They told her don’t count your chickens before they hatch, but she couldn’t help it and counted only half of them, this was from the same people who told her don’t put all your eggs in one basket, so she put each egg in a different basket, ending up with dozens of baskets, this was from the same people who said an apple a day keeps the doctor away, so she ate two apples to double the odds, this was the same people who said there’s no use crying over spilt milk, so she thought she’d learn to toughen up and buy a cow with engorged udders that squirted all over the walls, and it got so unmanageable that she remembered the same people also said bite the bullet, and she did, the problem was when she bit the bullet it discharged from the casing and now she’s a ghost in a house full of hatched chickens that shit on the sofa, baskets of rotting eggs overpowering the potpourri, curdled milk that no one cries over, and a cow that waits for her luminous head to appear from behind the drawn drapes. •


Guy Cramer is a healthcare worker and writer from east Texas whose stories and poems have been featured in Gone Lawn, HAD, Pool Party Mag, Midcult*, and Hobart.

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