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“I hope that good is good and right is right and fair is fair.”

–yrsa daley ward, Bone

I walk to the kitchen first and take the lighter off the counter. The pot is full of water, the beans have been soaking. I meant to do this yesterday. Genevieve is silent, grown patient in the cold,  or at least I project that. She isn’t begging for food. She remembers when I used to wake up at four pm. Loyal, she would mimic my posture in bed next to me and all day long, for as long as I slept, she slept. Occasionally, she would swat me in the face without claws or lean over me, those big owl eyes staring into my clenched shut face. Sniff my breath for wine. Nuzzle next to me anyway. Today, she is thirteen years old, cold and the tether to Earth that keeps me breathing.
“I have so many beans.”
Ten bags of them actually. They are the thing neglected most in the cupboard. And prominent, the thing that comes in handy when someone who loves cooking enters my house, throws open the cupboards and the first thing they see are dozens of plastic bags full of little colored balls. They say, “oh, split pea, perfect, I’ll make the soup” and you are grateful hiding pizza boxes in the recycling and trying not to ask,
“Well, if it’s a real dinner, we should order dessert.”
Still shivering, I peer underneath the burner. Some of the water will go into our mugs. Clicking the switch of the candle lighter, I carefully move it closer to the center of the burner and I am comforted by the ignition, the sudden whoosh, the blue flame. The water boiling. The sounds of hurricanes in childhood.
“Well at least we have hot water,” my mom chirped through the house.
I loved the power outages, the candles, the way the sky was black and so was everything.  I would stare out the window, at the fallen branches, sometimes whole trees uprooted in my neighbor’s yard and the black. Waiting to go outside and pluck the worms from their emergence, chase the oil slick rainbows on concrete, compare damage on each block. Right before the hurricanes hit, my skin was electric. Right before a southern thunderstorm takes over, the night shades the day. The smell of petrichor, that sex smell, that musk I craved. I would watch streaks of light blaze the clouds like they had it out for them. Like vengeance. Like violence, stretching to show it’s width. I missed the smell of rain but right before this power outage hit, I burst into flames.
“Hello!?!?!”
This time they yell and knock on the window. I glide over the floor in my mismatched slipper socks, the ones with the padded footing. They are on the wrong way, one inside out and one is falling off the foot a little so it looks like an elf’s slipper but I am going for it. Today I will answer the door. Today I will look someone in the eye. Today I will say exactly what I need. Throwing the door open, I have rehearsed all yesterday,
“Thank God! I am almost out of food.”
It is two police officers and I immediately regret not just my choice of words, but my choice of outfit, location, occupation, history and opening the door.
“Hello officers.”
I am shaking like a caught deer.

My eyelids sort of dance on the balls. They are heavy like trunks. I yawn, scribble, remember a piece from an earlier dream. Force them open.
I was cleaning my ear, thought it was my teeth but it was my ear. I remember that. Like a camera panned out to show the true view and it wasn’t your gums you were scraping but your ears, with a q-tip and something sharper, scraping resin. Little pinches of black on pink. I was removing the rotten parts.
I hear cars pull up and I throw the covers off, jump up for motivation and even though I am swaying, rocking gently, surely I will fall, I stand.
“Come on, Genevieve.”
She stretches behind me, arching her back, shaking off sleep. My body is undulating without effort, shuddering like a caught deer. I have been asleep for fourteen hours. Who will I look in the eye and  how? The gravel, the pause, the engine shutting.
“Let’s go get help.”
My body needs stretching, pacing but I am being carried by two loaded trunks with the lid propped open. Let’s see. I waddle down the stairs, gripping the railing for balance as she races before me. I feel like I could sit on the stairs and a waterfall would help me slide the rest of the way. Light, not like a feather but light like nothing at all. Like I’m not even here. It is time to eat.

what I have is worse:
echoes of absence and
impregnable hurts.

A bottle sits on an empty table in an empty foyer. Noises are heard in another room. I appear to be at a party but have separated myself from the crowd. I’m drawn to the bottle. I look around.  I hear noises but see no one. To my left, a shadow of a man hands me a gun. I lose interest in the bottle and immediately point it at my temple.

The man says, “Well, that’s one way to avoid a relapse.”

I am at a party but it’s my house, except I’m leaving and moving into another house even though I just moved in. She is there and is being mean to me. Even with distance between us, I can feel her petulance, her annoyance that my stuff, my books, my posters, are littering the room. It is her friends that are here. I am quickly grabbing things: novels and picture frames and I can’t explain to anyone why I would leave this big house. I’m not upset but I feel rushed. Out of nowhere, she comes up behind me and shoves me. Ready with rebuke, I twirl but you grab both of my hands from behind. You lead me into a bedroom. You are holding me with all of your might and you are saying, “relax.” The pressure you put on my body is soothing like a weighted blanket. Without explanation, the room has a bathtub and we are both in it and you are holding me down. I am breathing and becoming relaxed. This part feels like a daydream, not a dream but my imagination. Everything leading up to it felt out of my control until you walked in the room.
I wake up sad. I don’t try to guess the time. I turn over and look at my cat, content just to be next to me.
“Let’s go make the beans.”
But as soon as I say the lie, my eyelids shut and I am taken again.

I am in a lake, inexplicably and Jacob is there with some others. We are all in the water but I am the only panicking. We were on wooden logs of some sort but now they are sinking. With each grasp, the wood slips out of my grip, pushes further down. I  can reach the bottom but am scared of it and I am clinging to one, treading water, trying to will my body on this thin piece of bark. As it turns over again, I realize, not only is it just a scraping of a tree trunk incapable of holding any weight but there are in fact, nothing but sticks in the water. Where I saw boats, planks, safety, there really are just twigs and pieces of branch and nothing to hold. Where I saw two alligators on the bank, I see a ripple in the water coming towards me.
I guess it is about 11 am when I wake back up. I am making it up. All of my clocks were electronic and the phone has been dead for almost twenty four hours. Genevieve is still purring next to my face, practically sitting on it as she does every winter. I am still complacent, wrapped in everything I own. This is depression.
“No, it is cold.”
Rolling to the side, I nudge the cat a little causing her to look up in alarm.
“Are we eating today, Genevieve, or are we skipping?”
Facing the window, curtains closed, I hear some ruckus outside. Yelling, but can’t decipher it, and laughter. Sounds like cars starting up and down the block. Good. I’ve always wanted to live in a mansion in the sky, have a block to myself, have everyone’s stuff in a closet.
“They will come back when I’m ready.”
I shut my eyes, thinking of the first time I saw the alligator running towards me. Frozen in place, I squinted, not able to believe it’s size, it’s stature. It wasn’t just large but faster than I imagined and I was stuck near a large tree, watching it. In crisis, I can flounder, sort of vacillate between ideas at a rapid rate without picking one fast enough, and squinting. That’s what I do when I’m turning it over. I was not debating whether or not I should climb up the tree, a viable option, but whether or not the beast barreling towards me had crooked teeth. I wanted to be sure it was an alligator not a crocodile. Certainty has always mattered to me. And to the sound of the gravel, then the pause, then the gravel, then the pause, my eyelids flutter with a rhythm too; a motion to move too. I begin counting sheep before the last car pulls away. I hear a yell, “Anyone here?”
“No one answered.”
“Ok, then let’s go.”
 I have a cat on my neck, fifteen blankets, three cans of cat food, one banana, five cans of beans, one can of tuna, some wilting brussel sprouts, four bags of lentils, not a single time piece in this townhouse nor a single friend in this town.

January 11 2020

The apartment kind of moved like a wave, several, in fact, like a very small ocean grew from the carpet and each wave lifted me higher to the ceiling. Stuck on crest, I was anchored in the vibration right before the crash, high, the depth, the shock of being carried like that. I began to shake, ponder imminence, posture motionless, posture God, and then enact policy about it. I began to talk to me like this. You began to hear noises; check to see if it was the cat making them. You began to see slaughtered pigs at your bookshelf and the oven timer goes off in the middle of the night. You began to feel lethargic, take naps and wake up to apparitions in your doorway that kind of resemble Alex but also kind of resemble a human alligator. You hugged a small child at two am in your living room with no recognition of waking up or walking there. You began to chant his name. An upswing of movement takes over your legs; an endless urge to pace, to walk far. You began to wrap your body in layers and move things around; build shrines, hang postcards you had written to yourself like a map. The mother in you moves objects out of pathways for safety or tosses things over the bridge for luck: the coconut, the pearl necklace, the limpia leftovers. Your mouth keeps spilling his name and I love you and the euphoric laughter is the dead giveaway but life goes on. Fiddling, you shake. A nervousness begins.

You used to run around without a thought, numb, flask high. Once you ran to catch a plane but now you have responsibilities, an on time-Uber, a packed suitcase and passport. You began the slow climb to the emperor, responsibility, flossing daily and making lists. The euphoric laughter should have been the dead giveaway. The endless spinning and baths or the way you told him I can’t stop telling your friend I’m in love with him. You wore a red flag costume to the party but you maintained some composure anyway. Took some time off and a pay cut. Hugged yourself a lot. People really didn’t notice the muttering, the way you had to check things so often. You began to guess with 95% accuracy but hedged things to show effort. You were improving in your devolution. The night time became thick and mossy but during the day, you willed results; showed up early with coffee, felt responsible for your own volition. You showed up to the airport four hours early but ended up in Moscow anyway. These things really happened to you. Let go. These things all really happened.

Half has been burned the day your altar caught on fire for the third and last time but you still have the fortune from the cookie the flight attendant handed you:
“(Inscrutable?)”
I was awoken by Russian.
“Would you like a meal?” she repeated in English.
I had not planned to be on this Aeroflot flight on May 29th from Barcelona to JFK so I had not ordered a vegan meal. My meal had been eaten the day before by the famished traveler or curious Spanish tourist. Listless, probably actually starving, I decided to eat around the meat. I was only three hours in and trying not to count the full sixteen on my hand. I ate some spinach thing and a little cheese and a biscuit with butter, cheating. Who cares? I ate the fortune cookie last. I didn’t know Russians were so preternaturally oriented to include a chinese superstition but then again,  I was melting into the seams of my seat so maybe I was reading everyone wrong. It read
He who stands at the place, goes back.
You begin again without pettishness. You say thank you to everyone anyway, honestly, being raised that way. You begin again with a prescription and the same chant.
“These things really happened to me,” is the first thing you plan to tell him.

I hear a knock on the door. It is probably ten am and I am under ten blankets, clutching my journal, remembering the way edges begin to rip, slowly at first and then all at once. The way they crack with heat or freeze; either fizzle red and spark, burst then  settle away or break apart so clean and sharp to frosted fissure. The way you weather yourself like this: tense, under blankets, ignoring the pleading and loud “Hello” at your door.
“I don’t think anyone is home,” a man says.
“(Inscrutable).”
“Ok, let’s try Dave,” the man says.
You pull two pillows over your head. You let the cat nest in your neck and close your eyes to a very steady purr that neither ceases nor slows in winter. You’re warm enough. You’re back in the trough and coughing. You’re anchored in crisis, looking up. You’re breathing. You’re almost luxuriating in it.