"Nobody Knows"

THE GIRL

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The teacher was a writer who had done well. She had her poem on a poster, she tacked it to the wall. The girl was only 18 and had not done well. The girl was a girl who liked the latest boyband. The girl was a child. It seemed to the teacher that this child wasn't doing enough.

Unbeknownst to the teacher, the girl had been writing her whole life. She'd been jotting down stories like nobody's business.

The girl was sure as hell not impressed with the poster - she was sure as hell not impressed with the teacher. She was impressed by how the teacher's daughter had pulled down her pants in the "Fine Arts" hallway and shown the girl the cherry tattoo on her ass. It seemed the class did not seep through the umbilical cord.

THE WOMAN

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The woman, who had only recently become a woman, had married. She'd married a man very old for her. At 19 she had married a man who was 58.

Somehow she told herself, "I'm attracted."

Somehow she'd convinced herself to sleep with him.

Whatever the woman's reasons were, she wasn't in love. Oh she though it was love, but love doesn't give you nervous stomach ache every day. Love doesn't make you wanna pull your small intestines out and use them as rope to get back to him. Years passed; still convinced she went on believing. After the little girl had been brought to them, and they had adopted the small black haired, green eyed, Russian four-year-old girl.

The little girl spoke no English. She only knew to hide behind the woman and to ask for water. A year passed. The woman heard her say "Mama". The girl said "Daddy". She and her husband were overjoyed.

SIX YEARS LATER as she sat in her bedroom, her husband and stepsons came into the room as group and told her she had to leave.

A month later she found out her marriage had been dissolved after four years. Her husband had been seeing his ex-wife for the last three years. Or at least she thought he had - she was sure it had been the whole time.

ALONE

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I have always been alone somehow. Even if someone has been near me or been there, somehow, in my heart, I've always been alone.

In high school, sitting there, thinking. Thinking. Thinking I was not a good writer. Thinking.... I could sing very well at seventeen. Maybe even better now. I've always been somewhat vain about my voice. I never got a solo in choir.

I never got praise in Creative Writing.

And he never actually loved me.

The End

"Dirt Eater"

She was pretty sure she'd given her father and all his imperfections enough forgiveness.

Years before, faced with the large man or not, she still would not have had the gall to begin to talk to him this way. Now that the words were flowing from her lips she realized the aftershock of this was going to be more than she would be able to run from.

"Fuck it." she had thought.

The little girl that was "fathering" miles away from the town he'd raised her in had just had a baby. The girl was the daughter of the woman that her father had married, whom she loving reffered to as "The Sausage".

The little girl had given her son her father's first name as his middle. The name of her first little brother. This would be the straw that indeed was going to crush the cammel into dust. Poor proverbial creature already lay beneath a mountaness pile of straws. Fuck it's back.

Her nephew, who really hadn't spent too much time with her father and had been sick at birth, was now second banana to this other little boy: and the worst part was he didn't even know it.

And because her father had now dragged her nephew through the mud, it was now more personal than it had ever been before. It was no longer just about her and her three male siblings, no. He'd made the new life part of it too. He had no shame.

Her sister in law had said that he'd tried to stand up for himself, blamming the baby's name on the new wife and stepdaughter. Well none of that mattered as her feelings poored out into several text messages and one horrid phone call where he'd turned it around and made it about how hurt he was.

Her mother had stood in the kitchen demanding she hang up on him. She said she knew how to deal with him. Whatever the case, she was 25, and according to her father she was overeacting and too old to have these feelings, saying that they were never gonna go away.

I'll always need my father....is that what he wants to go away? Well then I guess I'll just have to cut that part of my still beating heart out.

Yeah it was an overdramatic thought but, hey....she had to have learned something from him.