Simulacrum

I’m not a dog
Right before you slam my head into the wall. You leave me and I go home.

The summer blisters onward. My mother my sister and I stand on cool kitchen tiles barefoot
The screens straining in cicadas and hot air. I stand still. My sister making lemonade. My mother
says I’m so glad I raised children who would never stand for abuse. What she doesn’t know won’t
kill her.

My older sister calls me in the Rite Aid parking lot I sit down right between the cracked white lines
Orange streetlights keep me from getting run over. She tells me what I already guessed.
It’s in the way we can’t make eye contact.

August and my older sister and I sleep on an air mattress. I say if you marry him I’m going to cut off
my pinky finger like that crazy lady we saw on TV and I’m not kidding. Sometimes my sister looks
at me and I wonder what she knows about me or has guessed.

The basic question: what’s going to happen to us?
All year I become what I am not and I chirp like a songbird don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch
me

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Faith Ellington (she/her/hers) is a PhD student at Louisiana State University.