by Mary Stone
The Last Woman on Earth
She thinks she remembers before, the lavender mist sprayed on bedspreads, the ease of switching on a light, the breath of an acoustic guitar. She hadn’t noticed any war playing out, each bomb an isolated image of smoke and fire so far away. A man’s bloodshot eyes and another man’s tears. She keeps finding guns after a full moon as they sweep in with the tide searching for powerful hands. The only things ever real were what she once held in her hands — warm coffee mugs, a dog’s leash, a cotton bra. She isn’t sure if chlorine ever existed, if she is clever enough to have invented something as grand as the sun or a toddler’s laugh. Instead, she digs down, deep into the dark sand, burying guns like little bodies.
The Last Woman on Earth
She combs the lake for her voice, using nets made from the silk of spider egg sacs, the moan of an ancient radio wave alive in her fingertips. Once, she’d had a lover bore of the sounds she made orgasming and today she sees the faces of many lovers in trees dying across the peninsula. Those monsters appear when she forgets the word they used to call her when she lay naked in candlelight and sang to burning neon clouds that threatened to fold into her limbs. She sang of laughter, once. The silvery lake opens and opens and beneath, where she can never see, the remnants of another song are swallowed by catfish, are sick with algae, are rearranging into the wrong order, are telling her to leave, to wind the net around her neck and sleep.
And she’s been listening for so many days she no longer hears the black siren warnings beyond her throat, resting somewhere between a palm
and an anxious heart.