Bed I roll over, and look outside my window. I roll over the other way after I see the tiny dead bugs on my windowsill. Is it Sunday? I slept in. I hope that I missed morning service. I feel like a Happy Meal box, on the side of the interstate, taking forever to decompose Cars with blank faces, headlights off, roar past and life hurls itself face forward onto the black asphalt, rolling as fast as it can, forehead bleeding. Piano Tinkle tinkle tinkle, wiggle wiggle wiggle, fingers doing yoga on a keyboard. My uncut talons click clack on the white keys, and my right index fingernail gets stuck in the corner of a black key. Shit. Ding dong. I wonder if the mailman heard me practicing, if he thought I was good. I was playing a slow part, Too bad. Sometimes, I’m scared that when I turn my head to check the poorly covered glass panes of my front door, That someone’s face will be pressed up against the glass, mouth open, teeth nibbling on the window, desperate to get in. Their fleshy stomach would be squished softly against the glass, like when a child doesn’t know better but to stand with their back arched But usually when I turn around, I see nothing. Outside The air smelled like laundry detergent. When I laid flat on my back on a soft gray blanket that made grass knives blunt and dull, I thought I could understand why people thought the earth was flat. The trees billowed in the wind like fat, green balloons rocking gently across blue construction paper. I wondered what would happen if a balloon popped, the crack echoing in the air, and I met the same fate as Jack’s mother did. I raised my feet to the sky, the soles of my feet covered with a layer of carpet fluff and hair strands, as I felt the ticks and snakes and vicious armadillos my dad had always warned me about burrow into my skin and eat me alive.
Eleanor Lee is a junior and the poetry editor for The Mire. She enjoys reading Mary Oliver, Jo Ann Beard, and Harry Potter; she also takes great joy in writing bad poetry about playing the piano. If you can’t find her, she’s either practicing or sleeping.
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