One Two Three

by Laurie Frankel

because one of the sad things that happens when almost everyone dies is there aren’t enough people left who remember why.

and it is also hard to say to your baby girl, “We needed the jobs so we did not mind for a while that we were all being poisoned.”

And it’s sad, which makes sense for a graveyard, but ours is sadder than most because the years on either side of the hyphens are too close together.

If you let them know how much they wreck your life, your kids won’t make you any grandchildren.”

She’s got her hands flat on the bar now, probably to stop them from shaking, but she looks like she’s going to vault over the top, take Nathan in her mouth, and shake him until blood and hair and guts rain down and his neck snaps and she spits his limp body into a broken heap on the bar floor and retreats to her corner to lick the gore off her haunches.

“Why should I want it to go well for them? Why aren’t my fingers and toes crossed that they’re burning in the flames of bankruptcy hell within a month of resumed operations?”

think of us like mascots, but we were more like crying, shitting irrefutable proof.