kylie jenner / gun baby poem

by C.R. Colby

lately i’ve been having this daydream where a rich woman like a kylie jenner or a gwyneth paltrow type takes up residence in my mind and watches me as i come off work or go to the grocery store or drive my 2004 toyota avalon with all the letters on the back peeled off and only dirt outlines still spelling out the make. the rich woman in my head gets to be appalled at these things and with baby-like curiosity she feels the chill of the steering wheel under her hands. i’ve been thinking as well about giving birth to an assault rifle or rather i’ve been thinking it’s too on the nose. i’ve been thinking it would be a 36 hour labor with two stitches to the perineum and that the nurses would hand me my son with his metal still warm and damp from my body. the rich woman in my head comes back late at night she’s wondering why i bother. i know that in truth it’s not that she doesn’t recognize me as human but rather that she doesn’t recognize me at all like an ant or a worm or a bullet casing i’m all wrong with my hair and my teeth and my skin all made of hair and teeth and skin. my cold son is crying for me so i cradle him with his nose at my shoulder and his butt at my hip. my mother and i have a difference of opinion. i don’t think there was a warm house or a daring escape i don’t think there was time for teeth in the scruff of the neck i think the kittens in the courtyard next door were drowned in the rain. i know this was what compelled me in the middle of the night to put on my boots and jacket and run to the edge of the driveway but i was yet unsure about crossing that boundary so ultimately i did nothing at all. someday in the future my strange boy will leave me with my heart wrenched full of coiled spring torsion. the rich woman is in my head again when we get the call and my mother and i have a difference of opinion but all the rich woman is thinking is i want to go home i want to go home i want to go home

C.R. Colby is a speculative fiction writer from the Midwest.