Breadcrumb #503

CINDY TRAN

I stepped into the lamp-flooded night to watch my dad smoke
and stood in the driveway, in the long middle of his shadow.

It was spring. A smaller shadow hopped. I ran after it,
laughing, a bunny, a bunny! I ran back to my dad

and asked him to help me catch it. He went inside
and came back out with a cardboard box,

oily from bobbins, throat plates, and stop latches.
Together, we ran down our street, chasing a long-eared

shadow, lit by living room lights. I looked inside
the box and the bunny looked at me. What should we name her?

伊是兔. It doesn’t need a name. I named her Bunny
Rabbit, thinking I was clever like my dad, who once said

he named me 美華, true, familiar, and foreign to him.
At home, the lights were off. And in bed, I heard the night

bite into a cigarette at the stove. I heard Bunny Rabbit scratch
the cardboard as if to dig down—I turned to my side

and hoped for a different name. Six months later, she died,
but I didn’t know why or how except that its teeth

grew so long, it looked like a baby brown walrus
sleeping on its side. When I told my dad the 兔

had died, he shrugged and stamped out his cigarette
by my mom’s rose bushes.

• • • • • •

Breadcrumb #502

JERRY DRAKE

Teddy always found interesting things in the trash. He'd found Christmas presents for his kids; they'd grown up and moved to other cities. He'd furnished much of the family home with the things he'd found. Just a little spit and polish and they were good as new. He'd even once found a diamond ring that he had resized and gifted to his wife. She was gone, too, and living with a new man in Florida.

    Teddy was a collector. Of all the joys in his life, it was collecting that gave him the most pleasure. He built every day around it – finding things in the trash.

    Teddy lived alone now, in a little apartment, but he still picked up wonderful treasures from the trash; they covered every wall and surface of his home. He was a fixture in town around the campus and had been for forty years, running his little garbage removal business, hauling off bulk items on contract. He was good at making extra money from the trash too, picking up gently used things, finding valuable things, and reselling it all.  

    It was a big oak bookcase he was wrangling into his truck, from behind a student housing complex, when he knocked over an overstuffed bag of household trash. It spilled everywhere. Beer cans, booze bottles, coat hangers, and the remains of what seemed to have been a substantial birthday cake burst out of the bag, spilling all over the alley. Resting in the middle of the spread of refuse was a human finger.

    Teddy stopped tugging on the bookcase and looked down at the finger. It was long and thin, with a perfectly manicured nail, painted pink. It was a girl's finger. At first, Teddy thought it was some kind of prank finger or party favor. He stared at it for a long time before picking it up. He immediately dropped it again, realizing that it had, indeed, once been a part of a living person.

    Teddy looked from side to side and up and down the alley; he quickly kicked open all the bags of trash searching for the rest of the body. All his life Teddy had heard about garbage men and junkers finding bodies in the trash but he'd never come across one. Nope. It was just the finger. How did it get there? Was the owner dead? Had they just lost the finger? Cut it off? Accident?

    He started to breathe heavily and the alley around him began to spin.

    Teddy took out his handkerchief and wrapped up the finger, slipping it into the front pocket of his overalls. He finished loading the bookcase and pulled his truck out of the alley, casually, so as not to draw attention to himself. He was planning to take the finger to the police, initially, but he didn't. He took it back to his apartment. He rummaged around in his kitchen cabinets and found a small Mason jar and, gently removing the finger from his pocket, slipped it into the container. He then took some white vinegar out of the cupboard and topped off the jar, allowing no space for air. He ground the lid on tightly and held the jar up to the light.

“He rummaged around in his kitchen cabinets and found a small Mason jar and, gently removing the finger from his pocket, slipped it into the container.”

    There was the finger, suspended in the jar, long and thin with its perfect pink nail. Teddy decided he would take it to the police tomorrow, but for tonight he would add it to his collection of treasures. He placed the lost digit on a little curio shelf, itself pulled from the trash many years ago, near his TV where he could see it from his armchair. He got a beer, sat back and looked up at the thing wondering who it had belonged to. He tried to imagine the girl in his mind.

    He thought she might have red hair and green eyes and he wanted her to be named Susan. He tried to form the image of Susan in his mind, but it didn't come. Instead a singular image appeared in his mind's eye: tall and thin, pale skin, black hair, and deep blue eyes. She wore a yellow dress and she seemed to whisper a name toward him: Addie. Teddy didn't want Addie, he wanted his Susan back but the image wouldn't reform for him. The finger belonged to Addie and she was here to stay.

    Teddy never did take that finger to the police.

    It was on the third day after he found it that the dreams began; the dreams about Addie, with her pale skin, blue eyes, and that incongruous yellow dress. She whispered to him in a husky voice. Teddy. Teddy. Give it to me. Teddy. Teddy. I want it back.

    On the tenth day after Teddy found the finger, he began seeing Addie while awake. He was driving along in his old truck when he saw a flash of yellow behind a big mailbox. Then the next day the back of a girl with a yellow dress and raven hair stepping into a bodega shop. Then on the day after that, he saw her staring out at him from under the awning of an old dormitory, her eyes locking with his. She didn't smile and he heard her voice in his head. Teddy. Teddy. Give it to me. Teddy. Teddy. I want it back.

    He wasn't scared or panicked in any way. He just accepted that Addie had been real all along and somehow she had projected herself into his mind. He was seeing her every day, now, sometimes twice a day, all along his route. She even stopped in front of his truck while crossing the street, whispering again and again into his mind. Teddy. Teddy. Give it back.

    On the twenty-fifth day after finding the finger, Teddy was sitting in his armchair, alone, drinking his fourth can of beer and watching a baseball game. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of yellow on the fire escape. He leapt up and ran over to shut the window. He slammed it and locked it closed. But it was too late. Addie was already inside. She was standing in front of the old curio cabinet looking up at the finger, smiling.

    This time she spoke with her actual voice. Teddy. Teddy. Give it to me. It's mine.

    "Take it! Take it!" Teddy screamed. "Just for god's sake leave me alone!"

    Addie held out her hands and smiled at Teddy. She had all ten of her fingers; five on each hand, with short cut nails, painted yellow. The finger that Teddy had found did not come from Addie's hand. Addie laughed as confusion fell across Teddy's face. She grabbed the jar containing the finger from the curio and dashed out of Teddy's front door, slamming it behind her.

    Teddy ran to the door and shot the old Yale lock and drew the chain. She was gone. Addie had taken the finger and left him alone. Teddy ran his own fingers through his hair and suddenly realized something was wrong. He looked down at his hands to reveal that he now had only nine fingers.

    It turns out, Addie was a collector.

• • •

Breadcrumb #501

EMMA FURMAN

Lickety-split, I was benighted. Sore-
throated, shriveled seeds spilling out
of my wound, red as pomegranate,
as many in number. I was a sliver
of silver shot into a passing duck,
then falling and fished out between still 
beating wings. I was caught in a truck
and corralled by a clown, blind bucking
until the crowd went off, roaring.
I was under the heel, blown out
of the boot bottom. I was a willing gear,
teeth fit superbly into the tines.
I was not a sheep, but future shank.
I was watching through the bars,
looking in at someone else. I’m not the visiting
caroler, singing outside, but the dog of the house
trembling and whining. What am I now?
I'm calling home. In fact, I am the phone.

• • •

Breadcrumb #500

BRONTE BILLINGS

She looked up inside the skull,
light seeping through thin brown
marrow making umber veins
that reminded her of the back
of her mother’s knees.

Australopithecus, her little hands
plastered to the glass. Knuckles
knocked to smudge display cases, her
father chewed the syllables for her, uh-fah-ren-sis.
Say it with me.

He lifted her slight body
limbs locked around his neck.
You almost did it. He wasn’t
a liar, not like most
giants. He used big words

drew out the letters in
her soup. Each meal a different
word: Inguinal, Umbilicus, Iliac. She listened
to his voice drone, spoon spinning
words away.

Next, look here. We look
outside the bones. Anticipation
shook her, shrunken figures reaching
out with brown muffed hands.
It was nothing like her mother.

He took her to the bodies, displayed
figures marked Orrorin tugenensis,
Ardipithecus ramidus, Paranthropus robustus,
fabricated skin and carpet hair, she touched
her forehead to the top of their skull.

So much hair, she tangled her fists
in brown patches. It wasn’t
all there, clay flashes of
flesh, she pinched her own
pinkness looking for a match.

We don’t have it all anymore, hands
deep in her curls, funny how it’s knots
on our head. She knew the other places. Secreted
parts of herself she knew not to
touch. Some names she memorized

myometrium, exocervix, ectopic—this
looked nothing like her pictures.
There was his wide gap grinning we all
come from somewhere. But it wasn’t here,
but he wasn’t a liar, but her mother’s knees,

her mother’s velveted skin, her
mother’s fat curls, her mother’s
hot breath, her mother’s skull
he promised it’d be like
her mother’s face.

But it wasn’t. Australopithecus,
small and furry and brown
and not like her mother, not
like any mother. She pulled
his sleeve.

I want to go home.

• • •

Breadcrumb #499

ANNA PETERSON

I wake up and look out my window.  The sun is beginning to gently illuminate my sheer white curtains; and then I realize - there is nothing attached to my shoulder.

Pins and needles start rushing through me like a tidal wave. I contort my body, thrashing against my sheets. I am telling myself that I have an arm, that it really exists even if I can’t feel it at this moment; I am not dreaming its existence. My vision focuses on my phantom arm. I pick it up and place it on the empty pillow beside me and wait for its feeling to return.

“My vision focuses on my phantom arm.”

As I lay there I can’t help but think that this is what being with you felt like. Telling myself your love existed. Convincing myself that it was real, even if I couldn’t feel it at that moment. Even worse, waiting for it to come back.

I glance over at my phantom arm and see that it is real. The blood is pulsing through it as it should be, and it can feel the cold air of my bedroom once again.

My phantom arm returned, but your phantom love never did.

• • •