1

My niece sleeps and I stand outside, smoke, and watch the neighbor’s bug zapper crackle at odd intervals. I had thought someday I’d give her the letters her dad and I exchanged during his stretches in county jails and prisons, but I read them again and found two sad men lying to each other with tough talk of religion his and existentialism mine. 
What fools.

When he was alive, I sometimes spoke about his jail time. It was a good way to cleave the righteous from my world. To them, prison meant he was a bad person, and perhaps I was by extension. Certainly, we weren’t like them. Now, decades later, the same people broadcast their stances as prison abolitionists and promote queer book drives for the incarcerated on social media. I should be pleased by the change, the progress, but my brother’s life was hard and he’s dead and I’m furious.

Was it a bad dream, sleep apnea, or the neighbour kickstarting his Harley that startled me awake, heart-racing, dry-mouthed, head aching? Another morning, another chance. Coffee, scroll, and shower. A quick news perusal feeds the misanthropic appetite. From my cursed phone in Louisiana ranked last in state education the governor has signed a law requiring displays of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms. Do your thing Satanic Temple, writes a commenter. Young tradcaths post Bible quotes and pose with guns. Articles about queer Christianity and queering Christianity are suggested. On Instagram, a life coach influencer “I’m more of a persuader” includes Jesus First in his bio and captions an engagement photo “My partner, my love, my rib...” The end of the world again is bringing back Jesus again. Why work toward change when you can simply fall onto the fainting couch of belief, spout nonsense, and do nothing? 

2

Two days ago, my niece was unceremoniously dropped off with me. I have no idea what’s happening – a familiar sensation, but usually it’s a solo endeavor.

Yesterday we drove to Dairy Queen.“Isn’t there a closer one?” she asked.“I like the one across town.”

The DQ near my place was next door to the motel where her dad overdosed and died. Maybe she didn’t know. I hadn’t told her. My brother’s funeral was the first time I’d seen her since she was an infant. 

She got some kind of parfait in a plastic dish. I told her sprinkles are sometimes called jimmies and we amused ourselves with talk of colloquialisms – soda versus pop, bubbler versus water fountain – until we fell silent driving by Traxler Park.

“I ice skated here with Dad once,” she said.

When I was my niece’s age, I came out and my mother told me I’d burn in hell for eternity. That summer she drove us to visit her sister and left me there for three weeks. My aunt lived in an apartment building that was a converted roadside motel and worked in a hospital laundry. We stayed up late. She smoked weed, laughed, and watched TV. Grace Jones was on Letterman. She narrowed her eyes. “Is
she high?”

3

My niece’s mother texts: I’m outside. I help gather clothes and books and pack. A quick awkward side hug and my niece is out the door. I wave as the car pulls away, then return inside to make breakfast. The playlist spits out Eartha Kitt’s “I Want to Be Evil” and a lyric here and there jumps out – my unspoiled gender. My mother once said the singer was evil for speaking out against the Vietnam War at a White House luncheon and making poor Lady Bird Johnson cry. “As a guest!” she fumed. I turn the song up and when it ends, I play Diamanda Galás’s “Malediction.”

The Harley roars back, the sky darkens, and a tornado siren blares. I go to the basement and watch the local weather alert on my phone. The tornado is an EF-2 travelling at 115 miles per hour, pelting rain and hail, crossing Interstate 39 where cars huddle with flashers on beneath an underpass. “I do not recommend that,” clucks the meteorologist in his tight blue suit and smile. Instead, he says, they should seek shelter at a nearby gas station. How driving into blinding rain as hail ricochets off your car in search of a building with no basement or secured room but plenty of highly flammable fuel as a twister bears down is the sensible choice eludes this viewer. I picture the people under the overpass, scared and confused. It came out of nowhere. An act of god. I wonder if my niece and her mother are safe or heading into the storm. .