Night Wherever We Go

by Tracey Rose Peyton

And most of all, she didn’t want to be in the thick of it herself, with a trapped soul inside her, sucking her dry and tipping her organs about, or later, nursing at her breasts or cradled in her lap, where eventually it’d be taken away, the moment she allowed herself to love it.

Some days, he ate on the cookhouse steps, and when he’d catch her watching him, he’d give her the strangest manic grin, his lower jaw twitching from side to side. The two halves of his face didn’t seem connected, deadened eyes and an animated mouth.

Dusk was falling and the balmy weather was hot and sticky, like the inside of a closed mouth.