It would always feel like a lot of both. I still live in that house, feeling lonely but watched, lost. I drove Mark away when he tried smoothing beauty on my face with hands soft as silt. All I felt was muck. The inside of my skin is mud- kissed, bubbling full of Bobby in his car, full of his white breath striking cold glass, my feet kicking car windows, trapped in an avalanche of flesh hot as boiling mud.
Men are reminders of the business of the birthmark.
My mother left me the house. It needs kept after. The clawfoot tub's been scrubbed rough over time. The porcelain's worn and the bare ceramic absorbed a pale pink color from the red dirt I garden in. I made a scarecrow, dressed her in my mother's crinolines and camisoles and my dainty party dresses.