matchbook

ry to make yourself new. You will need plywood. You will need icing sugar and safety pins. The road snakes ahead like a fancy ribbon. When you were small, your mother remade herself. For a whole year, egg white omelets and spinach salad. That’s all she ate. At thirteen, her clothes no longer fit your body. Do not search for her within yourself. Feed your new body. Feed it eggshells and dried cherries, the white bones of raw cabbage.

          Your sister locked inside her own personal zombie movie, cancer chewing her brain from the inside out—she has no place in this new you. Erase her like a bad grade. Change the keys. Don’t spool down the rope ladder. Lie silent on the roof until she leaves, or is eaten.

Try on your mother’s clothes. Shimmy into her wedding dress. Pop all the stitches. Stretch the fabric until it clings to you like a second skin. Don’t be afraid to tear the dress from your body when you begin gasping for air. Toss the shreds into the street. Wave goodbye to the gauzy skirt, the jeweled collar. Your father threatens to sue you for the cost of the missing dress. He doesn’t need to come with you either. 

          You throw dirt on your childhood friend’s casket and bake chocolate pound cake for his mother. Burn your fingerprints off on the cake tin. Feel them against your face, waxy and smooth. They’ll never be able to find you.

          Move this new you to a new city. Spend all your cash on a shiny apartment. Don’t kiss anyone. Don’t let anyone kiss you. Your lips are broken glass. You can’t sand them down. Eventually you scrape them from your mouth with a butter knife. In this city, no one knows anybody’s name. Faceless, you steal oranges from the grocery store. No one bothers to chase you like a dog. Dogs strain on their leashes toward one another and are dragged away. 

          The new apartment is right next to a meat-packing plant. Something your mother never ate. Night and day, machinal shriek and grind. Don’t bother to give yourself vocal cords in the reconstruction. When you die, no one will hear it.