"Milk Call" by Tom Busillo

You knocked on my door that morning holding an empty gasoline can and asked to borrow some milk. I told you I bought by the quart, but you said that was OK, you weren’t going that far anyway. Then later on the back porch, you taught me how to pray to your body with roses and a mask. You asked to stay, persistently pleading. That night, you made my chest move an inch inwards so that my heart couldn’t beat as fully and my lungs couldn’t expand. You wrapped a ribbon around my head and tied it with a bow so I couldn’t speak. You bound my hands in prayer. You put tiny teardrops of glue in my eyes so I could no longer see. You tightly wrapped a corset around me like a brace so that I would stay straight. You put me inside a bed of feathers, stitched me up, and said to wait. You sang me a lullaby about a bracelet of brambles so I could sleep. In the morning you were gone and my house was packed with gallons of milk jugs, but I knew I’d been emptied of everything.

Tom Busillo’s (he/his) writing has appeared on McSweeney’s, PANK, and Unbroken, among others, with additional work forthcoming in Calliope. When he's not writing, he likes playing acoustic guitar and attempting to sing Leonard Cohen and Magnetic Fields songs.  He lives in Philadelphia, PA.