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SWF SEEKS ROOMMATE
haley larson
Roomie laughed to herself mostly, to me
if I took the bait. I microwaved black
bean burgers, and she muttered cancer cancer
between the dining room and kitchen. It was summer,
when lawns must be mowed twice a week
in the Midwest, but only when the city complained
of her jungled Southwestern aberration
did she seek Neighbor Kid causing 4 p.m. mischief,
put his destruction to work. Little blades
making little blades littler, that was her
epiphany, and she shared it and the Lord
with Crazy across the street. And Crazy
shared a little too much, his ice cream,
his smoky scent, his distaste for visits
during waking hours. And Roomie prayed daily, baked on
weekends, and answered most questions
with Darn Tootin’ in a faux-southern drawl.
I microwaved in her absence, avoided caveats
that the Devil’s Oven would taint
my breast milk, leave my children
sexually confused. Is it thirty-seven,
maybe forty, that single women begin
to mass-produce meals, freeze copious doughs, store them
in three freezers like little squirrels
fretting before winter? I began to pray
Roomie might evict me for discarding
one teaspoon of freezable bacon fat. Home was now
six hundred dollars a month, no longer
where my dead dog’s ashes remained
in a cookie jar by the garage door.
PAGE 25
LA PETITE ZINE 24 · EMOTIONAL RESCUE
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Haley Larson is pursuing her MFA in poetry at Colorado State University. Her poems, reviews and interviews appear in THE LITERARY BOHEMIAN, RATTLE, MARGINALIA and SUPERSTITION REVIEW. |
