in summer, we sat in front of la nonna's house. someone ended up laying in the road.
the headlights illuminated our raw faces. i don't remember the first time he made
me bleed, but i remember fainting in the shower. he apologized for days, as if a
doll had broken. la nonna threw plastic fruit at me and called me a whore through
sand covered blue blankets.
in fall, the radio was always on in the dentist office and someone outside was screaming
bad romance as my mother wrote a check for my rotting gums. i wanted to take the chains
that hung from his pants and strangle my heart in two. one piece for the woman behind
the desk, and one piece for no one. escaping up the brick wall was out of the question. once
someone invented brick walls, and so nothing mattered unless you considered its history.
in the school yard, their legs dangled delicately below short pleated skirts, their lips pierced
in anticipation, their insides plump now, like the purple necks of peacocks. this can't be dangerous.
