cw: death

you visit me in the liminal of my consciousness; 
a representation of a phallacy.
 
You remind me nothing of my father,
yet you bathe together 
two floating dicks in cloudy water, 
the rubber ducky is stained with blood 

Let's play Monopoly; 
I am the thimble 
my grandmother keeps in a glass case
collected to never use.
I only have a single red plastic thimble which 
came with my first sewing kit
too small for my thumb,
I just curse and bleed.
I do not throw the thimble away 

My great grandmother died once 
in childbirth, as it was
she was pronounced dead and awoke again 
with startled eyes 
became a somnambulant oracle; 
after the shrapnel fell upon the town
she found the decapitated girl’s braid 
by the tree where she dreamt it

When I am four and my great grandmother is properly dead
in a dream I do not recall she places a vase of poppies on the table 
I wake and ask my mother where they are

I dip the pregnancy test in the egg yolk 
it comes back positive. 
I take a new test in a Barnes & Noble bathroom 
with the help of my brother who does not exist 

We are in the Big Brother house together:
this constitutes a sex dream 
it is the eighth one I have had about you 

I tell you I dreamt my cousin’s boyfriend was on a tour in Afghanistan; 
he is not even in the army. 
I do not tell you we made love in this dream
in the woods and on a rug 
before the turtles began climbing the rose bushes 

I pull the bullet from my neck 
it is a green almond –
a prescription for bed rest.

---

Anna Zarra Aldrich is a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts Boston where she studies feminist and ecocritical approaches to literature and creative writing. Her writing is often preoccupied with issues of ecology, science, and space. Her work has appeared in Babel Tower Notice Board (Forthcoming February 2021), Strukturriss (forthcoming July 2021), Long River Review, aurora journal, and the anthology Fast Funny Women.

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