Every Drop Is a Man's Nightmare

by Megan Kamalei Kakimoto

Don’t sleep with your feet by the door! Those dangling, dreaming toes are sweet as sucrose to the Night Marchers, and they will drag you from your slumber by your feet.

Don’t sleep with your head under the open window! When the demon visits, he will wedge his knife through the slit and slice you open by the neck.

Don’t kill the moth! Could also be your father.

Eat as you please, honey girl.

Mediocrity leaks through his sweat,

It’s a strange thing, to be in love during a national crisis.

The first man who finds Her wears rubber flippers and a fool’s grin, like nothing bad has ever happened to him.

“She’s a bad guy,” accuses Toby. Always I am correcting him: She is a woman.

After the first sighting, the Madwoman develops a taste for obtuse men and their depressive children.

Toby’s father used to smile like nothing bad had ever happened to him.

I will teach him to think audacious thoughts and act with insolence.

The bottle I’m clutching feels smooth along its feminine contours,

the kitchen is the only room in which I am needed.

feel the bruises bloom along my neck without witnessing the injury firsthand, which is the best way I can describe being a mother.

No girl could be afforded such a pleasure without the accompanying shame with which to share it. Isn’t that why it’s called a guilty pleasure?

Friendships were invaluable, even charged ones between women who hadn’t spoken in over a decade.