A grasshopper jumped into a rest-stop toilet. People ate veal. I dated a chubby Catholic girl who told me her parents never touched her, that as a kid she wanted to be touched so badly she looked forward to the lice and scoliosis tests at school. I knew a guy in junior high who told everyone he owned a baby elephant; years later he murdered his stepmother by beating her head in with a can of chicken & stars soup. I saw cats, dogs, possums, raccoons, and squirrels; a fox, a kangaroo, a bear, deer, rabbits, birds, and toads; rats and mice and snakes with their guts smashed out, their insides outside, their heads crushed and dead on sunny roadsides. My mother got cancer.
— Matt Sumell (“Little Things”)
