~
Veins
When you walk through the kitchen after the late shift, you stare at the way the green light on the microwave illuminating the 10:47 reflects onto the dirty floor tiles. From where you’ve stopped at the threshold, you can make out little crumbs mixed with dirt and some dark appendages of what you assume to be cockroaches lining the spaces between the tiles. This collection of matter flows through the floor in long, straight veins carrying inky, infested blood. You wince as you think of Bea’s habit of picking up and eating the Cheerios she drops on the floor. You remember clipping a coupon from one of those home maintenance magazines some company sent to your address by accident a few weeks ago. The coupon is probably still valid—it will grant you a free bottle of Clorox. You wonder if Clorox is what you should even be using to clean tiles. You feel the strap of your cloth bag pinching the skin of your shoulder and remember that your manager gave you a few of the ripe cantaloupes from the produce aisle that were starting to go bad and a container of yellow cupcakes with purple frosting when you told him it was your daughter’s birthday and you dropped her off with the neighbor right after school for the entire evening. That was a lie. You left Bea at home like you did every single day after school got out because you can’t afford daycare or a nanny and because the neighbor has too many half-full bottles of beer on his countertops to make him a half-decent child sitter or “manny,” as you’d heard on some podcast. But you can’t say this to your manager because you’re not supposed to leave your seven-year-old (she’s eight now) alone for seven hours every afternoon and evening when you go to work the afternoon/evening shift at the cash register so that you can keep a roof over your daughter’s head. When you dropped Bea off at school in the morning before going to your morning job cleaning the dorms at the community college, she asked you if you were going to make her a special birthday dinner. As you walked up the sidewalk to the brick entrance that was splattered with Graffiti by some of the bigger kids who went to the school, you told your daughter you left some frozen lasagna in the back of the fridge to defrost and all you have to do is stick it in the microwave for two minutes and then you can even squirt some ketchup on top, okay honey? And as she bit her lip and nodded, you kissed her forehead and then peeled your lips off the thick strands of black hair that clung to her temples, sticky with oil. You wonder now if she took her weekly shower yet while you were at work that evening and if she left the hot water running for more than five minutes. You realize you’ve never asked her what day she has designated as shower day. You sigh as you toss the slightly-mushy cantaloupes into the right drawer of the fridge and slide the container of cupcakes onto the empty shelf. You’re grateful to the manager. You know that if he hadn’t given you this plastic case, Bea would have had to wait until lunch at school to eat. You feel a small smile playing at your lips as you realize that maybe you can make up for the evening by giving her a special belated birthday breakfast. You hear the lips of the fridge doors press against each other snugly as you tiptoe into the living room, where Bea is lying on the pullout couch with your nicest blanket draped over her small body. You kneel on the plastic carpet in front of the couch and stroke your daughter’s hair. It’s still dirty. You brush your lips against her cheekbones and taste salt. You feel your throat begin to swell.
~
Divya Mehrish is a writer from New York. Her work has been longlisted by the National Poetry Competition and commended by the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award. She has been nationally recognized by the Scholastic Writing Awards and the UK Poetry Society and has won the Gannon University National High School Poetry Contest, the Arizona State Poetry Society Contest, and the New York Browning Society Poetry Contest. Her work appears in PANK, Prairie Margins, Blue Marble Review, Polyphony Lit, Ricochet Review, Tulane Review, Sienna Solstice, The Kenyon Review Young Writers Anthology, Sandcutters, and Amtrak’s magazine The National, among others.