Janice Leadingham
“A Visit from Your Biblically Accurate Guardian Angel at Bedtime”
To have a thumb with a sturdy nail to peel oranges, fingers to split its sections, a lover to share it with. A nose to smell its oils, lips to say, ahh simple pleasures, a tongue to taste it.
I have 1000 eyes, BE NOT AFRAID. Though eldritch, they are only for the witnessing. One back there is for checking the wilt on the philodendron on your windowsill, the one beside it is to watch your cat knock the philodendron off your windowsill. One of the eyes on my left-outer-reaches watches storms in the skies above Kansas and another on the top of me is locked on women’s soccer.
To have a coworker named Paula who microwaves fish, and sneezes five times in a row, always five times, and another coworker to complain to about it, and a commute home in a Honda, alone.
I watched Goody So and So sign her name in the Devil’s black book but not really, and the removal of Rasputin’s penis. I witnessed the building of the Pyramids of Giza, the building of the Great Wall, yes that too, but also the building of bungalows, and sandcastles, and squirrel nests in the branches of suburban pines.
To have a butt. A big one. To sit on it a lot. To do squats to make it bigger and also smaller (?) and for people to look at it, to turn their heads and strain their necks and watch it go by.
I saw City of Angels, but that’s not what I’m quite getting at. It’s just that sometimes I’ve wondered what it’s like to have a head and a headache and a person who softly scratches your head when you have a headache. I have an eye on the aurora borealis in Iceland, an eye on the Milky Way, many eyes on other galaxies with other planets who all have their own Meg Ryan. I saw a woman pick the sebum from her scalp with her fingernail and then eat it at an afternoon showing of When a Man Loves a Woman starring Earth’s Meg Ryan in 1994.
To have a cat, how is it? To open a cheese stick and have a cat meow, asking for the cheese stick, and to say no, this is a treat for mommy not for baby. How is it? To hold a cat and have it purr on your chest seemingly in answer to the question, are you a baby? How is that?
I was there when the sun first rose and I was there when it first rose on you. I’ve seen your sunsets, too, of course, and your first kiss at sunset and all of your kisses after that. I’ve seen you drunk on champagne, your face aglow from birthday candles. I’ve seen your skin like prom dress satin allover after orgasms, your arms and legs rosy and limp. Also, I’ve seen your heart break, which looks more to me like lightning shooting through the hollow space in your bones, and your gut filling up with stones, and somehow, you still answer emails and trim your bangs and give good advice to friends who never take it and buy celery. At night, eventually, I see you put the world and its blue light away and sleep.
How is that? To close your eyes. How is it? How is it?
Janice Leadingham (she/her) is a Portland, OR based writer and tarot-reader originally from somewhere-near-Dollywood, Tennessee. You can find her work in HAD, The Bureau Dispatch, The Northwest Review, Bullshit Lit, Wrongdoing Magazine, JAKE, Maudlin House, and Reckon Review, where her piece was nominated for Best Small Fictions. She is @TheHagSoup everywhere and also hagsoup.com.
