Jessica Bozek is the author of The Tales (Les Figues, 2013) and The Bodyfeel Lexicon (Switchback, 2009), as well as several chapbooks, including Squint into the Sun (also from Dancing Girl). She runs the Small Animal Project Reading Series, teaches writing at Boston University, and lives with her family in Cambridge, MA.
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There is too much silk, so I sew my mother a parachute. I think thick seams might hold more air, keep her aloft.
I pull out her IV and strap the parachute to her back, then climb steep red stairs to the attic. I open a window. She sighs. Wind catches her breath and the canopy fills.
Dense clouds weight the sky. The canopy crumples from its apex. Tumors drop from her torso, as if she is being slowly wrung out. Updrafts snap against silk, until the parachute is an orange husk on snow.