Isabella Piedad Escamilla

You Don't Have to Believe Any of This

Bacterial growth is a function of porosity: every cracked ceramic
plate is perpetually dirty. Chipped nail polish, too. Not every public 

restroom has seat covers because seat covers don’t work. Well, they did
until I told you they didn’t. I know a nun who started wearing 

a wedding ring so men would stop hitting on her in hotel bars.
Almost all fake flowers at craft stores are designed to show 

symptoms of infection, because they’re beautiful and won’t die
soon from mosaic virus. Most pediatric ear infections happen 

from a dribble of juice meandering into the ear canal during a nap.
Take the bottle away from sleepy children. It’s that easy. I once 

had a teacher tell me to stop coming to high school if I wasn’t going
to pay attention to Edgar Allan Poe. He dated and married his own student, 

but that didn’t stop him from kicking me out of class when
I couldn’t stop laughing. Later, he tells me to apply to colleges 

that would make other people jealous if I got in. He somehow
found a way to overestimate me. I have these two friends 

who’ve been dating each other for years. I introduce them
to Sex and the City. One watches half asleep, chuckling. 

The other stares with his hands covering his horror-gaped mouth.
I’m not a fortune teller. I know time. Or maybe, they just don’t work 

well. The seat covers, I mean;—I can’t remember. It’s unrealistic
to tell me not to come to school if I think poetry is boring. 

It’s very bad form to court a child even if she’s 18 next year.
The drunk driver who almost killed me sues me because I have more 

money and she is newly paralyzed. If this is my greed, I let myself,
for a moment, love it. For most of my life, I misunderstood the translation 

of my own name. It isn’t that I thought Piedad translated to mercy;
I thought mercy and piety were the same. My parents named my sister Modesta. 

The West Lafayette Celery Bog is a marsh. I’d been waiting
to tell you that one. It only matters if you know the difference.

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Isabella Piedad Escamilla is currently working on her MFA at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where she studies poetry and reads for Ninth Letter.