It's a girl!

She used to be somebody. She used to walk into a room and people would look to her to find out what was going to happen next. She was loved by everyone who knew her and she was the prettiest and smartest person in the place. The sincerity of her importance would make you look twice at her deep painted face and three times at her clever droll jokes. She could stare you down and drag you around for days. She was the last person up with a bottle of warm straight in one hand and a long ashy cigarette in the other inviting whoever and whatever to early morning parties where we hated when those birds would chirp.

And then her brain exploded and colorful bits of flesh splattered all over the walls of her tiny universe leaving trinkets of suicide for everyone to remember fondly like ski trips and beach vacations on mantles all over the Norman Rockwell nation. She died at the end of the summer when people were still wiping sweat from their brows and their balls and hanging on to Indian days like it was the last season of life on Earth. For her, it was the last season of death.

She came flying out of the vagina of stark raving sobriety like a blue baby without crying or gasping for air. The doctor with the head mirror and the cigar held her by her feet, slapped her on the ass and said this one’s gonna take a minute to catch up with the rest of us. She coughed up the blood of her mother and took a breath, screaming into the night for hours, days, weeks, months. She woke up from the nightmare of being the center of the universe and something clicked. Click.