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 wrist
with whatever pen I was holding
so I wouldn’t forget.
I had about seven or eight phone calls to
make, the weaving of
committees plus incidents to report,
plus how much I stepped or made
or consumed and the beep of friends
in need
like the outer rim of a leech,
stuck to hip and
wasting me.
when I saw the melting
phrase, a faded scrawled “pw”
near my thumb
which meant paperwork.
it was already Saturday.

there are three hearts 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 my
long lost sister.
I am chanting this
ghost’s name,
Catarina.

the first hour is the hardest.
my stomach sort of lurches
realizing the first wave has already hit.
I need to get out of a place that is wall to
wall carpet and packed with scribble,
pillows, cat hair, journals,
the air of segregation 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.
I ignored the chipping bathtub
just to make it out the door.
I am remembering when I had bed bugs.
there are things I will miss
I think as my skin leaps.

other  things I’m naming:
ways to feel unsettled in transition.
states, or
how to move between things and
home also;  the way the birds landed
on the trees outside my stained-
glass window,
the way the pink light cut 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 am wearing sunglasses so no one
can see the way I
let the fog trickle from my eyes.

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.

I am  trying to remember
what my dead brother’s laugh
sounds like as I walk out of
the Woodlands.
not before I held my hands out to
the daughter I forever crave,
but I become stolid
dead center in the middle of
that ritual during the fourth
wave; the preparation
to leap into the comedown
with what you have noted.

child,
there is no Catarina. 

“the first wave (grief)”