In The Shower
To the boy I can no longer hurt,
It was your birthday yesterday. When you were five, I smashed your head into the cake
and you yelled that brittle squeal, the same as the door that slammed and took your tooth.
I still hear it at times, Tony,
the emptiness between each step you took to come down the stairs.
I hear it now, the squelch of sandwiched blood that came from your friend’s neck onto your mouth, thick as cupcakes and glue.
I see you transparent not like water but the faint, electric outline of a ghost, and sometimes the water hits me in the shower
and I think back to the day we buried you when you came back from Vietnam. I placed myself in your casket and imagined the pellets as falling dirt and I started to laugh because I felt stupid and I thought you would find it funny.
We laid you in Virginia where your mother was born. You never liked it there because
you were worried about the Mothman scooping you up and taking you to the moon.
I liked to run after you in the laundromat pretending to be him, your eyes lit up as bright as eucalyptus trees on fire and napalm raids in skies sizzling the blue into a shade of dark purple.
I imagine myself now eating the purple and drowning Mothman under
Virginia pellets where your casket is living inside my gastrointestinal tract breaking down
the cupcakes
all over your face where your teeth
will rot away
the hurt I gave you.
Alexis Limon-Aceves is a senior at Hamilton College in Clinton, NY, pursuing a degree in Biology with a minor in Creative Writing. “In the Shower” is his first publication in a literary journal. In his writing, he likes to explore family dynamics, the emotional implications of marriage, weaponized domesticity, and how our everyday lives and relationships reveal our own hidden temptations and truths. In addition to cell biology research, he likes to review movies, journal, and dance with his friends!
