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My Stepdad Cannot Blow Up the Inflatable Kayak

by Eva Salvatierra

i wish i could tell you i used a skill from the dialectical
behavioral therapy, mom, but i picked persimmons to curve my
depression. nearly artificial in their glossiness, the curvature of color
fused from green to deep orange and when i got home i saw the
football sized watery thin-skinned apples my sister had bought
at the grocery store. i checked the sticker but i didn’t have to
to know. i sell apples, but not those. those are an American emblem, the
bigger the better and pumped with artificiality until we grow numb and chew
the edges of our mouths off. of course they were
honeycrisp.
when people at the stand ask me for a variety most like
honeycrisp
i want to kindly but firmly direct them to the exit.
maybe it’s a primal instinct that i dissociate the second i enter a
bed bath and beyond. who else needs a water filter? another dish
towel? a bowl for your
honeycrisp
apples? my brain slams into the metal shelves and my skin
greys under the high ceilings and fluorescent light.
i laugh when i walk on the heated floors of our bathroom,
the irony may kill me
before we may kill us

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