FANZINE

Eclipse

Mostly porn is the elderly
getting lost in the rules

of a young babysitter who
agrees she needs

that ride home.
There’s no real way to
replicate that in my domestic

life.

I lost several animals to mysterious
fires, and even more friends to

the same.

I had a husband who told me about
his ex girlfriend. Her father said

before the big dance, “keep your
legs together.” This was how he
sympathized with my story of

incest. It

wasn’t the same thing, but
it was hotter.

You say you don’t mean it,
Running your hands over
The vape catalogue. Like

It matters what kind?
You’re a suicide away

from writing me that note.

 

 

 

1998, Lake Road

You should remember me. I went missing. I am your not¬daughter. I have red hair in the dream where I come back. You think you can hear me. Isn’t it always that way. You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s not your fault. It just isn’t. My cousins owned so many guns. It takes a long time for winter to outrun the girls from their hideouts. I remember the back roads with cottages lining the lake. How you would slow down at the intersection and look at me in the rearview. Still here. You were singing. You were singing because it’s common law to keep singing. I replace the cottages with the lyrics, “tell me now baby is he good to you…’ Having a dreamer in the family is an omen. There is a beautiful hill. There is one beautiful hill on this google map of hills. I want to show you. But not yet. I walk backwards and it freaks out god, that’s how you know I’m a pretty big deal here.

————-

_{Katherine Osborne is a writer in Massachusetts and editor of Little River. She is the author of Fire Sign.}