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Six Months

Celeste Mohammed

When oil drop to 9US$ a barrel, man, you know you getting lay off. The only question is when. Like everybody else in the industry, you wait.

It come like the worst thing that could happen, when they announce people will have to go “in tranches” every month.

At first, every time you don’t get a envelope, you breathe a sigh of relief. After a while, though, you start feeling like a death-row inmate in a cell near the gallows; like these bitches want you to witness everybody else execution. Soon, the fact you still working come like a noose swinging in front your face, grazing your nose. You start to wish they just get it over with.

And when it happen, you rush home to Judith, your common-law wife, mother of your two children, and give her the news. She put her hand on her heart and say, “We could breathe easy now, Junior. We could move on.”

You and Judith cling to one another there in the kitchen. You feel your prick resurrecting like Lazarus. Is months since the last time. You know Judith feeling it too. She pulling away? No, she gripping on tighter.

[read more]

Celeste Mohammed is a lawyer, emerging writer, and mother of a two-year-old. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University and lives on the Caribbean island of Trinidad.

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