-1The aunts and I

The aunts and I
are sequestered in
the bedroom in
Darrington -

Carolyn is sitting
on the bed, peach
nightgown folded
across her chest,
having been tucked
haphazardly into
the blankets,

the new born
kitten is floundering
on shaky toothpick
legs along the crease
in the sheets; she tells
us later that she put the
rest of the litter in a bag
before taking a hammer
to their skulls.

We (all of us)
cluster around the
tiny room, devoid of
light and air, but for
one tiny window-hole
near the ceiling that isn't
open.

She does not look at us,
though we can't help
staring at her: the saggy breasts
when she undresses later hanging
over her too-thin body, the
way the lines droop across her
face like a lazy current in a river.

She's bloated on drugs, or at
least her sense of complacency is,
locked as her vision is, on the tiny
box TV set watching reruns of
Robocop; she's more enthusiastic
in the show then in the intervention
we are all staging.

It doesn't help that the boys
are outside, already teenagers,
hungry to knock wholes in their
bedroom walls, hungry for
hot sex, and girls, sweet
and supple, ready to comply
in a small town where people
tend to follow the trend of looking
the other way -

It's more about her,
than about them, though
she tells my mother that
the man she was with is
no longer there, like some sort
of season, changeable, he merely
evaporated like water thrown on
the porch which has since melted in
the sun.

She is more interested in her new
Celtic style fringed purple jeans jacket,
ordered from a cataloge, then the
forest of pill bottles rising up from a
tray on the nightstand, sepia, hollow,
and half empty,

much like herself these days.