Hubsand, borther, and mothre

I am known to many people, including myself, as Jabnice.

I can spell my own name, but I can’t always type it. Jabnice started as a chronic typo I was forever correcting; then I started leaving it stet, or [sic], every so often, for a laugh. Bill embraced the name Jabnice and spread it to others; now I’ve adopted it as a nickname. I’m not a girl bomb anymore, but I do jab nicely.

There are three other typos I routinely commit:

Hubsand

Hubsand is the substrate of my stability.

Hubsand is infinitely pliable; it takes on all textures and viscosities.

Hubsand forms protective dunes on shorelines, hosts native plants, attracts and shelters animals. Hubsand shifts and houses topple.

Hubsand pours out and your life is running away.

He’s everywhere, in your shoes, in your scalp, in the inside of your nose.

You’re beached, you’re sunbleached, you’re dehydrated, you’re deserted.

No, wait, you’re home.

For safety, NEVER bury yourself or someone else in hubsand unless you’re at least 50 meters away from a body of water.

Wet hubsand is suffocatingly heavy; countless have drowned under its weight.

Borther

I don’t mean to be a bother, but I’m afraid I was born one.

An intrusion. A reminder.

I can’t help sounding so much like our mother. And I can’t help hearing it.

Me…trailing off.
The way…she did.

The way I infix you know into any sentence longer than two clauses.

I imagine it’s hard, watching me bear her affect around like a baby in a sling.

Worn by a careless woman.

I don’t know how to tell him, the opposite of what I wrote is also true.

Before you were born, I rued you.

Never since, never once.

We can’t ever get our phone calls straight; we both talk at once and then concede, and laugh, and try to proceed.

We feel guilty for loving the same woman at opposite times.

Mothre

Mothre fights Godzilla in the memory cage of my grandmother’s closet, with its ear-ringing stink of mothballs.

Mothre shrieks.

Mothre’s wings are mottled like the fancy soap shaped like butterflies I once bought her that she never used.

Mothre’s wings are thick with sticky dust.

Mothre is not the enemy, Mothre is tragically misunderstood. I am also an irradiated, abberated grotesque.

I also stomp shoebox cities, without topses, dreadful sorrow, Clementine.

Mothre and I should not fight, we should cooperate and eat giant sweaters together.

But Mothre is dead. Dead! Nevermore to nibble a sleeve!

And it wasn’t the government planes that did it, or the tanks, or the brave underdog who risked it all to swat her down.

She flew right into the burning light, and fell.