THREADCOUNT

A Diagram of Reproductive Anatomy

A uterus is a house & someone must live there, so why not the dead?

If you ask me these ghosts are fossils, out of touch. There are three I think.

One is a horse. He is also a liar. I didn’t know a horse could lie (that makes him very different from a dog). Or maybe he is a literal fossil; he says he has two toes on each foot & remembers drinking milk from a bird’s breast & watching a mammoth play possum as a joke, only to freeze to death.

I think he must be from the Pleistocene. (How different the world must look to him now, yet he insists everything has always been the same—even when I say to him, “You used to walk across continents, now you are trapped inside my womb.” He says, “You should see the trees in here.”)

He is obsessed w/ plastic—like him it doesn’t rot. My tampon applicators & dildos are not enough to satiate his interests.

One of the ghosts is a young girl who loves flowers. She says she has a body somewhere, but it got lost. I pick roses and put them inside for her—thorns & all. Eventually she uses one of these thorns to cut her way out of my uterus.

I should be mad, but this is what I’ve come to expect from humans. She wanders the halls of my body. I cut holes in my six nipples, so she can see outside. When I watch pornography, I tape over them.

She can still hear it I guess. But what does it matter when she says everything in this world sounds like water?

I still have the urge to lick b/t my legs.

The final ghost is a typical misogynist, but from a long time ago, which leads to surprising turns in conversation. For example, this morning:

I plucked the hair from my labia out of nervousness.

“They will think you are diseased; no one wants a woman who is all skin and bruising,” the misogynist said.

“Thanks, grandpa,” I said, a little too loudly. It echoed back to me in my apartment.

“You know in here feels like worn velvet,” he said. “Most smell & feel like they just came out of the factory.”

The horse neighed w/ disappointment. He would give anything for that shiny new plastic smell.