A20
Collective Memory
Excerpt from collection:Call it Awash: Stories and aphorisms.

july

August stormed through the front door and hurriedly moved toward the dish soap.
Dry salt covered his face as he scrubbed a stranger’s blood from his hands.
With the rough back of a dish sponge he scraped his arms up to the shoulder,
and when considering how to rinse himself off in the sink, moved into the shower.
The warmth calmed him down, allowing him to gather his thoughts
and reflect on his night so far. He thought about holding the child in his hands,
all limp and unfinished, and the pride he felt for extracting it. He thought with a wince
about wondering if spanking the child would reanimate him, as if that was why
doctors spanked newborns. He remembered spanking the lifeless thing several times,
the first time out of curiosity and the next of hysteria.

August held his palm against his face and cried and laughed and felt an all-over
sort of embarrassment. If he was the hero of any story, he thought, what might that
story be called? Through his tears, he decided August Spanks The Dead Fetus,
and began laughing as he exited the shower.
He opened the bottom drawer of his dresser and removed several shirts.

Ruth Crimson-Forde