Photo be Pexels.com: Cottonbro
by Sumitra Singam
When you walk into the reunion with your husband like a phalanx and your apple-pie-posed photos of your 2.3 kids and dog like armour, I kick my heels off. When you bare your teeth for tearing flesh with all the other tight and toned roots touched up stiletto red nails butts perky in dry-cleaned peach satin wife-and-mother ants, I take off my stockings. When you en garde your business card and ask me for mine, my feet have already turned into a bitter, hard-shelled pointed end plate, a telson at the end secreting musky and glandular. As my body segments, pairs of hairy legs sprouting from each one, spiracles to breathe breathe breathe your oily-sweet pheromones in either side, the bartender hands me a shot glass of tequila with a gusano in it, and I use my palps to hold it up to you, a salute, and you say no more of that kind of thing for me I’m afraid, have to get home early to the babysitter eyeroll ha ha and maybe it’s the babysitter, but maybe it’s the memories of the tequila nights in my dorm bed, your annelid curves cupped in my hot hands, your nails chittering down my back, at least two of or our eight arachnid limbs falling off to the soundtrack of your yes so soft you could pretend you never noticed I was a girl too. And as you smile your apple-chomping teeth same as you did the morning after like it’s me that’s done something weird but you don’t want to be a dick about it, you don’t notice I’ve turned into a giant centipede. You don’t notice the room screaming streamers tearing balloons popping in their haste to leave and your husband tries to pull you away but you can’t see him (who’s the gooseberry now, asshole), and you’re reaching out to stroke my antennae wondrous, hushing your hairdresser’s done such a great job, and your husband slimes away as I crawl over you sinuous, baring my forcipules, and I pierce your pulsing neck with venom as you whisper yes yes yes.
Sumitra Singam is a Malaysian-Indian-Australian writer who used to find centipedes ick, but now she sees that they’re just trying to make their chilopod way through the world too.
