Just Marco.

By Leigh Silverton(from the forthcoming collection, Sharp Objects of Affection)

Marco stands in the bathroom again. Not the family one — the one no one uses anymore, with the mirror that doesn’t fog. The one where he talks to himself.

Tonight, he doesn’t flip on the light right away. He lets the darkness cradle him like a voter he’s about to disappoint.

“Do I…” He traces a fingertip down the sink’s porcelain edge.“…do I have a soul?”

He doesn’t mean it metaphorically.

He means: Is there a thing inside me — a pilot light, a wick — or have I outsourced that too?

He studies his face.It’s not a bad face, technically. But the eyes don’t quite know what they’re doing. They keep shifting like interns waiting to be told what ethics are this week.

The mirror doesn’t offer much back. Just the ghost of a man who used to blush.

Atrocities Inventory, Night 768:

Voted to allow the government to detain migrant children indefinitely.(Framed it as “order.” Slept fine.)

Stood silently when the Muslim ban passed.(Privately felt “weird” about it. Publicly said nothing. Sent an aide to tweet “America First.”)

Spoke out against Trump once, briefly, in 2016.Then spent the next eight years folding like a fitted sheet at a motel sex party.

“When fascism comes,” he once tweeted, “it will come in the name of anti-fascism.”(Didn’t write it…