She closes the door to the bathroom. Her daughter is still inside. Their family is something they make out of dolls sometimes. She says the father is not a man because he was not the man he claimed to be. The daughter makes a big deal out of taking the clothes off the dolls and putting them onto other dolls. The mother says people don’t change like that. The daughter says mother says words are the worst things. If she wants to stop or change the world, the mother says, it can only be done with her body.
Brendan Todt lives and teaches in Sioux City, Iowa. His poetry and short fiction can be found in print and online. Most recently, his work has been featured in Pithead Chapel and The Ekphrastic Review, where his poem “Because the Living May Be Worth Something, Too” was selected as a “Best of the Net” nominee.
