The Jersey shore house, your grandparents before the bad knees, the kites, the swollen tide. You had those perfect ringlets you eventually grew out of. Your brother had won golf trophies at the country club. You ran into the backswing, driver, thickest club. Paper body flying, velvet blood, red cracks in the driveway. You had a hole in your head, your mother was holding paper towels to it, trying to close you. Laid like a halved watermelon in her lap, father ignored speed limits. You asked your mother to show you your head, its hole, your skull a thousand church bells. The hospital where you were born, big dizzy needles, dreams of ice cream. You kept bleeding. Where were your brothers? Spiders, all you could think about. You laid in bed and men and women surrounded you. You thought you had won something. Ice cream, your wound, someone had licked it clean.

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Paige Chaplin is a writer/musician/fleetwood mac nerd and also she’s from the moon or something. Listen to her music at https://paigechaplin.bandcamp.com/