there was a girl once
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I met her at a house party near Porter Hospital.
I took her hand and led her outside. We crawled under the house — I drew and drew the space for us, both hands I scooped until the nails came clean off. We made a Christmas card, glued purple sequins to the wood. There was no reason there. So much dirt loose from all our digging. We ate it up until it loosened the teeth in our gums. There were no foundations, all the houses stilted as cranes. There was a woman who stabbed her two-year old sons to sleep that winter. I ate it because her fingers were soft on my hand as she gave it to me and I could smell it on her too — sweetness, which is also like rotting. Her hair was the same color as my hair and her face was my face. I loved her like a sister I could kiss with my whole mouth. |
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Carolyn Orosz lives and writes in Northern California. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Sixth Finch, Poetry Northwest, New South, DIAGRAM, and elsewhere. She is a poetry reader for The Adroit Journal.