Half the girls in this train car wear gold earrings, large and oval, bisected by their names in script. They are yours because you name them, your Lekenya, your Mirellie, your Yesenia. Excessively ornate, almost illegible, like your grandmother's cramped handwriting in a Hallmark card with loopy golden cursive relaying every detail of the rest home in Orlando where her former pastor now resides—the year of establishment, the founder's name, what the food is like, how once someone moves in, they have no plans of ever moving again. Tomorrow, you settle on a plan for breakfast, you settle on banana. You are not hungry. It sits there on the desk still in peel, nervous for inevitable disrobing. Stare at Banana. You sit there. It is afraid.
From Sudden Dog by Matthew Pennock. Copyright © 2012 by Matthew Pennock. Reprinted with permission of Alice James Books. All rights reserved.