Growing Out My Bangs

When I crossed Humphrey Street on my way to the short brick row of shops—bank, dry cleaner, deli, liquor store (everything but a place to buy rope)—I passed under the worms dangling from the maples, and for a moment, I didn’t feel afraid, jealous, unnoticed, hungry, hot. I heard a siren from blocks over but couldn’t tell which streets, which way, how far. I turned to see my poor old body pooled on the sidewalk, like a dress I’d stepped out of and left for next morning to wash. So I figured I must be dead, had died minutes ago, but hadn’t been told. Shame. I’d worn my favorite headband, too: the one with plastic horns: thick, pink, and pearlescent that held fast, and shone.

The Way This Acela Train Eats

I watch a video on my iPhone of a python swallowing a brown fawn whole. The snake’s jaws unhinge and it moves down the length of the baby deer, slides with its reticulated muscle, the way this Acela train eats the tracks through Connecticut: one smooth forward swallow. The herpetologist who narrates says the snake will have to lie with its long full body for quite a while: the shape of the fawn slowly dissolving over days, maybe a month, for the snake’s juices to break down the meat so it can shit bone bits, antler buds, flat teeth, and velvet. Until then, the snake can’t move at all. This is when the snake is happiest, most vulnerable and sated. I am midway between New York City and Boston—the night sky follows this last train out of the station. I drink a cold ginger ale to calm my stomach. My insides are confused: I’m sitting still and enclosed, rushing in some direction. The thin moon in each window of this train.