Cento from Get in Trouble by Kelly Link
 

I was drunk. I know you’re supposed to be able to laugh at yourself, but that’s pretty sucky advice when everyone is always laughing at you already. He gnawed on a fingernail with those big square teeth.

The house, dry-stack stone, stained with age like the tumbledown wall, two stories. She went back inside and filled an old backpack with bottles of gin.

You’re a bit wobbly, Conrad said. He took the empty glass from her hand. 

She reached down into her pockets. 

If you had a dollar, seventy cents would go to your exes.

Fill in the blanks however you want, Protia said. We were young and we were stupid and people wanted things from us and we did things we shouldn’t have done. Sometimes you’re on one side of that equation, and sometimes you’re on the other. 

There is something about the way she says this. Old friends forgive old friends. 

Let’s tell ghost stories. Everyone who is alive has a ghost inside them, don’t they?

Aura Martin graduated from Truman State University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. She is the author of the micro-chapbook Thumbprint Lizards (Maverick Duck Press). Her work has appeared in ang(st) zine, FEED, and Kissing Dynamite, among others. Find her on Twitter @instamartin17.