one o'clock on a sunday

Brooke sits upright in bed, cursing silently to herself and sucking on the moistened end of a menthol cigarette. Her lungs are shriveling up and dying, she can feel it, but every morning after yawning and stretching she grabs the pack from her night stand and fires one up. Then another. Then another. Between puffs and wheezes she fantasizes about killing her family. She wishes she could gather them all in a wooden barrel and roll them into some deep, remote body of water to writhe and gurgle and drown. Then she would wipe her hands clean, fire up a cigarette, and drive quickly away to no where in particular.

These fantasies make her content if only for a brief moment. They keep her mind off of the reality of the situation.

At the precise moment that she begins a particularly violent thought her mom bursts in the room with a beer in her hand, smelling like the floor of a horse's stall. The shirt stretched aross her large breasts reads "REBEL" in dark red ink. She works forty hours a week as a cashier at a 7-11 and answers every request from her manager with a "Yes sir!" It is unclear what she is rebelling from. She's skinnier than her daughter, almost attractive, but then she opens her mouth.

"Your grandpa is at it again!" she screams, her dead glassy eyes bulging out of her skull. It is a very tiny room yet she continues to yell as loud as her blackened, shriveled lungs will allow her.

"Your grandpa is at it again!" she repeats with southern vigor. "He fucked your grandma last night. Now he's lying to the both of 'em!"

Brooke flips a page of People Magazine. No glance at her blabbering, half-drunk mother. Yet her mother continues with no loss in enthusiasm.

"He's back sleepin' with that 30-year old gold digger from Texas!" she yelps, fingering her thick gold wedding ring. "He told yer grandma that he was finished with her, that he won't gonna fuck her no more. But momma found messages in his phone from that rotten skank sayin' some of the most foul and repulsive things. But your grandaddy talked his way out of it like he always does and ended up havin' sex with momma to prove that he still loved her. But he's been tellin' this bitch from Texas that he ain't fucked momma in 16 years! And to top it all off, she's been stealin' money out of poppa's wallet. The nerve of that redneck!"

She stops to take a healthy gulp of Bud Light, spilling a drop on her Rebel T-shirt. "Brooke, you gotta 'nother cigarette? I just smoked my last one, baby."

Without looking up, Brooke tosses a pack of Camel Menthols towards the foot of the bed.

"You can have one," she says. "But don't take any more."

The Mom pulls a cigarette from the pack and sparks it up. She makes a remark about how menthols taste like the tail end of a tractor pipe, but her attempt at humor flops like a dying fish. The two smoke, in silence, as Mom wanders over to a DVD stand in the corner of the room. As she bends low to inspect the bottom of the rack a black, a laced thong rides up the small of her hairy back. "Oh, I just love Vin Diesel!" She glances over her shoulder. Brooke jams her cigarette on the top of the can and flips the page of her magazine.

"We're havin' pigs in a blanket tonight Brooke," she says timidly. "I want you to eat with us."

Brooke eyes rise slowly from the magazine to meet her mothers. Beautiful deep brown with dark black bags underneath them. In her head she imagines her mother roasting on an open flame, surrounded on all sides by people poking her face with long, sharp sticks.

"Why? So I can listen to you and dad argue about Chester again?" she says, locked in a wide eyed stare with her mother.

"No, I'm not going to sit through another night of that. It hurts me enough to see dad walk around like he's already dead. That kills me, absolutely kills me. And there's absolutely nothing I can say to him to make him feel any better. The only person who can do that is you but you're too damn wrapped up in yourself to look in the mirror and admit that you fucked up! You can make this better but you don't. You refuse to. You see how badly grandpa has hurt grandma. She doesn't even get out of bed anymore. She barely talks to any of us. Yet you go out and do the exact same thing. I'm over it. I'm done."

She grabs her pack of cigarettes from the nightstand and stomps out the door, slamming it with a thud behind her.

The mom looks out the window and sees her daughter driving away to no where in particular. The reddened leaves have begun to fall, leaving the trees gray and naked. Without blinking she follows a leaf from a high branch as it flutters and drifts to the brown grass below. She takes one final swig of beer, crushes it between her hands, and stares with dead glossy eyes at taillights of her daughters green Honda.

love.

love.

is a merging of two worlds.

love is simple: love is a foot massage, a back rub, a hand stroke. love is a look. love is innocence. love is childlike and playful. it giggles. loud. it cooks for you. it feeds you french fries while watching jerry springer. it licks the grease off your cheek or wipes it with a finger. love is small talk, big talk, bed talk. love sucks toes. love licks below the belt between the cheeks. love is dirty. love is watching her sit and pee. love is fishing out her tampon. love fucks during periods. love fucks twice without cleaning up. love bites and scratches and sins. it's not always flowers and lollipops. sometimes its razors and needles. fuck me until i bleed. love moans. love comes inside. "i love you, you're amazing." love kisses her eyes and drifts peacefully to sleep.

love is complicated, love is insecure: don't hurt me, you're all i have. you have my heart don't stomp on it. love cuts and curses. blood and "fuck you." i was drunk, no excuse but im sorry. my old boyfriend had me upset. love nags and demands. i love you. baby i love you. love me back talk to me. you haven't loved me enough today love me more. why arent you talking. stop being a bore. rub my back stroke my hand rub my feet. i need these things and you are here and i love you.

love sometimes explodes. then love is deadpan. love opens avenues and closes them, too. it floats down low and sometimes become stale but it never cheats. never. it stays loyal through shit and rainbows alike. love is work. love sacrifices. love dedicates.

love is a merging of two souls.

love

is never a waste.