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You take what you can get. You always find a way to make do. Your mother taught you that. Your mother drank wine through a straw. When you were fifteen, you watched her take down your father's hunting rifle from above the fireplace and shoot your dog, your best friend, that got run over by your neighbour's truck and had to be put down. When you were fifteen your mother held you as you cried about your dog, your best friend, that got run over by your neighbour's truck and had to be put down. She didn't say a word as you did but when you were fifteen, you caught her weeping in the middle of the night to your father, who apologized that she had to shoot that damned dog because he couldn't because he had a bad back in those days and couldn't handle the recoil. Your mother was that kind of woman.

You left that pre-chewed house at seventeen. Your mother didn't try to stop you but wept for many days. For three years you lived alone, trying to find someone to soothe your gums and proofread your electrocardiograms, writing UPPERCASE POEMS on bathroom mirrors with your finger after you showered. I followed you heliotropically at that time, sticking to you like wet clothes on salt-skin. One night the traffic lights held you upright and you told me you felt like interstate. I asked you what that meant and you told me it was a jesus allegory. I said not everything had to be a jesus allegory but in those days your ribs were metal-alloy.

Two years later you will return to that ovoviviparous house and your mother will kiss you and rub earth in your hair and tell you stories about the screamers and the tiger shark embryos. She will bury her tree root hands into your shoulders, crying, "Never leave again. Never leave again. Never leave again."

You are now in the womb of your mother. To escape you must eat your sister and brother. This is a sibling blood rivalry, your magnum opus—they call it natural order; you called it matricide.