Daisy May

I do not remember most things. I do not remember the words I said yesterday or the day before and I will not remember the words I say tomorrow. I do not remember the day my father left or my last day of high school. I do not remember if it was blistering hot or if the clouds provided relief but I like to imagine it was a beautiful day. Perfect weather for grave-digging and swallowing shards of glass. She could not suffer one day more with noxious organs weighing her down and I know the trees could feel my misery because I cracked my bones one by one and sat them at their roots. Take these, please. Take them for me. I do not need them. Please. I remember teeth through skin and needles injecting death into her bloodstream. This I remember. I watched him grab fistfuls of dirt and it may as well have been joy personified crushed between tendons and running through fingers as vermilion water— dare I say blood? She could not walk anymore, had endured many falls in her last weeks. I let her fall. Heard the whines and ran to see humiliation in a heap of black fur. Take her, please. Take her pain and take her body and show her the eternal fields of wheat. I cannot help her. The woman met us in sunlit grass and presented her tools and this is where the teeth come in— this is where joy is crushed and bones are ripped from my body. This is where I remember.

— ODH