*****

“it’s hard to talk about anything anymore
when half your family is dead. it just wells
inside of me.”

“The tears?’

“The scream.”

the first thing you notice about me is
the way I saunter.
even to grab a ginger ale
from the cooler
              “it’s my favorite.”

brush you, smile at your friends
and kind of swarm them
like an imposition.
starting conversations
that are really my to do lists;
assuage shame, assuage
guilt, anxiety publicly and
always alluding with  gesture
and wink
to my prescience without
saying anything.

if you ever said a word,
which I highly doubt at
this point, you’ll say
its the smirk
I mastered,
not the crowd.

“the warehouse”

the night we met
I was hopeless,
two friends in two;
one who wanted to
throw me on the bed by the
neck and fuck me,
and the other someone safe.
my hair was jet black and
I still remember your awkward
interjection to finally speak
a word to me.
my eyebrow cocked,
perfectly incorrigible and still quite
devout but to nothing.
or to a doorknob if
needed as the aphorism goes.
just the fervent pray to cleanse
me day after day after day.
itching to be
under the feet
of  anyone.

look there.
your eyes are crystal blue.

I began to fall in love.

 I’m naming:
ways to feel unsettled in transition,
states, or
how to move between things and
home also;  the way the birds land
on the trees outside my stained-
glass window,
the way the pink light cuts through
the room and all the green on my block
in summer which meant
blackbirds, blue jays, cardinals,
plus skateboarders.
my short dresses catching
on the points of fences.
I am opening the door to warmth
and it shreds me.

I spend forty five minutes
sauntering in presence,
pinching the skin of my purlicue.
tedium, ennui
or indifference.
how much space
reverie takes in my brain vs.
results. What do I want?
a soft nothing
like my jaw opening on
a pillow, feeling the satin
on my thighs and just
gawking at the glitter on my ceiling,

another thing I will miss.

my leisure:
the growth between getting
and having.
people never change.
I am stuck
somewhere on a trail
walking and wanting not endless
provision, but the
allegory made more
palatable.
by the time
I walk into the graveyard
hoping to see deer,
I am mired deep in belief
that it is a dead sister
I am seeking,
ignoring my real
brother’s name.

I take the sharpie
out to mark the second hour
at the gate.

“the first wave (grief)”

the first hour is the hardest.
my stomach sort of lurches
realizing the first wave has already hit
this is acid so it’s harder.
I take half a tab so
my doors won’t melt
but still I need to get out of a place
that is wall to wall carpet and
packed with scribble,
pillows, cat hair, journals,
some printed hexed postcards
creating a map  as
I chain myself to my five mirrors
not to be heard from for a whole year.
I grab eight stones and empty
everything else out of my bookbag.
I bring one water bottle.

I begin to walk with no
sound, letting minutes
weave themselves around my body as
I patiently walk down the
three flights  trying not
to be appalled by how crooked
the building was
or my sore knees or
the temperature of my men:
a reaching tepid
still present in a corner of
my head even on this journey.
I ignored the chipping bathtub
just to make it out the door.
I have a tendency to clean.
to organize.
to clean obsessively
frightened of the silverfish,
the water bugs.
I am remembering when I had bed bugs.
there are things I threw away in that
terrot that I will miss
I think as my skin leaps
down the steps.

my hand is smudged
with ink;
marker actually,
I lick my finger tip
and check again,
try to rub it, realize I had
written it in Sharpie
before I stick the tab under my tongue.
this is
a bad habit of
mine:

writing to do lists on
my hand
with whatever pen I was holding
so I wouldn’t forget.
I saw the melting
phrase, a faded scrawled “pw”
near my thumb
which meant paperwork.
it was already Saturday.
(this is 2018 to keep up.)
there is one heart on my left hand
to count the hours between when I took the
dose to now.
everything is obscured by
the fractions of stories–
  I am looking for
something that can
only be found by my
favorite talent:
my eidetic memory,
my propensity to travel
from one section of
the ground to another
uncovering trauma,
my ability to walk backwards.

there is one heart on my left hand
to count the hours between when I took the
dose to now.
everything is obscured by
the fractions
of stories,  I am looking for
something that can
only be found by my favorite
scope of talent:
my eidetic memory,
my propensity to travel
from one section of
the ground to another,
my ability to walk backwards.

celebrating alone in my mineral salts
and tears, how long I lit the candles.
how many candles did I light to this?
and all the wrought years,
to own.
black-etched marks throughout the
notes, tucked in pillows,
boxes, pants.
to own something.
to own something other than
lament. the loss that gives lament
her nudge,
a home.
a home.
my home.
and you hung
back.

what’s more pleasing:, the salt lined doorway
proved me right. all who wish
me evil/gone are robbed of sight.
you’ve never set foot in this place

and you never ever will.

your black tassle swings
on knob of closet
like warning.
my step heavy
through the halls,
looming,
warden.

“bondage”

this next section is called 

FRIENDS

 I find my head turning, giving notice to something: 

the phone on the table. the front door closed and my boots near it. I am on my knees, palms pressed into the floor to stop myself.  the howlite is next to me. a deep longing to be still. I am facing the door. it is not even three seconds of this belabored quiet before I am up; before I am grabbing my headphones and
straw.

—-

 I am interrupting myself. clutching the straw and the keys and the knob. knees crack. my wrists are turned inward slightly. they are  always like that:  unnaturally curved so it’s hard to write things down. my handwriting has become an indecipherable slant of lines and wavy figures. sometimes it’s hard to pick things up or open things or just be here now. the constant ache.  the T-rex bend to the elbows so I can fiddle as I pace. the way I like to do it: an internal palavering clouding me as I lope forward.  I dropped the howlite for this. pick up the straw. head to the door. habits are insidious. they are the leftover thing to shake. made from ephemeral need becoming  the most used devices even though need is fleeting. you could wait a second or only have one sip of water to sate a tongue. 

one glass for a whole throat. a couple more glasses more when it’s actual dehydration which judging from the depersonalized reference to yourself, is constant and haunting. this is the distant oasis you’re gaining.this is the gauntlet. these tics; they just sit through anything and become fed. fat. the word habitual means regular or usual. I am flinging the front door open in hat and coat and headphones because the come up is hard but you have about ten minutes of a mostly innocuous adjustment before it gets harder. before the drug hits. I took mushrooms for this. for what?

 habits are familiar. they are the leftover thing to shake.

1. Propitiation

being obsessed with inequity
creates lines on
your face.
your teeth clenched
with scowl and stress,
mired panic, just something
so familiar about lack,
empty stomach. subway,
one headphone working
so the sound is all the way up
to drown out the left’s tinnitus
and you’re eyeing her up and down,
pining for that woman’s jacket. 

but it provides a catalyst to
all movement.

 people are scared
to admit a big motivator
to success is
their unremitting desire
for vengeance.
and money helps.
takes away the change
of facial shape.
fills halls, fills
spaces with things.
little decorative things.
and money assuages.

and money goes but
comes eventually.
or at least that’s
what you tell the
little tree you water.
the little girl shoved
deep inside the well,
hands out, frozen.

“The Money Tree”