By Sarah Freligh

Rita started working third shift at a 24-hour laundromat the week of Mary Jane’s accident, 11 p.m.-7 a.m. and overtime if Maxine is late, which turns out to be pretty much on the regular. Maxine shows up smelling like lust and Southern Comfort, but she can fold a fitted sheet absolutely flat in under a minute. The secret, she says, is to keep the corners tucked and flush, not to let them get all screwjiggy, something Rita can’t wait to tell Mary Jane when she visits her in the hospital. Screwjiggy, WTF. She brings Mary Jane a hot cherry pie from McDonald’s and a single knitting needle to scratch the itch inside her cast, only Mary Jane can’t feel a thing yet, thanks to pain meds and the wine slushie Rita sneaked in. Mary Jane’s mother flutters around the entire time Rita’s there and seeing as she’s a church lady, Rita makes sure to keep it clean: no fucks or motherfuckers or even asshats, even though Mary Jane’s doctor is a giant one. He says out loud that Mary Jane’s leg will heal in time but she won’t be whole again until she gets some serious psychiatric help, which is absolute BS. What does any man know about the night, how a smother of dark will make any girl lonely and more than a little screwjiggy? Make her want to lean out of an open window and howl at the full moon.

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Sarah Freligh is the author of seven books, including Sad Math, winner of the 2014 Moon City Press Poetry Prize, Hereafter, winner of the 2024 Bath Novella-in-Flash contest and Other Emergencies, forthcoming from Moon City Press in 2025. Her work has appeared many literary journals and anthologized in New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction (Norton 2018), and Best Microfiction (2019-22). Among her awards are poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Saltonstall Foundation.