Continuous Family Ownership

Jenn Marie Nunes

Then comes the part where I am the best. I am the best ever.

The backbone stupid. So there was a

goat could speak as if trolls and a water under the bridge. There’s my

girl in the box

’neath the second pine. Clouds part. I hurt people on purpose. This is

what I learned from my

mom. A gold dirt. Sit me down to whisky every night for I am exactly

as dirty as I dream.

So I inherited my grandmother’s heels her lamb’s wool coat and her

penchant for fashion over

fit. Mommy this is how you die. Through the brown water brown fish

like children’s dreams.

I was daughter then I had to be her everything. I was like the dog and

like I was her husband and whatever else.

It’s not fair but I’m not a fair person. Later she tells me I was terrible

to live with

in high school. “That’s codependent,” my friend says. “That’s an only

daughter growing up with

a single mother,” I reply. The truth they say will set you free.