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Kansas, anyway

Rachele Salvini

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Since I moved here, I’ve been looking up horrible Kansas stories to avoid thinking. I read about a mother who never let her kid out, so he grew up in his room, never able to meet other children. He sat in his own feces, crawling like a monkey. The cops who found him had to step out to vomit. 

I know it’s crazy and selfish, but these stories reassure me, somehow. They remind me that I need to stop feeling like shit, because, I mean, look at what happens to other people. Comparatively, I am okay — I left, and here I am, surrounded by these wide expanses of nothingness, where you could never find me.

Still, the story about the dog of that guy who got murdered in Kansas made me think of you. 

It’s a true story: look it up. Although I guess you can’t look it up now — which you never liked doing anyway —, because I moved to Kansas, and I can’t really tell you to look things up anymore. Which I suppose is a good thing. I don’t want to be able to tell you to look things up. 

Although, even when I used to tell you about something, and you rolled your eyes, saying, “I don’t think that’s right,” and then I told you to look it up then, you never believed me anyway. 

I noticed that, when I think of you, I think a lot of “anyways.” 

Like how you never liked how I dressed anyway. “You’re ridiculous,” you said that time I got a pair of sparkly boots from the thrift store. 

Or how you never liked my music taste anyway. “This is gay shit,” you said, when I danced to David Bowie’s “Modern Love.” 

Or how you never liked what I did for work anyway. “Writing doesn’t really matter,” you said, drunk as most nights, lying on the floor of my apartment. 

When you inevitably passed out, I always took the time to drag you to bed, all 6’5’’ of you. I had to stop and rest even across the twenty feet to my bedroom, and let your wrists fall back onto the floor.

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t dragged you at all, and I’d left you there, walked off, tucked myself in, and let you choke on your vomit or wake up in the early hour of the day on the cold tile floor without a blanket or my warm body asleep beside you, always ready to get up and fetch you a bucket if you were sick. 

You’re probably still drunk on someone’s floor anyway. You were good that way at first: I remember how you picked flowers for me on the side of the road. 

I’m sure some other girl is cleaning up your vomit now. 

Or maybe not. Maybe that’s why you were drunk all the time — because of all those “anyways.” You didn’t really like who I was, and maybe you’ve found someone that doesn’t have to drag you, because you walk to bed with her and hug her tiny frame under the covers. She listens to country like you, wears oversized hoodies like you, does a blue-collar job like you. 

These thoughts confuse me, and that’s when I look up gruesome stories: cases of people who experienced things far worse than mine — even though everyone keeps telling me that what you did to me was bad, that I was lucky to get out, that Kansas is giving me a new chance. 

I know they’re right. 

I still wonder if another girl has to drag you to bed. 

As for my bed, well, it’s dry and empty now, a wide expanse of nothingness. Kinda like Kansas. 

Anyway, as usual, I lost my train of thought: a guy got murdered in Kansas. No one knew who did it, and they couldn’t find his dog. To avoid thinking, I try to imagine what kind of dog it was — surely not a pitbull or a rottweiler; maybe a lab, or one of those curly Retriever-Poodle mixes. A few days later, the dog was put up for adoption at a shelter in California, and someone identified him.

To distract myself from remembering all the times I dragged you to bed — which inevitably leads to remembering the times you got drunk and angry, yelling and throwing things, pushing and shaking me, and then, eventually, hitting me, I wonder how a dog from Kansas could end up in California: did the murderer steal him and then realize it was too much of a hassle, and it could get him caught? Did he abandon him, or actually took him to the shelter in an unexpected act of kindness? 

I looked everywhere and couldn’t find out. 

I know none of this matters anyway. 

Anyway, Kansas. I’m here now, lying in the quiet prairie of my bed. I’m not in the mood to dance to “Modern Love” anymore, but I still have countless playlists full of songs you’d probably call “gay shit.” I even stumbled onto a song by Gorillaz called “Kansas,” which is all about a guy who has to move on. “I’m not gonna cry,” he says, “I’ll find another dream.” 

The prairie is empty and quiet, but it feels limitless. So many things can happen in such a vast space.

I still think about that dog, suddenly finding himself in California after watching his owner get murdered, ending up in a shelter to start a new life.

How do we end up where we do? How did I end up dragging you across my floor, feeling ridiculous in sparkly boots, turning down David Bowie, believing that maybe writing didn’t matter at all, like you said? How did I end up in Kansas, so far away from you, trying to hope you would never find me again? 

I don’t know. But don’t look me up this time. 

I am somewhere on the vast prairie, writing all this anyway.

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Rachele Salvini’s two greatest loves: her cat, Guinness, and Nutella.

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Rachele Salvini is an Italian woman based in the US. She spent most of her life in Italy, and she writes both in English and Italian. Her chapbook, Oklahoma Bestiary, was the runner-up for the 2023 Quarterly West Chapbook Award and came out in early 2025. Her work in English has been published in Prairie Schooner, Moon City Review, and others. She currently lives in Kansas, where she’s the Director of Writing at Ottawa University, and she earned her PhD in Creative Writing at Oklahoma State University.

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