More Martha

The Worst Day
Yesterday Martha asked if she could be the cold spot on the other side of my pillow. I resolved not to flip it over in the hours between the covers and falling asleep. She doesn't deserve to touch this cheek, but as I started to drift off, barely even conscious, I turned over the pillow side and felt the brief but comfortable cool. I could collapse a lung shouting that I put my head on a pillow and not a Martha, but whatever she calls herself she is. She's the most confident, clumsiest ballerina I've ever patronized.

She's self-taught, and it shows. But ask her and she's a the god damn Russian tsar of the dance, because she says, "I am a ballerina. I am the girl who watches you dream. I am the cold spot on your pillow!" Mostly, I think she's a ballerina because I watch her while she dances. But I can't watch her when I'm fast asleep with the pillow warming under my grimy, unshaven face. There's no telling what she is then. Disease still eats organs while men in shacks dream of Jesus. I know that much. That half a second pleasure ate the skin right off my face. That night I dreamed of Jesus in a tutu and sweat out all my secrets right through the mattress.


Day 4
Martha left a plate of cookies by my door. I dumped them in the bushes outside the window. There's no telling what she put in them. They looked normal enough, but there's still no telling. They looked like sugar cookies, but I'm not confident she knows the difference between sugar and salt, and I don't believe she can differentiate between butter and rat poison. She once talked about how the streets were full of rats, but not a single one ever invaded her domicile. Her words, not mine. That's why she bought poison by the pound, in case the streets tried to come inside. She'd converge on them with sheer poundage, by the great trap of her will to live. I envy rats.