Breadcrumb #252

MONICA LEWIS

When I imagine my liver, I imagine a little black worm with a wide open mouth. When I remember my life with you, it looks just the same.

These days, I buy pig snouts for my dog and let her eat them in bed. Sometimes I give her ice, even though it's been swimming in gin and I wonder how she never gets sick. The ice doesn't last as long as the pig snouts and not nearly as long as the pizzles. A pizzle is a bull's penis that's been stretched and twisted then dehydrated. It looks more like a girl's french-braid than an organ that once pulsed.

The night I realized I was too good for you, I funneled full-fat mayonnaise into my mouth using potato chips as a scoop. I drank eight beers instead of chilled liquor and seltzer. 

I think things don't dry up, shrink-shriveling, then die. What feels like emptiness is in fact excess and what feels like excess is maybe also emptiness. We get our fill of the other, expanding until exploding back into nothing and then, come morning, find ourselves woken and desiccate, again.

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