Rubbernecking Brushy Creek

I was eating patty melts with little Jilly
at the House of Pies when I first read about

the homicide in Hutto. Somebody’d left
their Statesman next to my juice glass, and I saw

the word found from the corner of my eye, then
dead. I remember Britney Spears was singing

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah over the speakers
and it was two kids murdered, three and four, just

about Jilly’s age, skulls cracked, suffocated,
left to die in Brushy Creek by some corn fields.

Jilly called out Momma! and I scolded her:
Shut up now, your Momma’s doing a little

light reading. See, the paper said: It’s disturbing.
It said: dead children. Said: murdered. And later

when I started buying up all the Statesmans
off the newstands, they gave me some more of it

to take in: Mickey Mouse diapers, a small
choir playing “Jesus Loves Me,” the kids’ names

spelled on construction paper in macaroni.
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. Well you knew it was

their Momma who did it. But I’m still waiting
on what those two dead kids smelled like.

Bye

When I die I regret the dieting
and literary theory. I am just

oh my god one rasberry left. Strange
how we had different experiences.

I would have loved to have handed you toilet paper
under a stall door. This would make me feel

warm and like a good person. I also regret
the obsessing over ragged seams.

Funny thing is: sometimes the obsessing
called attention to itself doing it

while it did it. I guess we could have gone
naked. Do you know the story of Helen?