Blue Laws

Amy Barnes

__________

The milk that Ellie still expresses, ounce by precious ounce – is so translucent that it’s almost Delft or sky azure, a faint hint of color glowing like radioactive, futile tactile milk, the liquid of a failed, but obedient woman – the kind that observes the Sabbath tax laws, despite no longer believing that the day matters to herself or to God’s self, the kind of woman who has an accumulated pile of things she didn’t buy on Sunday, still wrapped with Gainsborough paper and ribbon and kind thoughts from real mothers that are stacked around her as she lowers her head, not to pray, but to try and staunch milk circles on her robin egg Tiffany satin blouse she’s trying on because her fake maternity leave is over and she has to go back to work on Monday while her soul and lips and heart feel like the same color, too cold or too sad to go out in public, but she wears them on her sleeve with high heels and 70s frosted eyeshadow for courage as she expresses the precious liquid into bags and labels them with dates and ounces before putting them in the special freezer in the basement that looks like it could hold a body, but is only holding her body’s liquid before she asks her husband if cows hoof milk into baggies too and do they put garden cabbage leaves over their udders when their calves disappear but he has no answer for her, instead folding out a camp cot for himself in the basement while Ellie decides to be a good mother to someone and advertises her milk by screaming into the forest and their suburban cul-de-sac and the lake where she goes on a writing retreat, but only finds herself retreating as the Women with Babies hear her and call at all hours to buy her ziploc bags zig-zagged with midnight Sharpie dates and take home the extra diapers and wipes and tiny hoodies as bonus parting gifts so they aren’t piled up in her living room anymore on any given Sunday, because Ellie offers her milk, but no baby for sale.

__________

Amy Cipolla Barnes is the author of three collections: Mother Figures (ELJ Editions, 2021), Ambrotypes (Word West LLC, 2022), and Child Craft (Belle Point Press, 2023). She has words at The Citron Review, Spartan Lit, JMWW Journal, No Contact Mag, Leon Review, Complete Sentence, Gone Lawn, The Bureau Dispatch, Nurture Lit, X-R-A-Y Lit, McSweeney’s, -ette review, Southern Living, Cease, Cows and many other sites. Her writing has been nominated for Best of the Net, the Pushcart Prize, Best Microfiction, long-listed for the Wigleaf Top50 in 2021, 2022 and 2023, and included in The Best Small Fictions, 2022. She’s a Fractured Lit Associate Editor, Gone Lawn co-editor, Ruby Lit assistant editor, Narratively Chief Submissions Reader, and reads for The MacGuffin, The Best Small Fictions, The Porch TN, and CRAFT.  

__________

To learn more about submitting your work to Boudin or applying to McNeese State University’s Creative Writing MFA program, please visit Submissions for details.