“No.”
“But I—“
“I said no.”
There was a slam,
a bang,
and then a sigh.
That’s how the story started,
and also how it ended.
She looked down at his body,
at the crooked bend of his neck.
She peeked into the crater of flesh,
at the bored-out hole in his skull.
She sniffed the air,
the gunpowder and smell of
shitty
shitty
death.
“Fuck,” she breathed.
His old motorcycle jacket
went around her shoulders.
She dropped the gun into
the big triangle shaped pocket,
and then patted the lump of it three times for good luck.
Opened the front door.
Locked it carefully for
No reason at all.
She kicked over their lawn-gnome,
Stumpy,
on her way down the cracked foot path.
He smiled sideways at her through
a tangle
of overgrown weeds.
“I had to do it,”
She told herself,
On the bus-ride to Toledo.
“He was ruining me,”
She sniffed,
During a thunderstorm in Vegas.
“It was me or him,”
She bleated,
To her mother is Southern California—
To the queen of Cacti and martini’s,
Of silk scarves and old men with mustaches.
Where she patted the gun three times
For luck,
Her mother patted her
Yves Saint Laurent ROUGE PUR COUTURE
Within a garden,
Of purple desert flowers
And black lacquered chaises.
She told her mother.
And her mother,
Sunglasses perched near the place
Where her nose was
Before she cut it off;
Her mother,
Smiled her peroxide smile,
And said
Nothing.
El Portal Literary Journal 