Menagerie | Beth Moulton

When we were small, my older brother always gave me the broken animal crackers and kept the whole ones for himself. What he didn't know was that I would get to the bag before him and nibble off a few animal appendages, just so there would be more cookies for me: headless horses, legless camels, trunkless elephants. For good measure, I also licked some of the whole cookies. We are brothers of blood and spit, which I suppose bonds us in a certain way. 

Years later, he regularly tells this story, about always leaving me with broken cookies. He laughs, with wild eyes and flashing teeth, that laugh he gets when he's transforming from a happy drunk to a mean drunk. I never say anything; the story is my cue to leave before things get worse. Because things always get worse.

But some nights when I can't sleep, I find myself at a convenience store buying animal crackers. I sit in my car in the parking lot, under the sickly yellow light of a street lamp, sorting cookies in my lap. I only eat the whole animals, leaving a menagerie of broken ones abandoned on the curb.

Beth Moulton earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Rosemont College, where she was fiction editor for the Rathalla Review. Her work has appeared in mac(ro)mic, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Milk Candy Review and other journals. She lives near Valley Forge, PA with her cats, Lucy and Ethel.