I haven't been posting on Open Salon, cuz I got a full time job as a social worker. I've also been polishing up my book so I could publish it and share it with family and friends.

So, friends, here's an excerpt: The book is called The Dumpster's Daughter, and it's about a homeless woman who finds an abandonded baby. 

She left it. She set it down right in the middle of a full black garbage bag and walked away. It’s lying there right now. Right fucking now. It’s even uglier up close., and it’s gray – just like her. Gray and scrawny, like a baby bird. But not  cute, like a baby chick or anything. More like a gross looking baby condor. It might even be dead. Oh, shit. Thanks, bitch. Thanks a lot. Leave your dead, fucking baby with me. Now I have to sit here and watch it shrivel up and rot. Wait – oh shit – it’s moving. It’s fucking moving. That’s even worse. Sooo much worse. Okay, okay, okay. Its gray little legs are moving in this spastic, twitchy kind of way. I think it’s having a seizure or something. Now both legs are moving. Its hands are like tiny little balls – little fists. It can’t have fingers – nothing could have fingers that small. It does have toes, though. These funky little teeny-tiny monkey toes.

I’m not looking at the fucker. I’m just rocking and rocking and rocking. I don’t see it. I don’t hear it, I don’t hear it, I don’t hear it. The thing is making this weird sound – a high-pitched,  scratchy, crackling kind of cry. And it is digging like a mother fucking drill through my head. What would it take to shut it up? A hand smushed over its face? A greasy plastic bag? A clumped up handful of old newspapers?

I stop rocking. A scream roars up my throat and knocks hard against my teeth. My teeth are clenched, grinding, crushing themselves in my mouth. I am about to cross a line. No. That’s not true. A line is about to cross me. And I can’t stop it. It’s rushing like a train. Its jaws are open. It has fangs and a tongue. Its tongue reaches out of its mouth and twists itself around me. It squeezes and breaks the breath out of my lungs. I am not breathing now. But my body is moving. It is moving toward that ugly putrid noisy little thing that won’t let me rest, won’t leave me alone, won’t shut its nasty, greedy, hungry little mouth. My moist grubby hands reach out for it, and I swear to god I can’t do one fucking thing to stop them. They aren’t my hands anymore. One hand slides under its soft floppy ball of a head that lies like a warm wet egg in my palm. My other hand slides under its boney little back – its whole body fits on my forearm, stretching from my wrist to my elbow. I bend toward it, seething, heaving, my eyes burn into it, my mouth floods with saliva, and I lift it to my chest. I press it into my stink and dried blood. I feel it squiggle against me, feel it squirm into my foul smell and moldy coat. I bend my face down, close to its head - it’s softer than a sparrow’s breath head - and I breathe the creature in. I breathe deeper than I’ve ever breathed before. Its smell floods my head and pops my ears. The creature isn’t crying anymore. And I am rocking, rocking, rocking. Have I killed it? Is it dead? I know the answer. I don’t really wonder about this. My nose nestles into its papery skull, its spider leg fingers clutch my grubby pinkie like a life raft. It’s a strong little fucker. And it’ll have to be.

Because it’s mine.

 (The Dumpster's Daughter is available on Amazon.com and LuLu.com).

Thanks for reading!