Potato Soup Monologue

That very first time, in anger I threw the potato soup at my older sister then crawled like a spider underneath the table whining and crying. I was hungry. Mother said there would be no soup for me but filled my sister’s bowl a second time. They sat and ate and laughed. I crawled further into myself and listened to my sister’s slurps and smacks of her lips and her mouth-filled voice tanting me. “It’s good—so good.” That night I dreamed of the spider who eats its mate, slurping and smacking, until nothing is left. In the morning, I was soaked red and my sister didn’t wake. We buried her two days later, clad in her Sunday dress with the squared buttons running down the middle and the blue shoes she hardly ever wore. My mother never made potato soup again and I never asked for it. But I still crave it, at dusk and at dawn, when hunger pangs strike at me most painfully and I dream of the spider who eats its mate.

My face slams on the counter and meteorites skirt around the smoke filled room. “Hope the bump got you sober.” She stares down at me with an eyebrow raised in surprise and a smirk of disbelief on her lips. “It’s all true.” I say, reaching for the beer. How many I had so far? Enough, I hope, to stop the potato soup from haunting me tonight. “I haven’t eaten any since that day, you know, because of the spider that eats the soup and then its mate.” “Oh yes, the spider that eats its mate, don’t they all?” she asks.” “Not all, just those who spin their web on the potato soup,” I tell