She Gets What She Came For by Chella Courington

No matter what you do, I sing “Stairway to Heaven” without end. Amen. Sugar on my tongue, chameleon-long, you raise your cotton shirt, spitting sticky rain. Over the Dutch Elm, Chagall’s wedding couple link hands and catch us in their drift, or is it their draft? Our stretchy limbs angel wings, our eyes spilling—Tibetan monkeys screech of Buddha in drag. Father Hennessey dispenses 50 Hail Marys for fucking mother’s best friend’s husband. Our fingers slip.

But this I know for sure: Mother sees the sun set, calls me high and low. Above Home Depot, I’m mistaken for a clumsy crow. Even when she ropes this body in, I won’t be there, not standing on the porch at 301 Sycamore but floating overhead, watching the girl who plunders and prowls. Last night she snaked into a bed on Main Street, spread arms and legs till the body ripped apart, the right side falling to the floor. The left side waiting for Chagall.




First Published: Tapas short fiction honorable mention, Doorknobs and BodyPaint (Issue 55, August 2009)