From Some of Them Will Carry Me, a collection of short stories, which will be published next month by Dorothy, a publishing project.

When my mother dies, which will be very soon, I will buy myself a house. It will have large windows, and it will be mine. I will hang up photos of her on the walls, of when she was young. Young, like a peach. My mother has small breasts and full lips. The photos will show this. My breasts are larger and my hips are slighter. We’re not similar in any way. I do not have my mother’s long fingers, long toes, or the arches of her feet, her turnout, or anything else that belongs to her. I have nothing, nothing at all. When my mother dies, I will miss her like Fuller’s Earth Powder, or a relevé, a jeté. I’ll miss wiping down her body, and holding her discharge in my hands. My mother’s brain is dying, and her hair. Her hair is brittle. Her hips are dying, the bones and her toenails dying, her earlobes, dying earlobes, and her knuckles, dying. Her bottom lip is drying and dying, her purple nipples are dead. I touch her back and feel the bump of her spine.

It is curved like a peach. Her skin is an accessory, hanging down from her buttocks like loose stockings, soft. My mother is light, she weighs nothing, and I carry her stupid body around for hours. Her hands move and it seems she can’t control them. They move fast, fast, fast. She is happy, and then she is sad. She cries quietly. My mother is an alien, and the photos hanging on the wall of my new home will show this.