Hello Girls by Mary Amato

You see Something changed. School concluded All of it stupid, Many nights Spurned by Cupid. Alberta humid Heat exuded Into a tiny bedroom, Secluded Not reputed. Instead, deep-rooted Inside a safe home. No more bullies, growing pains, Or being excluded. I was unsuited To this space Where every face Would be replaced, A gift from grace, But then there’s the displace And while I’m not here to debase Myself, fuck this so-called home I’m off to embrace A new place. And being away from family Takes a lot out of me And here I go To a great, huge world Debt, rent, utilities, Schooling, mistakes, the state of my living facilities. If I’m off To where I’ll have close to nothing If I’m gonna have nothing I might as well own something. Gloves are off So is the toque The hat The hood So, if shit will suck more than it should In the meantime I might as well look good.

God, she was tired. So tired her eyes were sinkholes—gaping crevasses— plunging further and further toward her brain. She couldn’t say when she last slept, but sleep was all her body craved now. Despite her best efforts, she stayed awake. It didn’t matter that she yawned endlessly trying to expel her exhaustion. None of it mattered. The switch in her brain was broken, and there weren’t any electricians available for hire. She needed to be rewired, tuned up, something. Her eyes continued to recede, slinking back with each and every blink, her head growing heavy, heavy enough to topple, just heavy enough to catch her off guard but not enough to conk out after crashing into her pillow. Her skin cells hissed and fizzed, begging for rest.

She was ensnared in this waking nightmare, no end in sight. Her eyes leaked discharge like rubble from a demolition site; she rubbed it away but always found more. Everything felt raw. Maybe gluing her eyes shut was her body’s last-ditch attempt at guaranteeing sleep. Maybe her clearing efforts weren’t helping, but it was just so itchy. The compulsion was irresistible. So here she was, stuck in this state of perpetual drowsiness. Her muscles ached, her head thumped. Bodies weren’t machines. They weren’t meant to run on overdrive without periods of recovery.

Maybe things would be okay if she could convince her body to slip into sleep for just a second. Maybe then she wouldn’t be stuck visualizing the gory mess that slipped out much too soon, wouldn’t be stuck lamenting all the time and pain that went into making that lifeless lump strangled by an umbilical snake. Maybe then she wouldn’t be mourning this lack of life, wouldn’t be stuck with this bottomless pit of carnivorous shame for not getting the most basic bodily functions right. Maybe then she wouldn’t have to teach the other children about grief already, wouldn’t have to explain what went wrong, what happened to the thing that was supposed to be a baby (a sibling) but now would always be this irreplaceable gap.

The Trouble with Complications

by Abbie Doll