Hominy and the new husband enjoy painting their fingernails with the blue, the green, and the clear nail polish. They share the polish. They like the smell of acetone. Sometimes they spill it on the wooden floors and they don’t clean it up, they don’t lament the stains.

Hominy wants a child with the new husband. Sometimes she thinks of this boy, of how she would prepare him for things. Even at this late age, Hominy hopes to have a boy.

When Hominy becomes pregnant, she finds the new husband does not share her desire. A pill is procured, swallowed, and that is that.

There is a kind of violence when the new husband calls Hominy a stupid fucking bitch. The next day they laugh, they fold warm clothes, they watch the Tip Drill video on repeat, Whyte Chocolate moving and the credit card sliding; they sleep with their legs intertwined.

When the new husband doesn’t return home for the night, Hominy sleeps with both windows open. Fireworks rattle, loud, and she dreams of a woman’s inner thigh, of a woman’s stockings inside her mouth. For the most part Hominy sleeps through the night. Unless she consumes a large piece of watermelon, sweet, metallic. The large watermelon wakes her up and Hominy hits her elbow on the bathroom door. Hominy moves in the dark to the toilet. Twice, three times, five. This natural diuretic, the pink pink watermelon always wakes her.

Hominy and the new husband go for walks. They walk around their neighborhood at night. It’s not a quiet neighborhood. They see eight or nine people in the street. Numbers ten and eleven are indoors, standing together in their dining room. The interior of their home is lit up bright. This pair has chosen not to purchase blinds, not the wooden ones, nor the hard plastic ones, not curtains. They watch them, they see their plain white furniture.

When Hominy and the new husband don’t walk, they sit on the rooftop. It’s not quiet. The birds are yelling and the slanted tiles are hot under them. Hominy doesn’t wear a bra; her breasts are low and free. When she’s up on the roof, Hominy can see the birds and the trees as they move. With each movement the trees say, your body is an afterthought to him, you shouldn’t have come. Hominy ignores the angiosperms.

When Hominy waits for the new husband to come home she is restless. She moves from the queen-sized bed. Her eyes are open, her body is up, her back is rounded, Hominy throws the covers aside, her joints ache. When she waits she wears a gown unfit for sleeping, delicate, a bright color, sheer, long, full, her nipples visible. Hominy wears no makeup; she’s unmade and waiting.