblet.

After coming to know Alice, the Hatter had never imagined a life without her. Never wanted one. He’d become accustomed to her presence and enjoyed it so that he found himself longing, aching, when she was absent. He’d seen himself with her as the man he was in current time, and the man he would be in all other timelines he might happen across. But the problem with being a man stuck in time is that thinking in finites makes infinity drag on forever. And marriage seemed the most finite of all.

His silence worried Alice, making her question his heart.

“Don’t you love me, Hat? Don’t you love me with all that you are, the way I do you?”

The Hatter felt immediate guilt for his quiet reaction, but he had spent so much of his life speaking before thinking and really, truly, having no idea what he was talking about. He didn’t want that reckless dithering in the words he shared with Alice.

When he did finally speak, his words were gentle. He picked up Alice’s hand as one does an antique ceramic figure, delicate and priceless.

“My sweet Alice,” said the Hatter. “You are my greatest joy, my only love. Life before you was riddles with no answers. I’d known nothing of the heart’s senses before feeling the metronome of your name. Al-ice. Al-ice.” The Hatter demonstrated the thrumming on his chest with his fist.

“I know there is a but coming…” said Alice.

“But I am a man without time. We speak of what ifs, but what of the right nows? There is no cure for forever, not unless Time says so. And if Time were to take away the gift he has bestowed, the right nows and the what ifs would be nothings because the Queen would have my head.”

Alice considered this. “Oh darling, for a man of such wisdom, you are often but a fool. Without time, there are no what ifs. Right now is all there will ever be because you will only exist in your present state. People change, but you needn’t have such worries. You will always be who you are, right here, right now, in this field.”

“Yes, but you will change. And what if your heart changes, too?”

“There is no room in my story for an ending without you. Which leads me to something I need to share with you.”

The Hatter sat at attention, a soldier ready for his lieutenant to finish providing crucial instructions. He leaned forward, urging her on.

“About a year ago, I went to see Time. I asked him for a favor.”

“Alice! You didn’t!”

“Is it not something you want?”

“Of course it is. I’ve already said it is so. But it is not a decision I wanted you to make until you were of an age and time when you were ready. You’ve still got so much living to do.”

“I agree. Which is why I’ve asked Time to stop me only when I intersect at your freezing point. I figure that’ll be all the time I need.”

The Hatter chuckled. “Are you calling me old, my dear?”

Alice returned his laughter. “Timeless. The term I am looking for is timeless.”

“Then what was all that business about you growing older than your Hatter?”

“This place has taught me to never show my cards before the hand is dealt.”

The Hatter looked into young Alice’s eyes, and he knew they were the eyes of his wife. Suddenly, the cruelty of eternity seemed softer, exciting even. There was finally something to look forward to. He gazed at their surroundings, nothing out of place, not even them. They were a part of the scenery, something beautiful to be seen and talked about, even painted.

“And what would you do if we were trapped in this field? Just the two of us, forever?”

Alice pondered a moment.

“Well, I reckon I’d eat dandelions. I’d eat dandelions for the rest of my life.”

ALICE

I’d never thought of my hand as a ladle, but Mikky was strewn across the bathroom floor, and I had to get the vomit from his mouth, so. I must’ve wiped my hands on my jeans at some point because when I looked down, my left thigh was darker than the other, with an orange-y crust. Probably Spaghetti-Os.

The last thing he ever did in his life was puke canned pasta.

An hour earlier, I had tried calling him, and he still hadn’t called me back. It was late Christmas morning and I was hungover from drinking too much at some overpriced shit hole near Government Center.

Mikky had been sober for two years, but every missed call, unanswered text, a day or so without hearing his voice, and my stomach twisted like the time my mother accidentally gave me salmonella poisoning. Had it happened? Had it finally happened?

You really did it this time, Mik.

After the fifteenth time I heard Mikky's voicemail—“hello…hello? Heeelllloooo?! Ahh, gotcha idiot! Don’t leave a message”—I got in my old Subaru and called Mikky’s best friend, Miguel.

“He’s not answering me, Mig. I just have this feeling…”

Don’t talk like that, he told me. You know how he is. Maybe his phone died. Maybe his charger broke. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

I tried the front door, but it was locked. I used to have a set of keys, but Mikky changed the locks after my mother got ahold of them and made a copy for herself. There was a ground-level window around back, so I walked through the gate and across the split pavement of the yard.

“Mikky?” I said, when I saw him through the crack in his broken blinds.

Mikky, I screamed, as I kicked at the glass. Mikky, Mikky, Mikky.

Miguel must’ve heard me because he came running into the yard as my body was halfway through the now broken window. He wouldn’t be able to fit through it.

“Call 9-1-1,” I choked when I cut my side on the single stubborn piece of glass that remained in the frame. I had stars in my eyes, but not the kind people talk about when they have big dreams. My stars were Fourth of July sparklers being stabbed into my eyeballs.

My foot slipped into the toilet bowl, and I lost my balance, falling onto the glass and my brother. The puke seeped from the side of his mouth.

I scooped out the thick bile, tilting his head to the side so that gravity could help me, and fumbled in the pocket of my puffer jacket for my Narcan. It lived there with the old tissues.

“Are they coming, Miguel? Are they fucking coming?”

“I called them! Come open the door!”

But I couldn’t leave him there. I was frozen in time, banging my fists on his giant chest and pressing up and down like I used to when we played the clear BOOM! game and he’d pretend that my baby fists were electrocuting him back to life.

I ignored the nasty smell coming from his mouth as I tried to give him my breath, all of it, every bit of it if I goddamn had to. I sprayed the Narcan up his nose again and again and again.

Either the EMTs or Miguel must’ve broken through the front door. The flashing blue and red lights came in through the side windows, and I thought, man, this is it. This is the moment where it’s not anxiety and it’s not a panic attack and I do have that seizure. I do stop breathing. Which maybe under the circumstances wouldn’t be so bad.

Miguel wrapped his arms around my arms to keep me tearing at the EMTs arm-sleeves. To keep me from getting on my knees and praying to them to play God for a minute. To, please, give me a miracle because I never asked for a damn thing.

But Miguel said to let the professionals work, so I did.

I knew, though. Even if I didn’t want to. I knew before I’d gotten in my shitty Subaru.

An uncapped needle on the floor next to his body.

The blue rubber tourniquet still wrapped lazily around his bicep.

The smell of pee from the unflushed toilet, dark yellow from a night of drinking Miller High Lifes and shots of Fernet.

And Mikky. My Mikky.

This is how the world would remember him.

The boy with brown hair that was so dark it looked black unless he was in direct sunlight, who would drag you outside just to prove it.

The guy who laughed too loud and had some of the worst tattoos I’d ever seen—who actually gets the words “hard” and “core” tattooed on their hands?

The man who rapped to Vanilla Ice in his work van and showed up to my apartment to fix a lightbulb but left me with muddy boot prints to scrub.

The brother, my brother, who pulled my hair into a shitty ponytail and rubbed my back while I puked after drinking away the news that my internship at the Planetarium didn’t turn into a job offer. “They can shove it up their Uranuses,” he said, the last thing I remembered before falling asleep with my face on the toilet seat.

And now…now I had to go deal with my mother.

TAWNI

The nurse at the front desk said do you wanna see your son, and I was like, yeah, I wanna see him. I wanna see him moving around my apartment, opening kitchen cabinets and smiling and asking me to make him some of my meatballs on Scali because it’s his favorite food. Can you do that? Can you get him breathing? Because that thing in there…that’s not my son. That’s a goddamn corpse, and I’m not gonna sit in some room and look at that disaster.

So I parked my ass on the blue rubber seats in the waiting room and picked at a heart carved into the armrest of the chair while I waited for Alice to come back out and tell me it wasn’t true. That it wasn’t him she had found, and actually it was some junkie friend he was trying to help who spent the night at his apartment. Miguel sat next to me, but I was ignoring him because he was on their side. He believed what they said.

The waiting room had peeling white walls, splattered here and there around the baseboards with what looked like dried mud and puke. It smelled like piss masked in Clorox, and all of the hand sanitizer dispensers I had tried were empty.

Behind the glass divider of the section I was sitting in, a young girl with greasy hair and dirty Ed Hardy sneakers was screaming, trying to break away from the two boy nurses, or orderlies, or whatever they were, attempting to restrain her and put her in a wheelchair.

“THE PURPLE MAN ATE THE RED MAN AND IS GONNA EAT ME. THE PURPLE MAN ATE THE RED MAN AND IS GONNA EAT ME GONNA EAT ME GONNA EAT ME GONNA EAT ME…”

The lady was a looney, but I kinda felt bad for her, too. I mean, nobody start out that way, right? Must’ve had a man or something that drove her crazy. Took too much Special K or smoked a lot of crack and came out the other end like a toilet flush into the harbor.

A third nurse in pink scrubs joined the two, looking a little bit like one of those fairy boys. He floated over with his feet pointing out, popping his little ass up and trying to seem important. The syringe in his hand found the cellulitey part of the lady’s arm, and she lost her legs. Her chin went into her chest, and then another chin joined that one. When they wheeled her past me, she looked me in the eyes and said “eat me?”

Was my son dead?

I kept trying not to think about it because then I’d be putting that thought out there in the universe, and God forbid. God forbid.

One of the nurses swiped his ID badge, and the doors were flung open like I was sitting at some magic show. Alice was on the other side. “Eat me, eat me?” the crazy lady asked her, half-assed reaching toward her, already one foot on the other side of a nice sedative high. Alice didn’t even look at her, like she couldn’t hear her. She was always halfway on the other side of something too, but I didn’t know where.

Alice was a beautiful girl, but she didn’t know it and good luck trying to tell her. Great skin, unlike Mikky. Same eyes as him though—they both got them from their piece of shit father. Neither of my kids looked like me, and it still pissed me off. They did get my dark hair, but I’d been bleaching mine since I was eleven, so I started telling people it was natural.

But something about her in that doorway didn’t look so pretty. She looked scary, like a ghost in one of those paranormal shows Mikky got me hooked on last time he dried out at my house. Every time I blinked, I thought she might disappear.

She walked over to me without looking up. I wasn’t sure if she even knew I was there until she sat down in the chair next to me, her jeans farting on the cheap upholstery. I laughed a little. She folded and unfolded her hands in her lap, watching them like they were gonna turn into something else. Maybe she thought they were gonna eat her, like the lady.

“Ma?” she said, whispering with that deep raspy voice. You always had to lean in when Alice spoke.

“Well?” I said. “Can we all get out of here now?” I tilted my head back and rolled my eyes up at the ceiling. One of the square pieces was missing.

What a ridiculous situation these kids put me in. I’d been in the middle of wrapping the new work boots I got for Mikky, and now when we sprung him out of here, he was gonna walk in my apartment and see them.

I felt Miguel’s hand on my shoulder. He rubbed it a little and I brushed it off. What was he doing?

“Mom.” Her eyes. It was like Mikky was looking at me. “Please.”

But it wasn’t Mikky. Where was Mikky?

She put her hand on my hand, and I pulled it away and slapped her. Miguel jumped up and grabbed my hands and then pushed them down into my lap, but Alice didn’t move.

“He’s gone, Ma.”

“You shut up. You shut the fuck up, kid.”

“Mikky overdosed. He’s gone.”

“Shut up, Alice. Shut up. Shut up. SHUT UP.”

“Ma,” said Miguel, and I swear to God, if I heard someone say “ma” one more time…

She tried to put her arms around me, but I didn’t need her, I needed Mikky. I needed to go see my son, to watch him pull weeds in the yard with his butt crack hanging out and sing off key to that terrible rap business he was into. I needed to give him his new work boots. It was too cold for the ones he was wearing with the hole in the toe.

“Get off of me,” I said to her and Miguel. “What is wrong with you? Don’t you know what you’re saying?”

I knew I was starting to make a scene, could tell by the nurses that were standing by, waiting for me to really lose it. I didn’t give a shit about those fags. I didn’t give a shit about any of the losers in that place, fucking junkies and wet brains. A lady with a dead son…

I was a lady with a dead son.

I turned around and started punching Miguel’s stupid chest. He could take it. His bones were solid, and the sound made me feel like I had it together. He didn’t stop me as I punched and punched and punched until my knees gave out and fell hard to the tiles. I could already feel them swelling.

“My son…” I said.

Alice knelt down next to me, staring at my face. Looking through me.

“Where’s Mikky, Al? I don’t want you. Go get me my Mikky.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Why can’t you? Why? Why…”

“Mikky is dead.”

No. I screamed as loud as I could, my throat feeling like it was getting blood blisters, but I didn’t stop. I knew Mikky would come if he heard it. If he heard how much he was hurting his mother.

I pushed my face against the dirty floor as the boys came over to help me up. I swung at their stupid noses. I screamed harder.

Then the perky-assed nurse came over with another needle, this one all for me. That’s when I stopped screaming.

They put me in a wheel chair, calling for the doctor to come.

I looked over at Alice, who just stood there, unflinching, like the world was happening to her and there was nothing she could do about it.

I spat on one of the nurse’s too-white Keds. I said, “eat me.”

Title: --WISH IT WAS YOU

Genre: Literary/contemporary fiction

Age range: This book is suitable for late teens through adulthood but will appeal most to 18-35 year olds.

Target audience: Addicts, recovering addicts, those impacted by addiction, and those curious about the impact of addiction.

Word count: These are the first 2,227 of 70,000+ words.

Author name: Amanda Todisco

Bio: Amanda Todisco is a Game Design Writer at Hasbro and an Adjunct Professor of Writing at Urban College of Boston. She earned a B.A. in English from the University of Massachusetts - Amherst and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Lesley University. She’s currently working on her first novel.

Writing style: I don't write for writers; what's most important to me is that my work is accessible to everyone. As the famous Hemingway diss goes: "poor Faulkner. He thinks with big words comes big emotions."

The hook: It was Christmas Day when Mikky shot up in his apartment and overdosed on Fentanyl. His sister and best friend, Alice and Miguel, found him dead on the bathroom floor with a tourniquet still wrapped around his bicep. In the weeks that followed, the already rocky relationship between Alice and her pill-popping, wine-chugging, undiagnosed bipolar mother, Tawni, was pushed to its limits. While the women are polar opposites who set off on their own grief journeys—Alice sought out her estranged father and investigated who sold Mikky the dirty dope, and Tawni found another young addict like Mikky to turn into her newest savior project—their love for Mikky and the binds of motherhood and daughterhood kept pulling the two women back together.

Synopsis: —Wish It Was You is a literary dramedy based in Boston and the North Shore. It’s about a mother, TAWNI, and her daughter, ALICE, in the wake of the accidental over dose of MIKKY, their son and brother, respectively. It is told as a dual first-person past tense narrative, alternating chapters between the two women. ALICE is street smart and smart smart, which is conveyed through her edgy voice and her love for astronomy. TAWNI is a middle-aged on-and-off again alcoholic with a casual affinity for popping pills.

The story opens with ALICE on the day of her brother’s death; she is the one who finds his body, along with MIGUEL, MIKKY’s lifelong best friend and a strong supporting character. With his death comes something else ALICE is dreading: “now I had to deal with my mother.” There’s no doubt that the death of MIKKY is going to have a detrimental effect on TAWNI, and ALICE is not only concerned with her own devastation, but also the task of looking after her selfish, alcoholic, and undiagnosed bipolar mother.

To find themselves, however, the women must set off on separate journeys. ALICE and MIGUEL dig up an old time capsule that the two boys buried in a historical cemetery, and ALICE finds a note with a phone number, which she traces to her estranged father. She also takes it upon herself to figure out who sold MIKKY the fentanyl-laced heroin that led to his death.

Meanwhile, TAWNI takes in a stray. In the early morning hours the day after MIKKY’s death, she’s chugging beers under a bridge where her ex-husband used to go to shoot up. Here, she meets a young man named BOBBY, who reminds her of her recently deceased son. She soon makes it her mission to save him. But when BOBBY can’t be saved either, TAWNI hits her bottomest bottom, leading to the climax and turning point of the story.

Ultimately, TAWNI is sectioned and placed in mandatory treatment. ALICE, after a grief-inspired romance with MIGUEL, has an epiphany: her entire identity has been wrapped up in her mother and brother and their addictions. She chooses herself and forgoes a relationship with a man who may very well be her soul mate. The story ends with the two women coming back together, TAWNI now in recovery and ALICE teaching young recovering addicts about the planets. There is hope for healing. The novel navigates the themes of grief and loss and the complications of a strained relationship between mother and daughter. There is also humor, love, and the belief that recovery is possible.

Why my project is a good fit: After submitting to countless literary journals, I honestly don't know why any project is a good fit for anyone. Can you share the secret?

Likes/hobbies: Writing, reading, ice skating, running, dogs.

Hometown: MA

Age: 32

Wake up. Black tights. Black dress. Black boots. No make up. Not worth it. Black pea coat. A robot-like emptiness.

Check.

When somebody you love dies, you have to think of everything in steps. Otherwise, one thing becomes two things and two things become the world and the world cracks like an old clay pot dropped from a building. One foot. Then the other. Check.

Walk up to the dead body, alone. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Cry. Stop. Stare.

Register that my brother looks like a transgender geisha. There are no earrings. He always wears his earrings. Touch his hands. Feel his stomach for the autopsy scar. I search for signs that this is real. This is him. For some reason there is truth in the sloppy scar. I find it, and for a brief moment, I want to puncture it. I want to put my hand inside of him and dig for the warmth through all this cold. Breath. Remove hand. Touch his hair. Contemplate taking a piece in case I ever get the chance to clone him. Stand up. Walk to the seats for the grieving family. Wait for the others. Check.

One hand. Two hands. Cigarette hands. Old people hands. Cold hands like Billy’s. Black hands. White hands. Dirty hands. Hands of workers. Hands of mothers. Every hand that has ever existed since the cavemen touches mine and says, “I’m sorry for your loss.” I’m sorry for your loss. I’m sorry for your loss. I’m sorry for your loss. I’m sorry for your loss. I’m sorry for your loss. I’m sorry for your loss. I’m sorry for your fucking loss. But why? You didn’t kill him; he killed himself. Keep my mouth shut. Remain polite. Check.

Then sleep comes.

Wake up. Black tights. Black dress. Black boots. No make up. Not worth it. Black pea coat. A robot-like emptiness.

Check.

The bill is $8800. $8800 to touch a dead body and put it in the ground. $8800 to watch some priest swing incense over the casket when we all know very well my brother smoked Newports. $8800 to write my own eulogy, only to have the priest take my words and claim them as his own. $8800 to tell the world he’s never coming back. $8800 to decompose with dignity. $8800 paid. In full. Check.

Sister. Mom. Living brother. Dad. In laws. Limo. Alcohol. Check.

Printed eulogy. Shot of whisky. Check.

The priest says my name, and even though I know I’m first to speak, I’m startled. I resort back to lists.

One foot. The other. One foot. The other. Three steps. The podium. Check.

My voice sounds foreign, like somebody who is unsure they are using the right word when speaking a new language. Take a breath. Look at the paper. Read the words. Mean them. Check.

Talk about our relationship. Talk about his relationship with my mother. With his wife. His stepchildren. Talk to the crowd. Check.

I get to the most important part of the speech. “His death does not stop these things from being.” His death does not stop these things from being. He has not stopped being. He is my brother. He is your friend. Your family. He is. I can’t tell you what death is; I can only tell you what it is not. Death is not finite. Comfort all, if only for a frozen moment in time. Check.

And then the pallbearers sweep him away. Seven grown men with storms in their eyes. Seven men with bellies that swell and hold, each man afraid that breathing will release that storm. We follow like his entourage. My sister and mother, two Jackie O’s in a classless world. They seem to have figured out the secret of the list. One foot. The other. One foot the other. We all check.

Sister. Mom. Living brother. Dad. In laws. Limo. Alcohol. Check.

Arrive at the gravesite. Take another shot of whisky. Make my sister laugh. Make my mother laugh. Try and fail to make my brother laugh. Doors open. We get out. One foot. Two feet. 14 feet total. All cold and numb and moving on their own accord. Checks for everyone.

Words are said that nobody hears. We are each given a rose to decompose alongside my brothers rotting body. I give him my empty nip. I hear him laugh and I laugh.

Couldn’t save me some?

Not where you’re going.

Have conversations in my head with my dead brother. Check.

Snow falls in all the beauty that the famous poets of past and present have written about. It falls slowly, like powder from a soap box in an old movie. The fragility of each flake is not lost on me. It comes, impresses, touches our hearts, and melts back into the earth. Gone too soon.

My brother is snowing on us all, and nobody else can see it.

And just like that, he leaves us, but not before sending the sun. “It’ll be okay,” he says.

It’ll be okay.

I know.

Find hope in the sunshine. Check.

I only feel free in the confines of you.

When in absolute solidarity,

I'm fenced in by--thoughts--anxieties

Labeled: love, future, self.

Then you walk in

Angry with all of the disappointments of the world

Disappointments often overlooked by normal folk:

Lack of kindness, skill, consideration.

I am consumed by your presence

By your existential outlook on what is

And what should be.

Suddenly it seems my thoughts

My pain, my sadness, my joy

Are not restrictions

They are not the shotty qualities that must be

Rewired, reworked, fixed...

They make me more human.

Magnificant uncertainties and vulnerabilities

Pour forth

Tearing flesh from soul until I am but air.

The planks fall back, and I become nothing and everything

All at once.

And for you, it seems so easy.

Cybele stood at the grave where her son’s body was rotting beneath her feet. The bitter air of midwinter swam around the exposed areas of her skin, but as she looked at his name on the rock before her, she was engulfed by an anesthetic numbness so powerful she wondered if she’d every feel anything again, for the rest of her life. She didn’t expect she was long for this world anyway; she thought perhaps she’d kill herself.

She remembered his birth: the pain, the tearing of flesh, the endless rivers of blood that poured from within her. And then, a boy. A marvelous baby boy with skin like silk and cotton hair. The doctor had put him in her arms, and she promised that she’d protect him. No matter what, no matter when, she’d be there to keep him from harm.

And she had broken that promise. Her baby, a full grown man now, on the piss stinking bathroom floor with a mouth full of vomit. “Asphyxiation,” they’d called it in the autopsy report. If only she’d gotten there faster. If only she’d loved him fiercer. If only she’d never let him grow up and move out on his own.

She wanted—needed—to feel it one last time. To feel what it was like when he was so fresh and new. The fear, the excitement. The overwhelming responsibility that comes with pushing life from within one’s being. She slid to her knees and rested her back against the stone, the last gift she’d purchased for him. She closed her eyes and tried to remember the agony that was thirty three years old.

But merely thinking was not enough, so she started to push, to grunt. Her eyes squinted, and despite the snow that fell around her, she started to sweat. One, two, three…one, two three…she numbered each breath, and held her own hand for comfort, support. You can do this. She brushed her hair from her forehead.

Something stirred within her stomach and the skin fluttered like disturbed water. Cybele choked back a sob, and she frantically removed her pants, her undergarments. She folded them neatly and set them off to the side, not wanting to disrupt the space around her. Her back arched as her legs spread open, the wind filling her womb like balloons from so many birthday parties.

The knife in her pocket was there at all times; she had toyed with the thought of slitting her own throat. She removed it now and flicked it open, a thick onyx blade sharp as a butcher’s cleaver.

Cybele placed the blade at the entryway to her womb, delicate fingers like surgeon’s holding the handle, guiding it on its journey. She applied pressure, testing its limits, testing her depth. As she felt it pierce flesh, she slit herself open in one swift motion, and the dam was broken and the rivers of blood flowed forth with life once more.

She put the knife aside and thrust her fist inside of her vagina. Hair met the tips of her fingers, and she screamed to the tune of a lullaby. She pulled at the head, not ungently, eager to see his face. She was ravenous for his face.

Cybele pushed one final time, shouting to heaven to bring him back, and from her loins slid forth a man with vomit green flesh and maggots falling like tears from his hollow eye sockets. As he spit the putrid creatures from his cracked lips he cried, “Mommy? Mommy what have you done to me?”

And Cybele crawled toward his head and held it in her bosom, rocking him back and forth and whispering, “baby, you are perfect.”

Cybele stood at the grave where her son’s body was rotting beneath her feet. The bitter air of midwinter swam around the exposed areas of her skin, but as she looked at his name on the rock before her, she was engulfed by an anesthetic numbness so powerful she wondered if she’d every feel anything again, for the rest of her life. She didn’t expect she was long for this world anyway; she thought perhaps she’d kill herself.

She remembered his birth: the pain, the tearing of flesh, the endless rivers of blood that poured from within her. And then, a boy. A marvelous baby boy with skin like silk and cotton hair. The doctor had put him in her arms, and she promised that she’d protect him. No matter what, no matter when, she’d be there to keep him from harm.

And she had broken that promise. Her baby, a full grown man now, on the piss stinking bathroom floor with a mouth full of vomit. “Asphyxiation,” they’d called it in the autopsy report. If only she’d gotten there faster. If only she’d loved him fiercer. If only she’d never let him grow up and move out on his own.

She wanted—needed—to feel it one last time. To feel what it was like when he was so fresh and new. The fear, the excitement. The overwhelming responsibility that comes with pushing life from within one’s being. She slid to her knees and rested her back against the stone, the last gift she’d purchased for him. She closed her eyes and tried to remember the agony that was thirty three years old.

But merely thinking was not enough, so she started to push, to grunt. Her eyes squinted, and despite the snow that fell around her, she started to sweat. One, two, three…one, two three…she numbered each breath, and held her own hand for comfort, support. You can do this. She brushed her hair from her forehead.

Something stirred within her stomach and the skin fluttered like disturbed water. Cybele choked back a sob, and she frantically removed her pants, her undergarments. She folded them neatly and set them off to the side, not wanting to disrupt the space around her. Her back arched as her legs spread open, the wind filling her womb like balloons from so many birthday parties.

The knife in her pocket was there at all times; she had toyed with the thought of slitting her own throat. She removed it now and flicked it open, a thick onyx blade sharp as a butcher’s cleaver.

Cybele placed the blade at the entryway to her womb, delicate fingers like surgeon’s holding the handle, guiding it on its journey. She applied pressure, testing its limits, testing her depth. As she felt it pierce flesh, she slit herself open in one swift motion, and the dam was broken and the rivers of blood flowed forth with life once more.

She put the knife aside and thrust her fist inside of her vagina. Hair met the tips of her fingers, and she screamed to the tune of a lullaby. She pulled at the head, not ungently, eager to see his face. She was ravenous for his face.

Cybele pushed one final time, shouting to heaven to bring him back, and from her loins slid forth a man with vomit green flesh and maggots falling like tears from his hollow eye sockets. As he spit the putrid creatures from his cracked lips he cried, “Mommy? Mommy what have you done to me?”

And Cybele crawled toward his head and held it in her bosom, rocking him back and forth and whispering, “baby, you are perfect.”

She rocks me to sleep in her arms every night. She holds me and sways and coos hush baby hush. You’re safe, she says. You’re safe as you’ll ever be.

I look into her eyes and can’t speak words. I cry like a newborn because it’s what I am when she holds me and sways and coos hush baby hush. And I don’t feel safe, at night, with this creature, human in form I think. She’s all I’ve ever known.

I used to fight back and claw at her eyes, but her grip is strong. So strong that I’ve grown to full form and still can’t get out of her arms. Let me go, I say. I’m a woman, let me go.

But she holds me and sways and coos hush baby hush. So I’ve taken to closing my eyes and dreaming of my dimension twin. The me from another world. I imagine her eating daisies and swinging from willows and playing the harmonica with a blade of grass. She is free, exposed, filthy as swine. She lives as she pleases, she fucks as she pleases.

She doesn’t like when I dream. She puts her mouth over my head and takes my thoughts, takes my breath. She slips inside of my body and moves my arms, punches my fists. She stumbles and falls and crawls, all while screaming I hate you to the walls of the hallow room.

And once her pain has become my own, she ejects herself from my body, lifeless now, and swaddles me in cotton, takes me in her arms, and sways and coos hush baby hush. She never looks at me as she rocks, squeezing tighter until I nearly suffocate from the pressure. But she never grants me the mercy of death. She needs me to stay hidden.

When she is done with me, she puts me back in my cage for the next time the world crumbles. Its crumbling is chronic. And when she walks toward the door and I try my words and say meekly, mother, please let me go, she turns and coos hush baby hush.