SCAB PICKING
meg pokrass
He hops around the living room scratching his ankles, complaining of an itch. Lately, he's decided to howl about how bad it is to wait for the lawyer to call, flogs himself for marrying her. I tell him to leave it alone, enough scab picking. She lies up for months in bed with a baby that turned out to be nothing but a stomach ulcer. She came home from the doctor one day wearing her size 4 boot cut jeans again, saying the OB GYN had never seen anything like it, describing how the OB/GYN fainted when he did the ultrasound. He wished he'd been at the appointment, to see the doctor falling over. Going through her car weeks later he found a rubber fat suit curled in the trunk. Still, he has dreams of someone peeping. I dig my head under his shirt on the worst days and he rubs it. Ba-Gawk! he says, over and over. I don't really want this, I say. I want to sit and watch Myth Busters, adopt a cat, have a dream.
Meg Pokrass
megpokrass@gmail.com
The Lay of the Land
Richard Ford