little words

Jessa had never before experienced this level of soreness all over her body. She used to be an athlete, for chrissakes. But this—this was something else entirely. She wasn’t sure why having babies was so normalized with all of the suffering it involved. Maybe she could deal with only the stitches, or the bleeding, or the bleeding and bruised nipples, or the back pain, or the sleep deprivation; but altogether, they made her feel like some sort of warmed-over zombie. She could pass for one with the way she dressed these days. Her uniform now involved some version of a sweatsuit, though mismatched, with milk- and only-god-knows-what stains. And the smell! She knew that her shower routine had taken a backseat, but she somehow felt even more pungeant than usual. She tried not to think about the lack of meal trains, and the comparatively minuscule number of friends and family dropping in to snuggle the baby, at least compared to what she had seen on social networking when her internet-ac...

Milly, a twenty-four-year-old living in NYC, suddenly had more time and space than she knew what to do with, and it wasn’t even quarantine anymore. She needed companionship, so in a moment of desperation, Googled “companions near me” expecting an entirely different search result than what she found.  In the days post pandemic, Companions TM were developed to ensure that people never again reached the levels of loneliness reached during quarantine: artificially intelligent, animatronic creatures that were almost like pets, but better. People were already used to talking to their pets but with this new version, Companions TM , they could be sure their words were understood.  Critics of Companions TM complained about the waste of money and manpower on an unnecessary technology. The general refrain typically involved something to the effect of— We already have pets. Companions TM are essentially computers, and we have enough of those in landfills. Their additional featu...

The camera pans over a neighborhood with tastefully painted brick homes, then focuses on a wide-eyed white woman bouncing a squalling baby. Woman Madelyn, baby Maverick. “Shh shh, baby, shh shh,” she coos. She swings a splotched backpack around to her front, scrambling for gold. She finds it and plops the binky in Maverick’s mouth. Two toddler girls, MacKenzie and McKinleigh, roam in the background, their double braids quickly unraveling, scuffing their knees on the concrete. The binky tumbles out of Maverick’s mouth and he wails. Meanwhile Jessica, the correspondent with FOX News facilitating the interview, is in the middle of asking a question. She can feel her perfectly blown out hair drooping. She almost doesn't want a mirror as proof of the creasing concealer under her eyes, but knows she needs to fix it before their next segment. The producers are in her ear saying, “You gotta ask again, she got none of that.” “Fuck this, man.” “Someone shut that baby up!”   The reporter sigh...