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Louise walked around with a spoon in her head like it was something to show off. The hair on the back of her head was bloody. Mothers snapped their daughters’ barrettes and wrapped their fingers hard around the wire of their shopping carts as they passed. Louise dressed dinner with a white tablecloth and the memory of a child that would have stared at his reflection in the empty white plate. She lit her candle and noticed the ruffle on her dress was stained.
It was unfortunate, the spoon getting stuck there so many years ago. Aunts and Uncles were crying with each other back then, hospital rooms were cleared back then. Louise used her brain to turn on the stove back at home and blow up the place. The words “It’s stuck” make some people want to drop their eyeballs into little pots. Louise remembered a yellow blanket wrapped around her head screaming “this life”, and then said to her sister “it gets worse”. Her sister remembered to curl her hair this morning.
Babies would grab onto the spoon handle now. The tranquilizers kept the cat from pawing. Soup was to be eaten alternative ways. She missed sleeping on her back. She missed looking in the mirror and seeing all of her. Babies would point to her head and say “spoon” now. Journalists would strain their necks to see the back of her.
When Louise wanted to sit on the grass, the mother ducks would take their babies far away from her. Mostly it was loneliness and not the spoon that hurt her; eventually she thought about it over a glass of lemonade with her niece; eventually she decided the spoon was irrelevant. She wished she would find someone she didn’t have to explain herself to.
Every day she would sit on her bed and try to get courage. She would fold back the covers over her heart and imagine God reaching her. The doctor said one day. ONE DAY the spoon will have to come out. She tried to remember what it felt like to grip the spoon handle; she tried not to think about taking spoonfuls of brain matter from the place that stung her. Her only hope was that one day someone would hate her enough to yank it out with the worst of intentions.
So she couldn’t help but notice the man with the fork in his heart. Yes, she thought, well yes, well I think these things happen. I guess these kinds of things happen to people. Then she cried for the things that kept on happening.
When the spoon came out finally it was in one swoop of the hand. It embarrassed her how anticlimactic it all was; she pressed the towel to her head hoping for more blood, but there was only a small red circle to prove the five years; she wanted to bleed from every pore just then. It was very unfortunate that she didn’t, she thought that night at dinner, the white plate glaring at her in disgust. She didn’t want to show herself off anymore. The ducks in the park approached her and approached her…she shooed them away away away away
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