Morning Routine

Open your eyes to cans on the nightstand.

Blink, blink. The can-chorus winks back silver sun. 

Don’t check the time or call your 

mom, instead, just think about your 

mom and the time and feel your wet, slipping 

heart slide down your arm and into your hand.

Squeeze it (hard) or throw it, chew it up, 

whatever feels best. Or worst. Or most like something at

all. It’s too hot.

Flop on your back, arms Atlas-wide. Imagine 

your torso is an oven, like your mother's keeping you. A handle

bridging ribs, a door opening on hip-hinges, splitting 

skin, revealing rows of gleaming racks. Ding! 

Your torso is an oven. You don’t know 

if it hurts because no one’s ever asked. 

Inhale, not enough. Exhale too much. Watch 

a small fly flit, hear it whine close, like all the missiles and

bombs careening into the earth, into hearts, at this

very

moment. Don’t 

flinch. Squeeze your wet sponge heart (harder). 

Feel red swarm your sheets. 

Ask yourself: Does it hurt?

Mess Drip

Ear against temple, I’m sure I can hear

a slow drip from his suspended, pickled brain as it lands onto

skull below. Not like a faulty faucet, no.

But the

pap,

pap,

pap,

of goop dropping flatly on bone.

I close my eyes. Picture it: mucous, cotton

candy-colored canyons brimming with

motor oil. Until,

until critical mass and

pap.

Quiet as thought.

Later, I see the drip under a stained-glass

scab on his knee, swirling and screaming,

careening like a siren-

nymph and noise.

Then I see it in his eyes, flashing

like a quick, bright fish.

Pressed, chest against chest, I feel the

sludge leaking through the thin, papery walls

of the heart. Much faster than the brain’s

pap,

pap.

Osmosis, or through the organ’s earned cracks,

I guessed.

It crawls down the inside of his rib cage like a creep

of geckos, sticking and flopping and stretching

until it gathers, pools, pressurizes,

pulls at his base, weighing on his sacrum,

pushing his dick up like a lever.

Like a syringe.

Electra McNeil is a well-adjusted writer and waitress from Albuquerque, New Mexico. She spends most of her time laughing.