Here’s a thesis for you—it all amounts to muck. Even the gentlest thrust
of wind, a tongue through cherry’s stem, even the wielding of tooth-
picks by almost-boyfriends can pock skin latitudes, can rifle its thickness.

In every life, I was the ideal audience for wuthering, who demands with
no hands, who clothes me in rain and other tortures delicate. When
I first realized I would never be singular, I began this arduous search for

a new body that could accommodate my five hearts and these blunt,
erupting teeth which seemed to frighten (I don’t see why) each man
who mounted me. Oh those? Don’t mind them. But they did—are not

girls supposed to be thresholds of velvet, vessels of petals and utter
abstraction? I steeple my hooves like a therapist. Not quite, no. Girls,
(how do I say it), when posed with a question like would you rather

be insane or dead, they will always choose the former, lives deduced to
how they can expertly avoid danger. Of what, you might ask? Here—
hold this mirror. And hold my hoof too. How lonely I’ve been! In this

life, it is best that I turn to liquid. That’s in nowadays, you know? We-
eping, gnashing, biblical punishments. Do you think God will cough
up when the next Great Flood is? I’d like to audition for a minor role;

I think it’s called fifth. All I have to do is (let me check these notes):
dispel chaos with tenderness, swallow the bones of every bucked man, and
when the water asks me back (which it will), I will hand my bridle to it—