The Rental

At first I refused to leave the house in a robe in front of the new neighbors, and now it hangs open while I take out the trash. I dump the bag in the compost because there’s no room left in the proper bin and I figure by now that most things are a lie.

Back in the kitchen, the light’s going gold. I’m sundown blue again, courting collapse. I think of the way my parked car’s tires bite the curb with nowhere to go. My mouth’s so tight you could hang laundry from it.

I crack open my phone to see The Roman Empire trending again. It turns out a lot of men think about the Fall of Rome. They love a good empire plundered and sunk: slaves, a virgin, the distance between martyr and saint. It’s not so far to go.

Outside, my kids are playing, making up the rules for today’s kingdom: You are the queen, you are the dragon, you are the ogre, you are the castle itself.

I see the grass needs to be mowed but I don’t recall agreeing to grass. This isn’t even my house. Somebody dreamt of this. I mean, I never did. All of this babies and dishes to do? What a laugh.

“Momma!” I hear. “Momma?” It’s the girl, always wanting something. “Hush,” I say, trying not to sound annoyed. It’s not her fault. She may as well learn now.

But I’ve already forgotten something again, like how blood is blue, or how veins collapse, or how nothing can stay open on its own.

Brigid M. Hughes is a writer from San Francisco. Her work can be found in The Rumpus, sPARKLE & bLINK, Memoir Magazine, the anthology Being Fifteen edited by Dave Eggers, and elsewhere.