TE20 Migrant Mosaics

Ben Sloan

tomatoes further away in the corner of the garden. What do you think, hunny? Then, she bought the seeds and shoved them into the earth with those chubby, perfectly manicured fingers, whose nails were always painted a shade of violet.

Specks of dirt corrupted by earthy critters browned her white fingers. The process can be dirty.

The fact that Birke’s mother lived two meters under the earth, where she had all the time in theworld to becomeacquaintedwith earth critters and damp sod, was no process . A process needs a beginning, middle, and usually an end. When Thomas used that word, process , she thought about the plays she used to write as a kid. Thing is, she thought, my plays never had endings. My plays always had a mother, who never had a name, and a daughter, whose characteristics always changed. The daughter never saved the mother and the mother never helped the daughter learn to growup. I wrote thembecause I wanted to. I wrote and performed them because, in this apartment across from Klagenfurt’s train station, the noise of rattling trains and the conductor’s whistle were my only company. I needed someone to talk to! Now she had Thomas to talk to. And Thomas loved her, just as she loved him. He supported her in everything she wanted to accomplish. Thomas listened to her. The other men, or boys, never listened to her. They smiled practiced smiles and grabbed her breasts too hard, as if they wanted to pop and explode them in the hope that they would yield money or fortune. Did you not get enough breast milk as a toddler?

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