Wrinkles
A woman constructed a hammock out of candy wrappers. She’d lie on it, look up at the stars, and wonder, “Why does the sky have so many wrinkles?”
She emptied all her lotions into a pot on the stove. Mixed in Brazil nuts for richness and beetle shells for shine. She heated the whole mixture until it pulsed and whistled like a neon sign.
The woman stared at her husband until he left the room. He muttered the word Desolate under his breath. She scooped his chewed fingernails from the table with a soup ladle and sprinkled them over the pot.
In bed that night she slipped out of her husband’s grasp. In her absence she left a pillowcase stuffed with warm cream cheese.
The woman climbed a stepladder out on the porch. Her knees wobbled under the weight of her heavy pot. With her fingers she scooped and smeared the mixture across the sky’s crows feet and laugh lines, everything smelling of tire rubber and mosquitoes.
