He often tells her the tale of her making. He whispers it against the ears he sews to her head. He hums it while he smooths skin across bones, draws thread through flesh, cradles organs before setting them in place.
I already miss home. As expected, moving was a mistake. This house is big and empty. I don’t like big houses; my mother knows that. They make me feel small.
My therapist, a woman in her mid-forties with short hair and small spectacles, clears her throat and finds eye contact with uncomfortable politeness. I admit that I enjoy watching how therapists bend over backward to maintain composure, “Jess, I think you might be Bipolar.”
First it was the chain stores. Dunkin’ Donuts bought out Sal’s. But that was happening to mom-and-pop stores across the country. Not ideal, but what do you expect nowadays? Then it was the people who swooped in and claimed to save the diner on the corner from closing. Now the only pierogies I can get are filled with avocado and salmon and some kind of berry I can’t pronounce.
"Ditches here were layered; you got a front-line ditch, reserve line, and then artillery just outside the ditches. Each ditch was only about five feet wide, but they went on for miles to the flanks. This ditch was part of one that went clear across France and Belgium. Some people take comfort in the ditches’ snaked length, in their womb-like innards and phallic shape. At some point in the war every inch of it had been moved."
