Dina & Darlene
The trailer next door catches fire but doesn’t leap to Dina & Darlene’s. They heard their neighbor threatening his wife if she took his kids away, he’d burn the place down. He kept his word, which seems to be the only thing he’s good at. Everything they owned melted and dripping, smelling of burnt childhood. The pictures! His wife kept wailing. The pictures!
Later, Dina & Darlene rummage through stored boxes of photographs of themselves which are kept under the couch in pink plastic bins. Photographs from their birth, thick scars magenta and dank purple in some places, spider-vein but much larger, resonances of conjoining. Announcements predicting the future. Everyone is preoccupied with their survival. Their first birthday with two small cakes so they each could blow out candles. Their father in the background drinking PBR, their mother smiling with her glitter gold cross necklace.
Later, still, another photograph from a few weeks ago with all of their friends in a line each with a rainbow WWJD bracelet on, bracelets they forced onto their wrists. They all started going to church and now no one wants to kiss their boyfriends. “You have to save it for marriage,” they tell Dina & Darlene.