Amanda Cobb's work has appeared in Arts & Letters, Controlled Burn, Kestrel, Georgetown Review and other journals; she was also awarded the AWP Intro Prize. She currently teaches English Composition at West Virginia University and lives in Morgantown with her family.

No, It’s Not A Bad Time
for Renée

So, I counted to ten, prayed out loud.
My mouth made noise like manufactured
hands sewn to the edge of a dolly’s soft arm—
Uneven supplicant—not matching up.
So, I called a woman who would know things,
like how to force a paper white with rocks.
I called this woman I’d only just begun to know,
to tell her I used to be a wind chime
in an attic by a busted window.
And the mud was so viscous it sucked pleats
of my skirt to keep me still. Every day,
I eat petrified bread, but think, tomato.
And yesterday, someone else’s wind chimes
kept me from writing anything down.
She knew I was mostly full of shit.
But, by the time we decided to wish
each other well and luck, I’d counted
to seventy times seven. She never once said,
oh the baby, oh the doorbell.