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Order this writing in the 2009 book Crawling Through the Dirt

enjoy this Chris Butler writing in the Scars Publications free 2011 PDF file chapbook: Antimatter (click on the front cover image or the title text to download the free PDF file)

Too Soon

Chris Butler

I was evicted from the womb two and a half months too soon
Born small enough to snug in the palm of a grown man’s hand
My single layer of smooth baby skin was scaling and cracking
My limbs were wrapped in oven mitts so I couldn’t peel myself
As I lay trapped inside my clear plastic tomb.

My mother was detoxing down the hall
My father was nowhere to be found
I was encircled by nurses and doctors
Ensuring my chest continued to rise and fall
Keeping me alive through impending doom.

As soon as I was discharged my mother was put in charge
And she affixed me directly in front of the TV
But my caretakers were primarily Barney and Sesame Street
As my mother sat comatose on the edge of her bed
Or she was wasting her WIC checks on cigarettes.

At the age of two my mother would drag me to day care
And propped me up at the bar in the tavern on the corner
I couldn’t stop crying as I choked on stale cigarette smoke
So she dipped my pacifier in a pitcher of Miller Lite
And slipped it into my mouth.

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