Tiffany Promise
We never sleep because we stay up all night holding our tiny babies that aren’t tiny babies anymore but half our size with nails like razor blades and hair long enough to strangle any man because when we were six Gran-Gran’s boyfriend put us on his knee and threatened to kidnap us in the middle of the night so we stay up waiting for that devil-eyed man even though he must be long dead by now his liver a pickled pig’s foot while our liver’s still storing fat and ghosts and forgetting how to detoxify anything no matter how toxic because every time we say no we get called crazy but we keep saying it over and over because it’s the only way to keep every bump in the night from reminding us of the undoing that’s always threatening at our windows and doors and in our pockets where our phones are stored because being a mother means never not being a mother even when it’s midnight and everything is quiet and the hum of the AC is like the hum of your mother holding on for dear life to the sweaty tangled babies that aren’t babies anymore but remind her every minute of their having been nestled in her gut like sweet fruits where they didn’t need those fingernails or that hair but grew them anyway in anticipation of the world.
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Tiffany Promise (she/her) is a writer, poet, chronic migraineur, and the lead vocalist for the poetry-punk band Snatchwitch. She holds an MFA from CalArts and has participated in the Tin House and American Short Fiction Workshops. Winner of the 2023 Honeybee Prize for Literature—judged by Roxane Gay—Tiffany’s work has appeared/forthcoming in Salamander, Redivider, CALYX, Narrative Magazine, Brevity, Creative Nonfiction, and elsewhere. A lifelong punk and horror fiend, Tiffany’s work skews gritty. Find her at www.tiffanypromise.com.