Up late
It is three o'clock in the morning. Maury is on television, keeping me company as I wait for you to come home. This fear is taking over my life, says the marquee.
On screen, a woman cowers behind a chair, incoherent at the sight of a plate of quivering red Jell-O. Her screams lock in her throat, only slowly seeping out of her mouth -- grotesque, open, ignorant to the taste of tart strawberry gelatin. I wonder if there is a sepia-tone image in her mind, that of a man trying to keep his guts inside his body.
Another woman is being chased around the studio by a giant yellow chicken. This time I am sure, judging by the hoarseness with which she calls for her mommy, that she remembers when she was five, running down the street as screeching chickens nip at her heels.
When I was a kid, no chickens went after me. No man knocked at my front door, holding his intestines in his hands. Instead, I planned my wedding and named all my future children. My greatest fear then was that no boy would stand underneath my bedroom window one evening, holding a radio high above his head. Or that the crush of the week would ask another girl to the Prom, and they would dance and dance and dance past midnight. Nothing, really, that would scar me for life. Nothing that would keep me up at nights.
The show goes on with more screaming, more bleeps and more winks to the audience from Maury Povich. You still aren't home, you haven't even called. Perhaps you're using your hands for something else, say, holding a radio above your head, waiting for some other girl's window to open. Perhaps, even, cradling your bloody guts to your self.
I should sleep now, or turn the TV off at least. But I am afraid you will not come home tonight because, who knows, you might have been attacked by some roosters you interrupted at mid-crow.
> Ladies and gentlemen, from watching Maury at three o'clock in the morning, waiting for nothing but the hunger to get me off the bed. And it has. Off I go for some Quarter Pounders. Ta.
On screen, a woman cowers behind a chair, incoherent at the sight of a plate of quivering red Jell-O. Her screams lock in her throat, only slowly seeping out of her mouth -- grotesque, open, ignorant to the taste of tart strawberry gelatin. I wonder if there is a sepia-tone image in her mind, that of a man trying to keep his guts inside his body.
Another woman is being chased around the studio by a giant yellow chicken. This time I am sure, judging by the hoarseness with which she calls for her mommy, that she remembers when she was five, running down the street as screeching chickens nip at her heels.
When I was a kid, no chickens went after me. No man knocked at my front door, holding his intestines in his hands. Instead, I planned my wedding and named all my future children. My greatest fear then was that no boy would stand underneath my bedroom window one evening, holding a radio high above his head. Or that the crush of the week would ask another girl to the Prom, and they would dance and dance and dance past midnight. Nothing, really, that would scar me for life. Nothing that would keep me up at nights.
The show goes on with more screaming, more bleeps and more winks to the audience from Maury Povich. You still aren't home, you haven't even called. Perhaps you're using your hands for something else, say, holding a radio above your head, waiting for some other girl's window to open. Perhaps, even, cradling your bloody guts to your self.
I should sleep now, or turn the TV off at least. But I am afraid you will not come home tonight because, who knows, you might have been attacked by some roosters you interrupted at mid-crow.
> Ladies and gentlemen, from watching Maury at three o'clock in the morning, waiting for nothing but the hunger to get me off the bed. And it has. Off I go for some Quarter Pounders. Ta.
Labels: Writing
posted by Sasha Martinez at
4:08:00 AM
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