An Abridged History (Part 1)

Mothopithicus the Greeks called him. He lived on an island with both parents then. He had missed the Trojan War because of summer camp, had missed Alexander’s conquest and later, The Huns. Father now gone, they are staying in an apartment outside of Cleveland. Locust and his mother, still Egyptian in the way she speaks, live in the flat downstairs. Locust’s mother makes food that tastes like they live somewhere else. Moth’s has white bread. Butters the loaves when she makes any type of sandwich, she has sparkling lemonade in big plastic leafy green bottles. “The same ones we used to make tornadoes in school!”

Locust’s mother bathed with the door open. Moth had once led a Lego pirate ship into an uncharted hallway and found her there–her skin dark like cocoa butter. She smelled like eucalyptus, like everything.