We are the girls whose skirts always reach below the knee.

We are never late for class. Our pencil pouches are on the desk before the bell even rings. If someone wants to copy from us, have at it. If someone forgot their lunch, we’ll share our own. If they need lip gloss, a tampon, or money, here you go.

We help the old blind man cross the street. When he thanks us, we respond: no problem at all.
If the man’s dog is also blind, we go back to escort it across too.

We smile when we have to give a flower and a kiss on the cheek to the assistant principal when he leaves, and we don’t say a word as his hand brushes against our breast.

When someone steps on our foot, we’re the ones to apologize.

We are sorry when someone else is angry. We place a hand on their arm, we’re so terribly sorry. We’re sorry, we’re sorry, our mouths our cuckoo clocks, we’re sorry.

We are never angry.

We don’t even know what it feels like.

We are the girls whose favorite phrase is ‘up to you’. What should we order for dinner? Up to you, whatever you want. Where should we go on vacation? Up to you, wherever you like. Would you mind if I stopped by to see that new marketing girl after work? Up to you, have fun.

If we say ‘up to you’ too often, they’ll write us a prescription for light. The light is pill-shaped, it will dazzle when it touches our tongue. We look in the mirror as we swallow. A star blazing incandescent in our throat, shining through our skin and flesh, radioactive embers forced into our stomach.

It’s easier to devour an entire pizza we don’t even want.

We reserve a lounge chair on the beach, though we’d rather be climbing up to the Acropolis.

And if we see that the other is constantly messaging on their phone, doesn’t even look at us for three straight days, we wade alone into the sea, our straw hat taken by the gusting wind.

Sometimes we can’t stomach so many up-to-yous. We need more illumination than was prescribed, so we head up to the hotel, pop the pills from their blister pack. We are wanting of saliva, the light scratches our throat, but we swallow them down, every last one.

In our stomach, the sun erupts.

We are the girls who secretly…

We won’t tell you what we do in secret.

We are the girls a photographer told to smile, and we never stopped.

We smile when our coworkers rank the girls in the office on a scale from one to ten.

When our mother snatches the dessert from our hands at Christmas, we’ve put on enough already.

When they ask us to shave the stubble under our arms, or when our boss foists even more unpaid overtime on us.

Their eyes glint blinding white light with every blink. Cheeeese.

It’s not so tough, we’re used to it by now. We use seventeen muscles to smile. The zygomaticus major and the orbicularis oris work for us. The mouth crinkles upward; at night we massage our faces, we’re going to be sore the next day.

Anatomically speaking, these muscles were designed for something else. For gathering saliva and spitting. For howling. For holding our mouth agape until the shutter clicks. For rending flesh. For catcalling others. For hissing curse words – though if we want to curse, we should instead take our finger into our mouth and bite a chunk off at the knuckle. We must apply appropriate force to gnaw through the joint. The salty blood sobers us.

If we feel the urge to curse too often, there will be nothing left of our hands.

We ask to bum a cig off a coworker, off someone at the pub, but they extend a Pall Mall box of daisies instead, here, smoke this.

We are the girls who sweep dead animals under the rug.

The corpses appear in the apartment out of nowhere. We open the dishwasher and find dead squirrels, hands contorted and gnarled around the wine glass stems.

In the entryway closet rots a disemboweled ermine. Like it was flattened beneath a car tire, its innards a tangled mass of Christmas lights.

In the linen drawer beneath the bed, a nightingale with a cracked skull. We hear it beating against the box spring, dum dum dum, it keeps us from sleep. A bit of brain matter has drained onto its beak. We beat it to death with the iron like we’re tenderizing meat. To end its suffering.

We don rubber gloves and gather up the corpses. They’d clog the toilet, so we take up our push broom and shove them under the IKEA rug. We worry a bit that someone might spot them.

The guests never pay them any mind. We politely tell them to keep their shoes on, the place is an absolute mess, we’ve only been cleaning for two days. They pace about in the living room, trod all over the corpse-crammed rug, yet they make no mention of it. Maybe they’re preoccupied with the finger sandwiches garnished with salami roses.

Then again, why would they go snooping around. It’s not like we look under other people’s rugs.

The forest is where we make our secrets. We don’t disturb one another, we leave each other be so we can immerse ourselves. No way is right or wrong, there are no precise operating instructions, but we do agree that the more we try, the better it works.

We lean our foreheads against the tree trunks to practice our howling exercises.

AHH. OHH. OOO. AHH. OHH. OOO.

Should our glances meet between the trees, we wave.

When we were born, the doctor recommended our parents cut out our tongues. Better to get the inevitable over with as a baby than to suffer later on; it’s faster than a tonsillectomy. A baby tongue is the size of a sardine tail, it won’t hurt anyone.

We would never correct somebody if we know the right answer.

We don’t need to air our grievances before a judge.

We would never say to anybody no, no really, I’m not in the mood, you don’t get it, hey, that hurts, don’t touch me, leave me alone, leave me alone already, fuck off!

It’s recommended to dry the tongue out and store it, just like your first baby teeth. It looks great in the baby book, right next to ribboned lock of hair.

We are the girls who are never sick.

Obviously not on our husband’s birthday, he says let’s not spoil things, please, we don’t always have to draw attention to ourselves.

We do not draw attention to ourselves. We obediently suppress the roiling stomach. We bite off one, two, three chunks of finger in the meantime, the joints grate. We take care that no blood drip onto the cake.

We should take the light, but we don’t want to take the light.

We store the viruses in the freezer, in a Tupperware container labeled: “casserole ♥”. If we labeled it “diarrhea ☠”, he would never reheat it for himself for dinner.

We are the girls who
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always sit with knees together.

They ask us about our secrets. Why are our soles bloody in the morning, it’s like you raked them with stones. How did our pajamas get torn. What’s all that dirt caked beneath our fingernails.

We smile sweetly, we’re not telling what we use our zygomaticus major and orbicularis oris for while everyone else is sleeping. Cheeeese.

There’s ermine fur between our teeth.

We are the girls told by others what we are like.

We package our opinions in bubble wrap, that is how we present them. To our guys. Our mothers. Our bosses. They just stare, surprise, they think they’ve gotten a present. A compliment. Flattery. Encouragement. They start popping the bubbles as if they were unwrapping something fragile. Their hands are occupied, methodically working row by row through the bubbles, lest a single one be left unpopped.

There’s a bomb in the bubble wrap.

If we want to be taken seriously, we deepen our voice.

Voice deepened we articulate: fuck you.

What’s your problem, what’s your problem, their mouth is a cuckoo clock, what’s your problem.

They put up a hand to shush us. We can talk everything out. Let’s all keep a cool head, we are grown adults, everyone’s opinion here is equally valid.

WE TURN OFF CAPS LOCK WHEN WE TALK TO THEM.

We find a sparrow charred in the coffee machine.

A shrew pancaked in the glove compartment.

We open our desk drawer in the office and a fox head with no eyes stares out at us. The severed tendons are ragged, the spine’s shattered vertebrae blanched.

The new girl wants to know if we’re going to get lunch with everyone. Truth be told, we’re already full.

They ask what happened to our face.

Nothing happened to our face.

They find the dead stag in the office elevator. Body immense, bloody maw mashed against the buttons, it’s left streaks of crimson on the wall as it collapsed. Intestines spill out onto the floor. Half-moon bite marks sink deep into its flank.

Everyone brainstorms what the protocol is for such a moment. Who do you notify when there’s a hundred-kilo corpse in the elevator, the one the customers use. The janitor isn’t picking up the phone, probably out on a smoke break.

One of our coworkers pokes at our hand. He’s noticed the nail scissors in the stag’s eye, glinting metallic, blades buried to the hilt in the jellied vitreous. He asks aren’t those ours, he thinks he might have seen them on our desk. Yes, we respond. Thank you for saying so. We’ve been looking everywhere for those.

We wrench the nail scissors from the eyeball, wipe them clean, and tuck them back into their little pouch.

The office has a rug too, we suggest.

Thirty million years ago, the smile was a mammalian expression of aggression. Lips pulled back from the teeth, the flashing gums signaling: do not fuck with me.

Cheeeese, cheeeese, cheeeese, cheeeese.

We are the girls.