Holly Howitt's Dinner Time, second selection

Here's my second selection from Holly Howitt's Dinner Time. I should mention that some pieces are much darker and more surreal than the ones I've selected--the book has an impressive range, but that those pieces tend to be a little longer, and I wanted to stick with what one could see in one small laptop screen.

"Fears"

It's always been the same, I try to explain. Periods and spiders, they're the thoughts I'm bored of. If it's not a furry-legged tarantula, a bird-eating monster, I'm thinking of the heat that makes my insides moan, the dance of my stomach and the heaviness in my knees, then the weightlessness afterwards, like a money spider dancing over my wrists. These are the thoughts that keep me awake, I say. The ones I can't exorcise, the ones that line my dreams and scuttle through my words, wombs and black widows, webs and ballpoint-marked windows.

Is it just me, I ask. Why am I so afraid?

Because you are ridiculous, the woman says, and scurries away on eight legs. My body cramps, expectantly.

Holly Howitt

Dinner Time (Cinnamon Press, 2008)

You can buy the book here.