Us four children used to ride the school bus to the small park. We would hang upside down on slick metal poles. We would jump from chalked number to chalked number. We would stand atop the green slide and roar like the beasts we were. One of us smelled of alcohol from a mother spilling too much of her flowery flask. Another would collect cicada skins only to be washed out by hurricane after hurricane. The third liked to peel sticky fingers off the monkey bars. It was always disappointing when the crack of a skull wasn’t heard. And the youngest would attach to us children like a parasite.
We would ride a purple bike, piled one on top of one another. We would climb the bare crape myrtles that weren't meant to be climbed. We would scrawl the names of dead cats onto rocks with sharpies. One always said another stunk of airplanes. The youngest liked to call fingers tentacles but would always accidentally use the word testicles. When we played princesses and knights the oldest would wake the youngest with a long press to the lips.
Us children would sling ourselves off swings, only once breaking a rib. We would lay against the great oak tree and slurp snowballs. Pistachio, wedding cake, and two chocolates with condensed milk and sprinkles. We would watch as each of us got plucked from the grass and plopped into SUVs, BMWs, trucks, and Priuses.
And then two of us children disappeared and only fragments were left. And then there were two of us children. We left the park and laid in peeling bathtubs and prayed to a God we never believed in that we would become siblings. We stared at each other in sleeping bags, threatening to tell someone that we both still dug in our noses, to find evidence of a brain inside. We bounded off trampolines like frogs only to hit metal springs and bust open ankles.
And us two grew and grew. And we played with Barbies. And we threw these Barbies across the room. And we ripped off blond heads and slathered perfect womanly bodies in hot sauce. And we boiled them. And we froze. And us children killed them.
Alex Hembree-Padgett Alex Hembree-Padgett is a New Orleans bred poet and fiction writer. They especially enjoy the dark, weird, and obscure. They are in an arts conservatory, focusing on creative writing and have been published in "Umbra," "The Weight Journal," and have been a finalist for the Patty Friedman contest. When Alex isn't dwelling on the nature of the universe they are spending time with their devilish, black, tripod cat, Circe.
