izzy

I am going to collect all of the salt in the air using my teeth.

something about the smell of it and you comingling lets me know
the water is a dangerous place

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sarah

she was born with a pistol in her fist
the doctors were baffled
tests were run, machines whirred away
and came back with question marks,
receipts from Walmart, awkward beeps
we kept it unloaded and she sucked on its muzzle
in place of a dummy, pacified and happy-eyed
as we watched on, horrified
we flinched every time a car backfired
couldn’t bear to hear fireworks
gnawed our knuckles to shreds as she grew up,
kneading the trigger with her sprouting pink fingers
the years passed with sickening speed
until, seventeen, she wandered in from high school
upended the gun on her desk
threaded a daisy into the barrel
and asked why we’d never told her
that she’d been carrying around a vase

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