[Fruedian chaise, fluorescent headache, chartreuse wallpaper backdrop] I confide to my therapist: I am afraid of having babies. Plan B’s / vasectomies / swim to my head, swishing sperm in my mouth like Cronus swallowing the pantheon: precious little gods. I am
the precocious Ugolino and his delicious sons, an attempted abortion, Tantalus reaching for

a gun.

*

[faux foliage, constellations on strings, spacious stage] I always study the feet of the dancers, trying not to focus on how viled their feet must be under the crush of pointe. Edacious torsos, stomachs imploding, starvation for graciousness. Entrails of ballet shoes: toes, fascia, bile, bones, muscles—shredded like streamers all over the stage. Everywhere I look, I can only see Odile.

*

[liminal space—sunrise or sunset, blush sun, 2006 Toyota Corolla] My headlights are Ambrosia to the forest: Bambi’s mom just committed suicide by colliding with my predacious death box gushing ninety miles per hour. Red smoke splatters, my synesthesia translates the blood into last September and the grizzled deer guts become my sister’s fourth miscarriage. All I have is a ballpoint pen: a brutal euthanasia.