1   The reflection of the people across the street was in the mirror of the mahogany china cabinet—their open mouths, their open mouths multiplied, the swinging glass doors, mouths and our children’s feet. In its interior the mahogany china cabinet held a mirror. The children who were no longer children’s feet could be seen as they carried the cabinet to the junkyard (their faces couldn’t be seen, or their legs or torsos). Their feet were harassed. The children carried the heavy thing and it was hard to carry, the beautiful mahogany and glass doors swung as they walked. The rumor had changed and the people across the street shouted this evolved rumor. The children pulled out the people’s thin strands, oily, and sewed their lips shut with needle and thread. During the confrontation the mahogany china cabinet sat alone.

PEACH

When my mother dies, which will be very soon, I will buy myself a house. It will have large windows, and it will be mine. I will hang up photos of her on the walls, of when she was young. Young, like a peach. My mother has small breasts and full lips. The photos will show this. My breasts are larger and my hips are slighter. We’re not similar in any way. I do not have my mother’s long fingers, long toes, or the arches of her feet, her turnout, or anything else that belongs to her. I have nothing, nothing at all. When my mother dies, I will miss her like Fuller’s Earth Powder, or a relevé, a jeté. I’ll miss wiping down her body, and holding her discharge in my hands. My mother’s brain is dying, and her hair. Her hair is brittle. Her hips are dying, the bones and her toenails dying, her earlobes, dying earlobes, and her knuckles, dying. Her bottom lip is drying and dying, her purple nipples are dead. I touch her back and feel the bump of her spine. It is curved like a peach. Her skin is an accessory, hanging down from her buttocks like loose stockings, soft. My mother is light, she weighs nothing, and I carry her stupid body around for hours. Her hands move and it seems she can’t control them. They move fast, fast, fast. She is happy, and then she is sad. She cries quietly. My mother is an alien, and the photos hanging on the wall of my new home will show this.

CEREMONY