Sunken Dreamers' Almanac: Flash Flood

 

 

The unborn jostles inside mama's belly. Not so much as a name yet, the two outside voices have taken to calling her B for Baby, or Blessing, or Burden, or Broken Birth Control. Voice X is small & soft: sings sparks when all is calm, lacing the lonely catacomb air with lullaby. Very large & scary is voice Y: wraps itself around the silence like a full body zipper. Snags like a telephone wire noose & then yanks up, greeting X's shrieks with a cold clack of bone against wet bone, an occasional wash of siren. Everything is never too late until it is. Everything is just a warning until it isn't. B is for Beware. B is for Belly Filling Up With Blood. B is for Bodies, as in, two found, one within the other, at the bottom of a pool. B is for Bruises That Will Never Heal. B is for Bad Luck, That Poor Mother, That Poor Child. B is for Blood That Never Deserved to Bleed Out. B is for Bells, as in, church. B is for Black, as in, the color that everyone wore. B is for Born, as in, never. B is for Blanked Out, as in, as if nothing ever happened.