Nevermore – by NIKKI RAE SPANO

Nevermore

By Nikki rae Spano

My name’s Nevirre. As in, never meant to have a kid. Or, never gonna get a girlfriend. Or, never threw my scooter down the stairs and gave my little bratty cousin a concussion.

My parents probably thought they were so funny. Do you, Lucy Thitchel, take Gordon Moore to be your lawfully wedded husband? Sure, why not.

They met at The Horse You Came In On Saloon in Fells Point, Baltimore. If you’re one of those freaks who gives a shit about poetry and ghosts and all that you would know that’s the last place Edgar Allan Poe was seen conscious before he drunkenly stumbled on out and passed out in a ditch somewhere or something, in a freakin’ coma or whatever, until someone found him and he just never woke up and died in the hospital a few days later. Apparently this happens to every poet ever, they get drunk and die somewhere, then they become this sensation and the last place they were seen conscious becomes a fucking tourist trap. Unbelievable.

So of course my dumb dilettante-poet parents would show up at the bar to wait for the man’s ghost to show up and drink his cognac, and get to talking about their god-awful poetry and then they’d get wasted and sleep together and have to get married…I’d say about nine months later.

And name their bastard child Nevirre.

Nevirre Moore.

I’m not even kidding.

Two years after Nevirre Moore was born the parents decided they really do love each other. So they had little Annabel Lee Moore. Somebody put those two out of their misery and shoot their faces. Please.

But Annabel didn’t turn out like our parents. She was pretty great, actually, and she was spunky, so I couldn’t resent her like I did the dumb-fucks. She was just awesome, you know? She acted like a boy all the time when she was really little and it was the funniest thing. And best of all, when the scooter incident happened when I was eleven, she was in the room but pretended she saw nothing when the dumb-fucks started grilling her. She was pretty great, my little sis. I miss the hell out of her every day.

It was cold out and there were bars everywhere. She and I were going in and out of them, not really drinking much, more like escaping November twice on every block. She was nineteen but I had just turned twenty-one, so I was buying her fruity little drinks that wouldn’t screw her up too bad. I probably shouldn’t have done that, in hindsight, because if I hadn’t, she would’ve beat the punk that touched her to the ground, instead of letting him push her around while I went to piss for the fourth time that evening.

I came out and she was gone, and I ran around like a lunatic searching for her and finally I found her on someone’s lawn, out cold. Her lips were blue and I wrapped her up in my jacket and I carried her all the way to my car which was like three blocks away, and I was all dizzy, from the fucking drinks, and I couldn’t see straight so I couldn’t tell that the light was red and my foot took a long time to reach the brake and by that time I was already in the middle of the damn intersection and I must have forgotten to put on the headlights and the SUV maybe didn’t see my black car and all I remember is watching it press into the passenger door and how the metal crumpled like paper with a shit poem written on it.

I’m Nevirre Moore. As in, never gonna hear the end of it. Or, never gonna forgive myself for taking that piss. Or, never gonna forgive the dumb-fucks for having me then having her then losing her.

Or, never gonna get attached again.

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***Nikki rae Spano is a recent college graduate trying to find her niche in the literary world. She was born and raised in New York and is inspired by the fleeting expressions on the faces of strangers.Find her on Twitter at:  https://twitter.com/mightybra  ***