Seven things I’ve been meaning to tell you by Brandi Wells

1. I have not been saving my water bottles in order to recycle them. I have been saving them for you. I want you to either make yourself so small you fit into one bottle OR cut yourself into bottle-sized pieces. Having you in these bottles is the only way I can fully trust and keep you.

2. Every day I put a few of my shirts in your closet. In a few months, all of your closet will be mine.

3. I hid the butter in the drawer underneath the apples, because I know whenever I am not home, you scoop butter out using your fingers.

4. I have been saving the gray hairs I pluck from your head. I love the way they look in a Ziplock bag. I will need them one day.

5. I want to put my fingers in your nose, so I can feel where the life goes inside you.

6. I rotate the chairs around the kitchen table so they will all be equally sat in by you. I have marked my favorite chair and sit in it every time, no matter what spot it’s in.

7. When I am trying to fall asleep, I think about flattening you with a giant iron and wrapping your carcass around me like a blanket. When the blood turns cold, I will wear you anyway.

Brandi Wells has a BA in Creative Writing and her fiction appears in or is forthcoming in Pear Noir, Monkey Bicycle, Decomp, and Vulcan. She has a chapbook forthcoming as part the chapbook collective Fox Force 5, which is being released by Paper Hero Press.

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Paperheart by Chris Castle Safe Harbor by Michael Thurston Norman’s Trip by Neila Mezynski For Kevin by Matthew Burnside