Vanni Taing
Vanni Taing is currently pursuing an MFA in poetry at Western Michigan University, and is a 2010 recipient of WMU’s Gwen Frostic Creative Writing scholarship. Her work has appeared in Lantern Review, CURA, and others.
The Boat
I built my home in a bottle. My father said I should have built a plane, but I said, no. Think of the expenses. A Gulfstream can burn anywhere from 250 to 440 gallons of fuel an hour. Where will the money come from, I ask him, I have no money. So I built a small boat in my bottle to retire to when I tired of my mother’s accusations: You want get raped, huh? You cut hair like boy. You ugly.
Her knuckles clock the glass. I do not come out. I strap myself in and wait for the gales to subside. She rolls the bottle, round and round and I hear the sounds of air: pressure, release, confinement. I peer up the thick neck and study its narrow mouth.