I'M FINE, BUT YOU APPEAR TO BE SWALLOWED. Marjorie doesn't chew our homes; she makes cud of our impossible life. Burps for room.

The grass is green, normally, but Marjorie flakes pink wax between crashing tree sounds, stomping gardens none of us will pick anymore, footprints cupping swamps of industrial skin. I hate you and Marjorie for butchering our life. I should've listened to Mom and ditched you at prom, but I swore you could change. How we met is a wonder, odds stacked against us, snobby in-laws and war tanks and unparting traffic. I remember we lived in the same dormitory and I knew you could be somebody, maybe, at least in student government. Instead: no one, all of a sudden, glued to the couch and stoned. Frenzied or dependent on drugs. The uppers. Disarming henchmen in your video game.

Now swollen Marjorie storms Arch Street, moaning between bites of gated communities. No no, I'm fine, but I wasn't fair to myself. I know your jiggly, milky-white center down to that embarrassing birthmark shaped like a fish, what you called a fading bruise our first time together.I'm fine with the birthmark, but we were breaking up anyway, awake and in the middle of angry sex. Then it happened, the rashy hand of Marjorie plucked you up. Earlier, you mumbled Stop, this isn't working at all; talk nasty like a dirty bitch, but I pretended I didn't hear you: Some eighteen-wheeler spilled over on the freeway next to the house we're renting, doused vagrant Marjorie in toxic waste, sprouted her to planet-sized and starved. Immediately the neighborhood sounds ripped apart, as if an earthquake or a fire ignited.

I'm fine now, but I'm on the ground, still naked in bed, the bed intact, my leg twisted in pus. I'm going nowhere fast, but out there is Marjorie, giant, wreaking havoc on our world. She's eating our world. Okay, I'll be honest: You bankrupted us, bet unemployment checks on the Browns and lost, swearing This is their year after a 4-1 start. Stop believing you're sacred. Your sacrifice means nothing. Is it hard to breathe in that sticky mouth, the air throaty and bubbling with sores, plopped between teeth and rocking like a carnival ride?

Marjorie's mouth grinds through safer and safer neighborhoods, but I'll say it before you get too far away: The satisfied grunts of Marjorie ruin everything, but I'm glad you were swallowed, sorted by Marjorie's colossal sweating hands.