The smell of the sheets gave her away.

She’s a stripper. (I love my sisters)

Why are we in her bed?

There’s no where else to sleep.

It could hardly be called a bed, though this was sadly, infuriatingly familiar. A mattress pad on the floor of some glorified closet. Had I learned nothing? Had my efforts really produced this little fruit? What do we have to do in this life to sleep in anything other than someone else’s shit? The suggestion had been presented more than once.

Move over.

There’s a thong in my way. Ugh. I can’t do this anymore.

It was neon green. There is next to nothing left in me to spare.

Spare row.

Sparrow.

With my toes, I plucked the neon triangle out from under the pillow and tried not to think about where it’d been. The perfumed ghost activated a migraine. Meanwhile, two overgrown toddlers, who’d not yet learned to master their native tongue, squabbled loudly in slobbered syllables over cold fast food, as their illiterate spawn garbled in staccato screeches. Is human hunger insatiable?

It was so late. I just wanted to sleep but my skin and mind crawled over the endless, filthy landscape of implications and less than subtle suggestions. Pay me for my beauty. I think it’s only right cause, I have been paying for it all my life. Is there a sponge? A spray bottle of disinfectant? An eraser? An elevator? We deserve better but no one comes out to show and tell us. Here I AM.

~

ps: strange memories and dreams I barely have time to process in between the full time. Everyone’s on fire and essential workers aren’t permitted the right to surrender to panic. Instead, I schedule time for feelings and these are the under-things which float to the surface. My husband’s surgery is Wednesday. Tomorrow’s a precious rest day. Pandemic patience. Manifest, man I rest, and trust the process. Monday comes with an onslaught of beetings. Beet. Meet. Juicy red. Seedlings. Ain’t it about time to bloom? Indeed. IT IS. I AM. xo