Lisa cuts strips of the newspapers she collected from the neighbor with the willow tree that blooms pink in the spring, her fingers smearing black, words seeking solace along whorls on her tips and edges. She can’t quite understand most of them yet, but she knows war and bombs and peace. She even learned nuclear and apocalypse from headlines on the fake spinning newspapers on tv, the speech of the announcer, a snarl in her ears.
Lisa picks up the limp balloon, leftover from her sister’s birthday, a shiny blue that matched her dress. She wants to make a turkey so she blows hard, her head aching from the effort. She tries to tie a knot but her inky hands fail, sending smudged blue shooting to the other side of the kitchen.
Lisa holds up a strip of newspaper from the pile in front of her, dips it into the bowl filled with flour and water and a little bit of glue, and carefully circles her left ankle, smoothing it flat. She places another strip in the bowl and wraps her right ankle.
Lisa covers herself in newspaper and paste, a mummy to be found. The words crosswalk and accident and drunk driver forever embedded in her skin.
