Zom Prom Mom

Prom night smelled of vanilla body spray and stale alcopops

breathed down cleavage made full with tissues.

 

In the girls' toilets bins overflowed with exhaled corsages

and someone was always crying in the last stall.

 

I swayed and stared and smiled for a while, then slipped

my hand into a man's and left to become another person.

 

My date left me by his car while he bought cigarettes

but I knew waiting was for single girls, and wandered.

 

At the edges of the headlights the stranger found me, half-drunk,

adventure-ready. He spoke in grunts, like a bear.

 

Eyes flat-white as fluorescent lights, he lifted his t-shirt to show

the hole where his heart should have been. Perfect.

 

His hands were rough as cats' tongues and my face reflected in his eyes.

My prom dress was cream, skin-tight. It grew full and pink.

 

I got back to the car before the cigarettes. Had to pee, I explained,

then inhaled smoke down past my lungs in a line to my cunt.

 

We fucked in the backseat like the verse of a b-side, and that

was enough to make him think my boys were half of his body.

 

He held my hand as I swelled, then shat and screamed. The boys

emerged holding hands and never opened their eyes. That night

 

as they slept I pried open their puckered lids, already knowing

what I would see: eyes flat and white as fluorescent lights.

 

The boys fit the boxes, and the boxes fit the garden. Soon

I will need new ones. These ones will not stop growing.