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by Rivers Solomon

Maybe my mother is God, and that’s why nothing I do pleases her. Maybe my mother is God, and that’s why even though she’s never once saved me, I keep praying that this time she will.

The answer to all these questions, of course, is that human beings are not very good. I say this not misanthropically but with the realization that we, through apparent dominance over other animals, have crowned ourselves kings, when in reality we are ill equipped to handle the basic demands of life on this scale. We are forest creatures who’ve wandered into the man-made road, eyes frozen and wide.

I lived in a house devoted to my breaking apart, but I refused to be wrong in front of Mama.

I guess I hope every time it will be different.

The world unfolds according to a logic most strange when you’re a child, and it wouldn’t do any good to try to parse it. If a house has claws, a house has claws. This is another fact in your database of facts: oatmeal is sticky and worms are the same pink-gray color of Grandmother’s tongue and winged insects fly unless you clap one between your palms as hard as you can and then it’s still, still as a girlboy under xer blankets hiding from the figure watching in xer room.

At Saturday’s WeightWatchers meeting, we discuss the importance of understanding the root of our weight-loss goals. It’s not enough to want to disappear; one needs a good reason for wanting to disappear. At eleven years old, I write that I need to be a sliver because slivers fit between cracks and if I could fit inside a crack, troubles would never find me.

When I was six, I lay down for a nap on the couch and woke up inside the oven. Mother is God. I’m Sodom and Gomorrah. No ounce of good left in me. Run.