gallery talk
Sarah Peecher
Every morning the yesterday girl becomes more yesterday.
Every morning the today woman is more today, this hour, now.
The woman asks, “where are you going yesterday girl?”
I’m just going to tuck myself into the back corner of your brain.
In the lamp-lit back corner, the yesterday girl crawls into the blanket fort built there.
The today woman drinks a lavender oat milk latte at her desk, taps her long fingernails on her keyboard without typing anything.
The woman maps her way to the back corner to offer the girl a sip.
The girl says, no thank you, I don’t like coffee.
“But it’s sweet. It tastes like a delicious bath.”
The girl doesn’t take baths anymore, she showers, though she loves to take her time, put too much soap on the washcloth and squeeze the suds out.
“Do you remember getting in trouble for using mom’s razor as a squeegee in the shower?”
I don’t want to talk about that because I hate getting in trouble. The girl’s face reddens.
The today girl wonders if the woman spotted her face in the crowd yesterday.
In her dreams, the woman is yesterday again, trying to conceal her naked body behind a locust tree in the backyard.
The today girl, when she's lying awake at night, wonders if anyone actually likes her jokes.
The girlwoman dresses up as a marigold fairy.
The todayyesterdaywomangirl will be a mythical creature for just a little bit longer.
Sarah Peecher is a second-year Creative Writing MFA student at Columbia College Chicago and a Nathan Breitling Poetry Fellow. Her recent work appears or is forthcoming in Allium, Bluestem, and FERAL. She also teaches writing at Columbia College Chicago.