Parade

Genevieve Kersten

 

Its corpse eye is pressed up against my window again. The giant baby in the sky feigns interest in my morning routine. It is not a pleasant start to the day. The big bundle floats above my apartment and waits for me to leave. Baby follows behind my car two hundred feet in the air. My own personal Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, every day. My astrologist gives me the name of her therapist. My therapist assumes it’s my biological clock tick-tocking all over the city. My psychiatrist tells me to stop drinking and changes my meds. I buy a crossbow. I am not maternal. The scenic overlook is deserted after sundown. Baby follows me up there. We are both unsuspecting. I fire the shot and it hits between Baby’s motionless eyeballs. I expect the frenzied flailing of a popped balloon. The explosion of one thousand small babies floating up above me is a surprise. Within an hour they have doubled in size, by morning they will be the size of first Baby. They will obscure mountains and disrupt flight patterns. I pack up my crossbow. Stop at Target. Hang blackout curtains on every window in my apartment.

#

Genevieve Kersten is a poet, romance writer, and professional semi-finalist. She is co-founder and poetry editor at Okay Donkey. Her poetry has appeared in Hypertrophic Literary, 8 Poems Journal, The Feckless Cunt Anthology, and Helen: A Literary Magazine among others. She lives in Los Angeles with her partner, and tweets at @genekresten. She regrets intentionally misspelling her last name in her twitter handle.