DEVIANT
by Lauren Bender
My daughters thumb out Polly's skirt
and sniff it a hundred times.
Muffins or strawberries, one of those
sweet scents. They comb out each pony's
hair and shove too many plastic dolls into
the elevator box of their dream house.
Sometimes those dolls are having
orgies, I've heard it. One daughter invents
orgasm noises while another giggles,
maneuvers the dolls into lewd positions.
The neighbor's kid is older, a teenager,
and she sulks on the porch. In the garage.
She has endless dark hours, and
I have caught parts of them, like when
she stood on the sidewalk with arms crossed
watching her own house, and all
I could think was predator. But then
the rumors surfaced, stories I heard
more frightening than anything I'd seen:
talk of sociopathy, witnesses to acts
of animal torture; a video shot with
a cell phone of a meltdown in the school
bathroom complete with self-mutilation
blazing its way through the internet.
Every anecdote another step to terror.
I have a clearish moment where I think
will they say my daughters are too fixated
on sex and there has to be something wrong?
My daughters have no respect for discretion?
There is no proof anywhere except a girl
who is sad more often than she should be.
I waste several evenings in a desperate search
for the online breakdown video, which
I never find and feel creepy looking for.
Gyroscope Review - !35