15 Simple Stories

Hand Mirror

When I croak
Bury me under the redwood
Limb by loving limb
I want to caress the ground
Like children suckle bosoms
And don't forget my hand mirror
I want to watch myself
Every waking hour
In heaven

"I didn't know Mama was a poet."

Claire breaks her cigarette over the picket fence she leans against to scratch the itch bugging her back while Jacky fans the left-over smoke out of his face in a brief coughing fit.

"You can't do that anywhere else, Claire?", Jacky growls through his teeth as he sticks the poem into his back pocket and buries the box it was in.

The sky is overcast with tiny clear sections of white poking through and the wind picks up right as Claire swings another cigarette between her cracked lips.

"You better not light that around me", Jacky grunts as he tosses the shovel by the oak tree and disappears into the house.

Claire shrugs and lights her cigarette in the tame wind, staring into the sky while dark clouds swirl and prepare to gather rain.

"Wonder if Mama can make getting soaked by rain poetic", she snickers and puffs upward while the rain begins to drop.

One of the second-story windows swing open and Jacky sticks his head out in disbelief.

"Claire, if you don't get your ass...", he mumbles to himself as he claps repeatedly until Claire notices him.

"Don't forget the hand mirror, dopey", she jokes when their eyes meet mid-smoke.

"And put that shit out or I'm gonna put you out with it", Jacky snaps before slamming the window shut.

The rain flips from drizzle to hard drops and Claire rushes inside, laughing and swinging the back door to stomp the cigarette out.

The kitchen comes and goes in waves of clarity and blur when Claire shuts the back door behind her and Jacky scrambles towards her when she nearly catches her hand on a loose kitchen knife.

"What did I tell you about being a pothead, jackass?", Jacky barks as he tries to keep his center of gravity while helping Claire find hers.

Claire giggles as she stumbles through the living room and slides open a drawer full of joints to snatch the hand mirror before shutting it quickly.

"I got the hand mirror, Jacky", she giggles uncontrollably while he tries to pry her away.

The rain comes along with thunder and lightning and the electricity goes out soon enough.

"There goes the neighborhood!", Claire exclaims as she honks, squeaks, and barks like a seal when Jacky tries to lift her from the dresser.

"Jacky, incest is nasty. Quit touching me", she blurts out and quickly cackles while he's doing his best to move her and grab the joints.

When he grabs the joints, she kicks his hand and gathers them as she gallops upstairs with him in hot pursuit.

Jacky stares down each of the four possible corridors and chooses one on the left to find her.

"The cigarette didn't have weed in it, Jacky boy! Chill out!"

Claire's voice ping-pongs across the hall but he can't trace the source of it. The room at the end of the first hallway is naked with the exception of a massive horse picture in the middle of the north-facing wall.

Claire lets out a loud neigh and Jacky sprints down the hall into the one adjacent.

"Hand over those damn joints, pothead!", Jacky shouts into the hallway while he shines the light from his phone.