VII

In the morning, they went to bed. Intimacy felt like living in a future time, being asleep while everyone ate at the table, then sitting in separate rooms watching their shows. Then, the snow sat raised like a roller rink dance floor, the automatic outdoor lights turned their feelings into an aquarium. When the sensor turned on, they were lit for tears. They requested an electric blanket because their basement rooms didn’t get even heat and the real dog wasn’t allowed. Once they settled in, they didn’t leave unless every few sleep cycles they sat awake typing  hav 2 pee. When the sun rose, they slipped into what felt like being enveloped by a fuck by the fire. Their mothers yelled down their names, first sweet, then feet on the floor when they slept through set alarms gagging from lack of interaction. Then their mothers damned work shoes downstairs to the basement. The computer swole in sleep mode. They pretended to sleep like they were little still, some sort of charm playing dead or an old empathy of needing dreaming. Their mothers pried the covers off and let the overhead lights lord over. I’m not going to school, they said. Enough bullshit. The mothers started their cars to make the ride into work overheated, parching the choked convos.

 

 

 

XII

He would explain his “case” to take her away from her herself, to sacrifice himself, for the luxury of primes.

                     

 

 

XIV

Although she always remained silent and apart, her head bowed modestly, counting her belly hairs. Subtract at least how many years so you can earn the lower number. One pluck, pull three. She took her hand to herself, growing pea-sized lumps where she had attacked the personnel. The pea bothered her and made her worry that the talk infected her with something. The pea grew to the size of the mouse scroller. Boys popped the balls out at school during typing class and threw them down her V-necks. Her sternum felt like whatever you call the back of a basketball hoop. Everybody told her, You’re so tall.
 

 

 

XVIII

On the outskirts of the hometown, in the little cabin with the green-checkered curtains, its small plot sunny and lubricated with rain, they went into the changerooms to put on new suits, ones that better fit their forms. Wrap a towel around yourself grandmothers told them when night lifted the outdoor light on the lake. The night boat rode the bumps toward shore, stored energies under the dock to swim smoothly while flies poxed the ease of wading into at least somersault depth of the lake. Their bathing suits striped with the inside coming out on the pizzicato clothes line. A relative sound when they were asleep on the side porch, fooling around with a sweatpants band. A dream about a black bear shuffling up the driveway woke them wet in the bunk bed. Don’t you eat more! You’ll get husky!

 

 

 

 Elizabeth Mikesch is the author of Niceties: Aural Ardor, Pardon Me (Calamari Archive). She wrote a minivan opera for Clarice Lispector and held a residency connected to The Bottom at Mass MoCA in 2017. You can find her work in Unsaid, Bomb, The Rupture, Black Warrior Review, Dreginald, and Juked. Her book, Sobriquet or, The Assalant Uses an Aliad, will come out via Keith LLC in 2024.