Binge

The fighter planes fly overhead, their sound is violent--an arial show, entertainment. But actual bombs are dropping and a mother is scared to go to the grocery store everyday for the last twenty years. Sunday, my great grandmother died. Many people never meet their great grandmother, even in heaven--she will wear a purple housecoat and I will forever serve her four year old burnt toast in my memory of the oldest daughter of twelve. Children die of hunger now and now and now... I lay out poison for ants and cry at the calamity. The planes rip through my eardrums, the closet doors rattle, and I feel afraid like the time I was small and I hung myself inside a party dress as if I were flat--I became a ghost at the sound of my stepfather’s truck coming up the driveway. They will fight again, dishes will fly. Than my mom and I will go to the grocery store, buy cheese, bread, and grapes to stuff into our hearts ripped open by those white planes, those white dishes... Even now, the throttle echoes in my belly and I feel afraid that even in ninety years I will never understand death. So I go to the grocery store, I buy a loaf of bread, and while watching the clouds shift I consume its entirety, so that I can feel alive.