Partial Credit Syndrome
       

That summer I could not stop sneezing. I wasn't addicted, but will admit to loving the abs that resulted, and how easily I could skip to the front of any line. It was time to reread Go Ask Alice while drinking Tab cola. The trees in my yard seemed a little more vigorous than usual.

Some people have the honor of witnessing miracles. Hedgehogs weed the garden then appear in tidy aprons. Statues scrawl and re-scrawl their own obscenities. I had no idea that twenty years later I would be bobbing in a cold lake, like sea-trash, until fished out.

Of course, I did not want to be fished out. I had a stomach weighted with naan and warm champagne. All of my decisions were sound. I was the message inside the bottle, and the bottle, and the rip tide. I was heading to Wisconsin the hard way. My diary entries were written with silver pen that had a white outline. I tried to trace my hand, but missed a finger. Thanked the lord I'd never need to stuff anything with tissues. I pulled up the bottom of my terrycloth romper, and then folded down the top.

When I claim that I had a low tolerance that summer, I am not referencing a little gin in the Fresca. All the newspapers gabbed on about a referendum, or a mother lode. Sometimes my parents had to hand-feed me slivers of cheese. The top forty stopped at thirty five.

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Copyright © 2019 Mary Biddinger All rights reserved
from Partial Genius
Black Lawrence Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission