CREATIVE WRITING

It was a two-nightmare night, a fragile sleep. My son ambled into our room and sandwiched himself between me and my husband, inconsolable. My side of the bed is directly under the witch-window. Instead of settling, he stared past me to that long rectangular window that hugs the roofline, and then, furtively, back to the door he’d entered from.

My ballot is a list of unopposed nominees this year, a touch-screen coronation for machine men and women who waited their turn and reached the front of the line. For me, there is no line. I’m in and out in a minute. I don’t vote for anybody running unopposed; there’s something I can’t stand about that…

I’ve been breaking federal law by opening my grandmother’s mail. I don’t think she’d mind; she’s dead and, beyond that, she was not the type of lady to believe in an afterlife she could judge me from. “Oh bullllllshit” she’d say, the first and third syllables staccato but the second pulled to near-breaking.

Every fragrance I own holds memories for me. They’ve been with me in the best and worst of times. I mourn every bottle I’ve finished, and I anticipate the memories I will someday make with different perfumes.

“I could clear out death row in an hour with this much pentobarbital. And I guarantee I’d be better at it than most executioners. I don’t even believe in capital punishment but every time I hear on NPR that there’s been another botched execution I think ‘they should really just hire me.’”

“I bet.”

I just turned 25! It was a Sunday birthday, one with a lot of quiet moments and time for reflection and from that clarity I’ve decided there’s something I need to confess. December 2021, the 22nd specifically, we hung out without you. I don’t think it makes me evil necessarily but you can’t have secrets between friends and I think you should know.