Emu, encomium, endemic, epicure, ephemera. I was expelled out of Mom on Dad’s birthday. I was the gift that keeps on giving. Mom went to some witch doctor who gave her an expensive concoction to drink. Nasty, she said. Turned out this exotic elixir could be bought at any Walgreens. Mom sucked down a few liters of castor oil a few days before Dad’s big day. I shot out in cannonball fashion with really soft skin, on the fifth day of May: Cinco de Mayo. Mom called it an omen. The fifth day of the fifth month. Elvis CDs twanged unending hope in the background for his erectile equipment and sense of flair, but it was me, Elva, who splashed out into the doctor’s arms. Mom was not enthusiastic when she studied the red splotch of a body and saw nothing dangling between my legs. Another one, she sighed. Dad said he carried me and Ermine around most of the time while Mom watched spelling bee championships or Jeopardy and drank vodka on the couch. She didn’t want us around until we could actually talk. And only when our speech fully formed with Scrabble-like weight did she converse back.

Meg Tuite’s

writing has appeared in more than 300 literary journals, has been nominated nine times for the Pushcart Prize, and was chosen as finalist twice in the Glimmer Train fiction contest.

Tuite is the author of two short story collections, Bound By Blue (Sententia Books, 2013) and Domestic Apparition (San Francisco Bay Press, 2011), and three chapbooks, the latest entitled, Her Skin is a Costume (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2013).

She won the Twin Antlers Collaborative Poetry award from Artistically Declined Press for her poetry collection Bare Bulbs Swinging (2014), written with Heather Fowler and Michelle Reale. She teaches at the Santa Fe Community College, and lives in Santa Fe with her husband and menagerie of pets.

megtuite.com

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Couple Busting, 620-word flash fiction in Drunken Boat (Issue 19, September 2014)

⚡ Lined Up Like Scars, 998-word flash fiction in Necessary Fiction (2 July 2014)