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  • “Name your torture,”
    one of them said
    with a wink.

    I wanted an orchard
    but I swallowed the vodka
    he handed me
    willingly.

    “The Gorge”

  • I’m trying to read the code.

    She grabbed me by the arm and
    gently pulled me up,
    said

    let me take you home. 

    They say don’t start the story with something traumatic. But my first first memory was me standing up in my crib and looking out in the hallway to see my mother pass by dressed like a witch.  That memory is boring and so is the second one;  me screaming at nap time refusing to go to sleep. My mother’s reproving look. That is also boring and my third memory they said is too traumatic. They said don’t start with trauma. (No, I said that once). I said I wouldn’t tell a rape story in my own story but my third memory is before the license plate. I think. It is my babysitter’s brother locking my door and telling me to get changed. Then I remember cutting my hair and hiding it behind the dollhouse. No then, I remember my babysitter’s brother making a face as I stood naked throwing clothes over my head dramatically, theatrically, and being wanted. Histrionic. I do remember cutting my hair and hiding it behind the dollhouse. That was my fifth memory.  I also remember being on all fours, naked in my daybed. That was part of the fourth memory. The way he told me to take of all my clothes and try on outfits. I made it a gamel smirking, throwing them over my shoulder. Nubile. And wanted. He made a face though. Some crinkled nose face as I pulled a cotton ball or some sort of lint out of my belly button. I turned around and saw him make a weird face like I smelled. And
    histrionic,
    haunted.

    I remember looking up at her with the limp brown pine needle in my hand unable to explain any needs; the way I hold things, the way I need to pace alone and mime, the necessity of reading the numbers in order. I’m sure my parents felt no worry when she returned me. I would be more careful when I needed it now: checking to make sure their brown car wasn’t there first, and skulking.  I would sneak into the yards to watch the numbers. 

    The sixth memory is the one that I feel still, like it’s palpable and mine to hold forever, no matter how leather my flesh turns: swinging the screen door open and running outside in my favorite blue and white sundress, my hair in a ponytail and my mother nearby. The sun hit my shoulders, that’s what I remember. That’s what I crave every day. Grass was green and soon Alex would be home and the sprinkler would be on and the sun would stay on my shoulders. Laying stomach down on the lawn, I placed my summer reading list  on the ground and began to twist a blade  in my fingers.  Began to read the titles, excited. I had been the first child to read in my class, and in kindergarten, younger than anyone else.  My teacher had paraded me across the hall when she found out. Had me read to first grader’s so they could clap which I liked. I didn’t understand what I was reading. It was about a blue dog. I knew that from the illustration. Only I could read it proficiently and perfectly without comprehending what I was reading. Same way I speak foreign languages now. If you heard me say the phrase, you’d think I was fluent. But I don’t always know what I mean. 

    every once in a while on a walk around town i say
    vous avez envie d’intensité
    to practice and

    It was the applause I liked. The way the teacher beamed when she caught me reading, creeping behind me like they do. Me, big eyed and small as she held my hand and pulled me. The way I tossed my dress over my shoulder towards him like that. The audience’s jaw shift. Me, practicing Vah and the numbers to follow. Trying to give them all cadence. Like songs. The way they hear me humming round the block. The way they creep up behind me. The way eyes befall a mouse. The way eyes befall a garden. Heading to the dandelions and even with the hoverfly squarely in center, what are shoes for? Curious, learning about consequences. Learning to lift from your center. Learning to approach in whisper. Learning to

    step on
    things that are
    small
    and
    quiet.

    “first memories”  

  • only two days ago
    your hands circled my throat
    to toss me on the bed.
    still dutiful,
    merely dotted with color,
    I am on my way
    to pick up a bag of cutlery and dishes
    for our house from the front porch
    of a stranger’s
    when I stop to admire the cracks
    in the side of the building.
    the wall is coral, faded but
    garish,  still stands out.
    it’s brick and

    this building has no doors and
    one broken window.
    each time I run an errand,
    these defects catch my eye
    and I pay my respects in
    photographs.
    I’m trying to get my memory back:
          stopping at each one,
    trying to remember how the boulders
    haunted too      how the ocean felt
    on my wasted ankles at dusk when I guzzled
    vodka Big Gulps and watched the
    white crabs roam the bay.
    watched myself dissolve into
    the bits of me and can I remember
    how the sunset looked draped over both
    tide and flatirons,
    hold two things at once
    without favor?
    how it feels to lose several
    small countries you claimed.


    the way men have held me:
    (invaded)
    all claws of resplendent mortar
    and cracking at the edges
    even with the scrape of thumb.
    I snap a picture of the broken
    glass pane and the beginning of
    the first layer peeling into
    white; the fissure.
    trace my finger
    over a chip and watch
    it flake onto the sidewalk.
    snap a picture of
    that with my boot
    in the corner of the frame.
    things to remember us
    by: namely,

    the way
    things have
    left me;
    split.

    “doors (#3)”

  • A neighbor once caught me in someone else’s driveway staring at the license plates on my block. Five years old.  We lived in a court and I was allowed to play by myself so long as I didn’t wander off too far which I did often but I had grown used to crouching. Had grown used to hopping fences and often could slip in and out to Lea’s house undetected. I don’t know the circumstances of why I was outside but I do remember it was overcast and I had a light jacket on– probably a shade of pink. I am sure my hair was uncombed. Sure my bangs felt too long. I am sure that I was trying to rid myself of this hindrance even so young, tossing it away with my hand constantly, tying it back in a ponytail, patting the back of my head when it was sopping from the heat and wishing I could peel it off. When it was cooler, I left it alone. Left it down and I am sure I was wearing pink corduroy pants with brown spots in the center of the knees. They were permanent. Sure I had been tucking my chin to my neck and twisting the pine needle with both hands and crouching, my knees strong then. My white sneakers scuffed. The tips of my shoelaces drawn brown with mud and I am sure I didn’t hear her approach me from behind. Sure she heard me muttering. 

    I had been going up the driveway of each neighbor’s house and sitting behind the cars, in front of the license plate. She had seen me from her window.  I was looking closely at the license plate, that is all she could see. I was looking at each piece of information. VA for state tags. To be clear it was VA, like VAH. Like the sound it made. Vah. I would say it aloud. Vah, she must have heard me. The letters in front of the numbers. Some would be doubled. Some in doubles. That felt special, like they were chosen to be doubles. Like some plates required scrutiny. This one had a green tag in the top left corner which was usual but also did not have repeating numbers. XGH-2879. It would have sounded better, I am saying out loud, XGH-2873 when I hear her.

    “Honey?”

    the first card I pull is the Magician.
    say nothing about it.
    my couch is stained from cat vomit
    and chocolate ice cream
    but smells
    like alcohol-spritzed
    fresh linen spray.
    I am uncomfortable
    at all times, at all
    hours of every day
    and tonight is no exception.

    I am trying not to look in
    the mirror behind you and
    instead focus on the red wine
    in the glass,
    the bottle on altar, not comment
    on eye color, guess placements without
    ado, turning over cards to let you
    know.

    I try to explain to someone one day
    what I am seeing in the mirror.
    no one is there, I say this first
    to myself on a walk
    around, pass a little girl in pink dress.
    fuck.
    a haze, like a fog surrounding my body
    begins to build and my voice,
    almost like it’s been previously
    recorded and then played back,
    comes through me and I have to
    repeat what she says.
    but sometimes the track is off
    so I am two seconds ahead of myself
    and it’s hard to watch
    the way the mouth doesn’t
    fit the soundtrack
    wait, stop,

    back up,     I’m muttering I think.
    too complex.
    stop myself when her brother looks.
    no, don’t tell him that.

    Australia looks better than Alaska,
    that’s all I tell him.
    we have some wands between us.
    that’s all.
    keep it to myself:

    predicting
    deaths of
    others
    and also
    practicing
    hugging people
    when they walk
    into the room.

    “the magician, abridged”

    I was five and soft and supple and ingenue and so much deeper than I am now. She said what are you doing? from behind me which scared me. I was tiny and crouched there with my most favorite one to hold; the withered needle. I am sure she heard me talking to myself. 

     I said I’m trying to read the code.

    “the magician, elongated”

    (or the thing with Spotify)

  • I wake up to a bunch of witches
    at my door, cooing,
    green eyed and velvet
    lipped,vying for my
    one open eye
    like I’m some patch picked
    prize of theirs.

    i remember the agreement.

    1. do not ask to see your own death.
      2. do not ask to see the death of your mother.
      3. trust the witch (which witch, pumpkin?)

    amended:

    4. the only men we (redacted) are fascists.

  • “a modicum of ennui and dissatisfaction are part of the price of admission to life.”

  •   it is not austerity, it is commitment. loyalty is love’s true manifestation. I still have every recitation I’ve ever honored. somewhere, these things stay suckled to me like little violent chords I strum when people disappear.

  • move in silence,
    low and slow,
    slower than
    time.

    they always say that.

    slower, slower
    than time.

  • “And they left me for dead.
    And I never did forget.”

  • ok, but ill only do this 28 more times.

    I got a moon trine Uranus,
    a feeling you’re watching,
    a Venus trine uranus
    and im write about

    e

    v

    e

    r

    y

    thing

    (that means a keen intuition
    plus a bit of serendipity)

    plus a penchant for walking
    wherever, boots,
    wig

    disguises

  • they never believe me when i say
    life is meaningless,
    that i am a nihilist,
    half my family dead,
    what is fair?

    when life is meaningless,
    everything feels lighter
    than air.

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