By: Kylie Betsill
I’m standing over the kitchen sink at 9 in the morning, topless in fuzzy gray sleep shorts, shoving blackberries into my mouth straight from the little plastic carton like a wild grizzly bear. Dad is watching Lord of the Rings in the living room and we’re out of cat food. Sunlight pours in, butter smooth and sweet as molasses. My fingers are stained purple and cold. Kids chase each other and scream high-pitched in the street outside my door. Blackberry juice drips.
If I had to pick a day, it wouldn’t be today. Really, it’s such a nice day. Soft recliner, fan whirring, no panicked homework, no long phone calls. If I had to pick a day to pick a president, it would not be today. I’m too young to vote, but the ads are everywhere. I’m too young to cry over front yard signs, but the ads are everywhere. The recliner clicks when I lean back and it’s barely noon now, but it already feels too late. It already feels done with. Time passes in a big pickup outside, leans out the window, waves at me, keeps driving on.
A 2-sided copper die spins in the air. Face side: the man, the pioneer, the false deity, the shaking shoulders. Tails side: the house, the base of operations, grandma’s backyard, hollowed out tree. Make a choice. I am small and soft and I’m not allowed a choice because I was born a month later than I was meant to, and I know the day exactly. Make a choice.
Robots are storming the streets with picket signs reading MACHINES ARE MACHINES. WE ARE NOT TRYING TO TAKE YOUR HANDS. WE CAN’T EVEN REPLICATE THEM. They’re wearing fishnets and glitter and they’re made of beautiful glimmering gunmetal. A man wants his hands inside a woman’s empty womb because he thinks he knows how to keep her safe, but he’s ripping her open, he’s killing her dead, but “she asked for it.” This is what the word affection was supposed to mean, but we put love into the definition instead because we put love into everything. Affection of the screen. Affection of the cross. Hands upon hands upon hands cover your eyes, layers of affection and protection, and god, all I was trying to do was show you this tree I drew.
If I had to pick a day, it wouldn’t be today. Save it for tomorrow so I have something else to worry myself with. Save it for tomorrow, and let me have the radio. I can’t afford gas but I have got to get out of this country. I can’t afford a three-star meal, but I have got to take my girl somewhere nice. We can’t afford a house but it’s okay because this apartment complex has a hundred kids playing and screaming in the street every day, and every day I come home, it reminds me what this country was made for. But I digress. The world is beautiful even though my teachers are in danger of being deported and my friends are in danger of being shot and someone across from me at lunch has the nerve to say, “Does it really matter if I vote?” I’m cutting off the flags embroidered to my jacket, just in case. “Does it really?”
I’ve got my hands deep inside a hollowed pumpkin, and I’m trying not to retch while I think of what shape to carve. Let me carve a continent with more going on than I can address with brush strokes. Let me carve a pair of gorgeous tits with stretch marks. Real girls are out here crying, slogging through the mud and fire, losing their minds. Real men are out here trying to keep the wind bag closed before Poseidon comes out of the water and tells them to go back to where they came from. Me, I’m just scarfing these blackberries. I want my mama. I want a clean ocean. Whatever. It can’t kill me because then I’d be dead. Whatever.
Heads, fear monger flips my table over. Tails, dancing in the streets. Have I ever told you my mama is Catholic? It doesn’t matter anymore. My dad says we won’t find out today, most likely tomorrow. And even then there will be lawsuits. And even then I’m scared. She asks me why I’m such a spineless commie and I say I think everyone deserves to live no matter what, and I don’t understand what’s so fucking wrong with that. I think we should be allowed to rely on each other. That’s the only reason any of us are still alive. But never mind all that.
Kids scream. Carton’s empty. I lean back. Recliner clicks. I think I’ll do some embroidery today. I think I’m gonna pray like Mama said to. Robots take a break to drink some motor oil, and a man cleans the blood off his hands. We’ll do it all again in the morning. It’s called a freedom fight, it’s called a campaign. I’m fighting for my right to stand topless over the kitchen sink and eat blackberries one after the other for 14 minutes like a fucking maniac. You should too.
Kylie Betsill studies English at Kennesaw State University with hopes of becoming an author of novels and poetry. She is a part of the Ancient and Modern Classics Honors Cohort. Her works mainly deal with themes of economic/political struggle, queer joy, and life as a romantic.