Harquebus

Rape wasn’t like another pop song. But here she was getting ahead, having lumped it with the general condition of adversity, like a puddle to walk through or a sandwich board waiting for its human meat. The answering machine glared at her in the dark. From its blinking stupor she gathered there were confessions written beneath its armature. She wondered what it would sound like to be murdered, perhaps if she were tied to balsa and hit with a lot of flowers. Imaginably that would qualify as the stupidest way of becoming martyred. She picked up the mail containing the phone bill, and her tongue made a ticking noise. A budding ultimatum, she was calling it. Somewhere there was a homunculus with a pair of her underwear, a green bottle full of ships that had sailed. She’d sat on it once, short of breath at her own confidence. That’s when the other news had drifted, just discernible on the pale body where they’d holiday at the beach. And eyes went shut against the picture, the lambs she had put in rotation. Drool starting halos where clearer heads would have wept, the Sunday menu ordered her to be a child with how big it was, just speaking physically.