netted bundle of beads in my palm, move my fingers around for the feel
of them. It’s a delicious texture, like river-smoothed pebbles or fish eggs.
Peeled grapes in a bowl at Halloween. Human eyes.
I don’t mean to cry when I take them back to my room, but my
eyes are so heavy. I don’t mean to do a lot of things. I don’t mean to be
here, 41, at the edge of an empty bed, squeezing bath beads until their
guts burst, staining my fingers purple, popping into the air a smell like
chemical flowers. I don’t mean to rub the gel through my hair, on the
back of my neck. I don’t mean to roll into Roger’s spot on the mattress,
press my body into its imagined indent, curl myself fetal-position like
I’m preparing for the womb. One more science experiment to top off this
silent night: SAD WOMAN SCRUNCHES INWARD UNTIL SHE
DISAPPEARS, GOES BACK IN TIME TO PRE-BIRTH.
I would need more than science for that. I would need a
Christmas miracle.
Down the hall, my daughter sleeps next to her girlfriend, a secret
she won’t tell me herself but that I know; I am not stupid. They sleep
there, quiet in the reflected light of the snow, the dappled reds, blues, that
potion-bright green effervescence of dollar-store Christmas lights. The
two of them look so peaceful, so calm. They look so happy. Tomorrow
they will unbury Roger’s village, in the morning they will set it up. Now,
they dream, or not. At least not bad. No one calls my name—that sweet
frog peeping, that barely-there Mommy. I lie on the wrong side of the
bed, tangled again in the sheets, hot and sweaty, rubbing at my temples
for the bad dreams to go away. I know why it doesn’t come, that call, and
I know because I’m not stupid. I’m barely present, that’s why.
I’m barely anything at all.
Science experiment four: HAPPY WOMAN REVERSED, NO
LONGER HERE.
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