Katy Cousino
from Himalayan Salt Lamp
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A catmom’s responsibility is to huff your cat’s shit so they don’t have to. This is what Cliff tells me as I’m squatting over his litter box scraping up his droppings and I have to believe him. In reality cat feces causes brain inflammation and boy do I feel it. There are so many negative ions in the air I breathe. I try to lap them up but my tongue gets dry waggling in this stale apartment. My boyfriend is convinced that the Himalayan Salt Lamp is haunted and has Cliff taking stress shits in the toilet, which is nice. But still I wonder if fear-mongering is really the sexiest thing he can do.
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My boyfriend has cut his penis on the Himalayan Salt Lamp. I can’t say I’m surprised since I planted the razor blades. Mousehead is ripping a bong and laughing in the corner and it’s like do you even get it, though? Quit your patriarchal mouse bullshit, I want to die as a fuckhole but all I’m feeling is hole, you know?
My boyfriend marvels at how his blood drops gravitate among us like a galaxy and I definitely agree that I’d be a galaxy, too, if I hadn’t been molested. We nod gravely and Mousehead smears his cutest poops on the wall. |
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I crawl with my face down out of the traveling bog which has swallowed my apartment; I breech like a struggling turtle with splinters in my green. Neighborhood kids throw rocks at my mud-blinking eyes which dent my eyelashes a natural curl. I tell them that people on dead planets shouldn’t throw rocks at turtle girls; aren’t you aware of our wisdom? The bog doesn’t like my sass and pulls me back like the Undertaker, by my shrinking, see-through neck skin that I really need to moisturize. I try to explain it’s not that I don’t appreciate the nurturing atmosphere or learning to eat through mud walls. I tell it that I have always been this way, that my hair has never held pigtails, that I prefer the taste of earthworms writhing in my own filth. The bog blushes and thrusts me to my feet; I’m such a charmer. I walk back to the room and brother is rewinding Wrestlemania on a VHS. The walls are covered in crayon. We repeatedly watch a WWF Diva’s top come off in unnatural, robotic movements. In my head I practice for the spelling bee. Her nipples are as hard as mine.
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I shove chamomile flowers into my mouth; I need to find sleep inside my fragile body and this is the only way. As I’m walking toward Barney the purple dinosaur I contemplate where parents go when they leave you home alone. I practice stranger danger in my head and my tremble mouth drools flower bud pools to trap brother behind me. I pray that my spit is corrosive as Barney takes me into his hard bodysuit. I speak to God and all I hear is white noise.
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The Bop It™ won’t stop telling us what to do. Cliff carries it around in his mouth at night like a foreman and my boyfriend wakes himself up chanting along every time. The toy recites poetry I wrote when I was younger and on my period last week: “kill me, kill me, I want to die and am already covered in so much blood.” I snap my fingers to the beat and begin to wonder if this was Cliff’s plan all along, to bop it, twist it . . . pull it. He has always had such high aspirations; I only wish I could sleep. My insomnia builds around me a chamber of white bedsheets and I am yet again a pretty pretty princess with a plastic necklace choking my neck fat, hotboxing my memory with weed smoke and McDonald’s apple pie fumes. I peek out occasionally from this virgin paradise to see Cliff dangling Mousehead’s rejected body over my boyfriend’s open mouth. I read that this is Satanic communion and I’m supes into it. But just as my white chamber starts to soak wet, God runs in, spots the demonic Bop It laughing in the corner, and smites it with lightning until it’s on fire. We are so thankful. I cook a Hobo Pie with nothing but peanut butter in it. The crust is hot like devil.
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KATY COUSINO is graduating this May from the University of Notre Dame, having earned her MFA in Creative Writing. Her work can be found in Deluge, Tagvverk, and Seven Corners. She loves working with communities and talking about horror movies.
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