The House No One Sees: List 2

Missymelody pumped soap into privileged hands and rubbed it onto my arms and laughed.

Brittle wallpaper cracks away, and I touch what I think is naked plaster, surprised to find another layer.

I give up and deflate against the table.

I’m the principal.

The linoleum underneath is stained but still brighter than the rest.

My pulse quickens.

On Friday, I saw his blue truck pull in and stop, home.
and accelerate, gone.

She was vibrant, joyful.

The something is too big and too small, too wide and too skinny, but it’s not an illusion.

The syringe rolls against my palm.

She says I’m lucky because the number of babies born to opioid exposure is five percent higher in Maine.

Mary says opioids are an epidemic.

She says the drug companies knew rural workers lived hard lives, and hard lives meant medical issues, sore backs, sore hips, carpal tunnel syndrome, and sometimes depression.

She says the drug companies knew rural workers lived hard lives, and hard lives meant medical issues, sore backs, sore hips, carpal tunnel syndrome, and sometimes depression.

And his humor made me think he was okay, made me think he saw me three rows in, four desks back, but if he’d seen me he wouldn’t have handed out notecards and asked us to write and draw stories about who we were, who I was, sitting in the center of his classroom surrounded by camping trips and dance recitals, fishing trips and soccer games, and all the things that could make flowers bloom and weeds stand out.