Stray – Cris Garcia

January 21, 2026

Because or since is no defense in a waiting room. The other day I saw through my mother’s eyes my dry hands shake to pull the insurance card from my wallet, dressed as I am and thinking I’ve never seen her like this. The thing is that. 

Something you should know is that I’m very light on my feet. If it weren’t for these socks and slippers you would have no idea I was ever even         ,even today when set in stone the vital signs. 

But milling along my way back home the frigid wind is a fugitive between each strand on all 
abetting heads. This world is hard to share 
and, slow, I’m going to let you go so soon and so embarrassingly soft. 

 

Miles

 

We inform him that the carousel is closed Mondays and Tuesdays—

it was gifted to the pier by a certain P. Toboggan—

and that the building he loves was condemned 

and all the glass windows 

were sent back 

to be sand. 

 

Blowing bubbles he could keep going. It is noon. But

Crushing ice off the bramble he is reminded. 

He goes home—thinking 

If only every single person knew that the Shakers had adult cradles then maayybe—  

To the bathwater—thinking that he’s the one and only 

Boy who looks just as he’s supposed to. 

 

He looks up at us: 

                youse in trouble.

We look down at him:  

                soak and be damp. 

We answer much like a lake. 

 

And so to speak he smiles like his name written on ice 

with skates 

in miles away.

 

Over the rampart taller we stand. 

He points his finger up to the valley and the distance which we seem to be: 

                that’s all I can do.  

 

I look at you, John, reminded 

That behind us, beloved, is a spider every day of the year: 

                Let’s teach the boy to speak like cotton. 

And you make that face at me. 

 

 

Cornfed, Caretaken

 

You are my son for being uncherished. You are fed things cold from a hand that just remortgaged a two story brick house. It’s coming down on you. It’s holding a spoon of corn. Corn is not a real vegetable, it’s a bad vegetable. Here comes the airplane.

                The hand is prickly, and one day it may become nervous and prickly. One day, the hand may have time for retrospective remorse; after you know to hate yourself for breaking into your savings or for missing the bus every morning, it may have time for damage control. After you stop fucking with Sunday wars, your eyes will soften; when you go AWOL on weekdays, then the hand will see something like a child in you. 

When you are a son you are denied. Your lesions smell like polenta and baby fat. But you are denied. You smell like 

                eggs and what’s in your nose (?) Get that out. Don’t throw that at the alley cats. Don’t rub

                body cream on your toy box. Don’t. hump. the. dolls.

I’m not convinced, but I have been thinking that maybe to be a child is to not know to hate yourself. You should know that I did not know to hate myself for dry humping stuffed animals and being sexual with them in other ways. I did know deviance and deviance as deviance, but I did not know to hate my own deviance or my possessed kinder-pussy. I do now and that’s a shame.

I was a better mother to you then. All I have left is a very good computer password. I grew up to hold weight in my arms. I know to hate myself for fat arms, but not to hate fat arms as fat arms. 

Whereas before, as creaturekind—uncherished and denied— I would blank-stare-ready a tantrum for small-apartment-sized acts of terror whenever told to suck it in!—my belly—at the baby shower; whenever told not to dry hump the stuffed animals by the front door. 

I was a better mother to you then. You have never needed a curfew. I know a solitary almond rotating at the end of the world waiting for me to get home from work. You don’t go to daycare because I don’t trust strangers with my kid. You take the bus straight home from school and wait for me too.