Black Mouth

by Ronald Malfi

A voice in my ear, whispering straight through to the epicenter of my soul: Do you want to see a magic trick?

“What’s your name?” “Sunshine,” said the woman. “Sunshine Devil Girl.” “What is that, Polish?”

“And your hole is so big I could see it from the street,” Sunshine Devil Girl said. “Like, from the far end of the alley, even.”

Events in our lives often have meaning because we choose to give them meaning. Whatever the case, it arrived in the way monsters sometimes do: as a creature in need.

A house like a blood clot: something snared in the artery of space and time.

We cannot run from ourselves. There is a history that travels through our blood, a blueprint for the people we are to become.

Maybe no houses are born bad, either. Maybe they’re just convenient receptacles for everything we put in them—a box that houses our dreams, hopes, fears, torments, happiness, laughter, grief. They’re what we make of them and what we need them to be.