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The other night I dreamt of a house in some desert town entrapping myself and a man that wanted nothing to do with me inside.

I just wanted to tell you what happened.

It was based on a childhood movie favorite of mine called “Kingdom of the Spiders” in which tarantulas land somewhere in Arizona to usurp power from man. There had been some other scenes in this dream before the final illustrious ending. I wrote those down as well: your friend at my parent’s house helping me get rid of cockroaches and building a sturdy foundation, suppliant, nodding, agreeable and eager to help. The house was dark but I recognized him and he wasn’t bothered by the cockroach crawling up my arm. The one I thought about all day was us in that house and your apathy. In the dream, I had walked up to you in a crowd simply asking you to listen and then we were in the last scene of the movie where the townspeople are trapped inside of a house and the screen pans out to show you that the spiders have come together to build a giant web around the structure. There is no escape and it’s just you and me inside. My recent meditation centered around the idea that home is impermanent. Unless a giant tarantula traps you.

When I woke up I began to assemble the pieces with a more ambrosial patience than I had previously carried. Sort of thrumming all over, I hummed down the street that day ,turning the music up and down, playing different songs, trying to get out of the repetition while being mired in it. I wore a sundress that showed off my tattoos and didn’t want to be bothered. Those two statements are not incongruent despite what witnesses say. My body is giant so it’s hard to ignore me. I have become engorged with different pieces of media, old stored clips and new clips that I feast on like rock cake but I was raised to take chances, be optimistic (spread your arms like this, Cat) so I’m buoyant, bright despite the weight of everything I’ve ever seen or heard. Parroting at times, I can spit things back like a tape recorder and rote memorization is how I aced every subject, however, I am generally confused and turned around when it comes to directions. My memories are interwoven with the memories of myself watching characters evolve either on screen, in print or in my head and there are often times when I am not here but there or somewhere I have never been. While I distinctly remember running outside with my summer reading list to feel the sun beat my back when I was only six years old, I also remember something can be fabricated or exaggerated in retrospect. Maybe bravery is learned or maybe you earn it with age or maybe you’re born full of grace and ready and able to face everything.

I heard a few things growing up that took place outside of my head and began to list them. That you should never have sex with boys and you should never let them have sex with you. They put the emphasis on you and let. You cannot let them win the invasion. You cannot let them pinch your butt when you walk by. You cannot let them masturbate about you. That I was a girl. I knew that I was a girl and I knew what the word precocious meant. I heard it enough that when I had access to the dictionary it was the first word I ever looked up.

precocious

adjective

(of a child) having developed certain abilities or proclivities at an earlier age than usual.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Cat.”

Some things I heard early. When you are a girl they tell you certain things and leave out others. Namely, you are to behave. To learn to cross your legs. To learn to smile even in humiliation as public shaming is a way to control us; namely kids, children of all genders. It’s the guilt my calves are strong from; namely, the way I ran. I was a girl. I wore dresses for picture day and combed my hair only right before they took the picture.

“Smile. You have such a pretty smile.”

I learned to smile. I learned to say thank you and please. I learned to monitor the volume of my voice, even in uproarious laughter, even when I won the game, even when I outran a boy, I learned to contain myself. I was raised in the south as a girl.

“You’re precocious.”

But I threw tantrums; explosive displays of trauma, emotion, tidal waves that took over anything near me. I had violent reactivity as well as bladder control issues, cried a lot, was called “very sweet,” placed in advanced classes, asked if I was “slow” in the same week, had not learned spatial reasoning or how to take the word no with any grace by the time I write this and was always very pretty. The second word I looked up was oppositional. I had oppositional defiant disorder I learned very late. I did things to spite whomever whenever but only when the odds were mostly in my favor. You never know for sure and you can’t bet on anything that talks.

precocious

adjective

(of behavior or ability) indicative of early development.

Girls don’t have that, boys do. Girls have hysterics, tantrums, bratty behavior that has to be shunned out. If you wet your pants, they assume you like attention or are being molested but they don’t ask how much you’ve had to drink that day. They don’t see your eating habits, your dehydration or little tendencies to hoard. I couldn’t handle the word no or wait or stop asking to go to the bathroom and often could be found kind of shaking. My muscles gave up. These cries burst from a place of fullness and I proved to be avid as I gained weight. They considered me querulous but dainty like a painted pink teapot coming to boil. Catarina, full of grace and soda, and I twirled.

“Veruca Salt!” he yelled after me.

Even though I had entered the land of no land where I get to enjoy my camp acid crescendo, my bursting ellipsis that plays on a loop on an app on my phone in my eardrums, I heard him. I knew who he was.

“I’m busy,” I turned the music down.

“For me? I thought I was your main man,” he winked behind me, I think

That’s an understatement.
I intellectualize.

I was precocious and oppositional and fancied all my girl friends as a child wondering what it would be like to rub my thighs against the inside of their thighs. One time, I got my neighbor to rub her body on my body when we were five and all of my friends’ mothers kept an eye on me because the fathers were only good for salivating over chopstick legs so I got away with things. I eyed their daughters like a thirsty hawk that just found water. Lap at the edge and perch, wait for the muskrats to peek out at dusk. I was always touching myself.

“I’m too busy to have a main man.”

But he kept pace with me even though I believed I walked the fastest in the whole world. Men were everywhere like a pestilence or cancer and I couldn’t get away. I mostly averted my eyes when I walked but here he was, demanding something. I had been absentmindedly rubbing my forearm and swaying, forgetting that I was in public at an intersection waiting for the light to change when I heard him right behind me. I had been practicing silence. I had turned down the music but my earbuds were in.

“Veruca Salt!”

I was built to be a very gay dancer but also once I dared a guy to watch me eat an entire chocolate cake in front of him while he stroked his dick for my enjoyment and here we are. I vow to ignore him. I regret the game but like I said we are here.

You are here.

“I’ve been thinking about you.”
My hand is clutching the hem of my skirt because I am practicing open palms.
“I’ve been busy.”
I begin to let a finger drop and the light changes.
“For me? I thought I was your main man.”

I dash across the street. My knees hurt. My ankles hurt. My back hurts. I am practically running and he thinks my appetite is about him. He thinks someone this unquenchable just hasn’t seen the fountain. He thinks he is the fountain. He has never been so full he wet his bed. He thinks I enjoy him. He thinks it’s really ok to really grab my arm as I dash away from him in public.

The first thing I do is suppress a gasp. It is in my nature to vocalize, almost narrate the drama. It is also in my nature to overreact but I am practicing the lean in mentality of masculinity. Show no emotion, detach quickly and respond with force. Lean in, Cat. Then, I jerk my elbow away from him. I watch him stumble only slightly on his own. Then, I whip my neck around in time to see the pickup truck. Lean in, Cat. I make the choice and push him. The truck swerves a little even though there is plenty of space, but it’s the surprise of the event that moves them to tip the wheel to the right. You can always trust your instinct. Really at this stage in my life, my arms are so weak; soft and sculpted merely for aesthetic but I couldn’t get the lid off my rose-lavender candle without someone’s help. No one is hurt but the man saw the truck swerve out of his periphery which I count on too. A parched hawk. He felt himself get pushed by a woman, and felt himself tumble backwards a little. He felt the air of the truck whoosh by him as he felt his heel step off the curb. He felt the tension breathe in the air above it’s tire a good three feet away but nothing feels safe when you’re pushed. I want to show him the bruise he left but didn’t want any more engagement and didn’t want anyone thinking my flesh was easy to puncture or mark.

“I like the handprint,” I admire the red of my ass in the mirror while she smirks. I can see her. I should have been a gay dancer.

precocious

adjective

(of a plant) flowering or fruiting earlier than usual.
I have never seen that man again. He has not tried to contact me or say my name in the street or mention me anywhere.

“datura moon”

No matter what kind of sleep I got, every single day I woke up with one thought on my mind.
    Today is the day I jump off the bridge.
    I would first make the coffee and then feed the cat, sit quietly at the table and stare at the birds. My mind was in a daze, a sort of blankness that defuzzed itself and materialized on paper. I typed almost everything except my dreams; those were handwritten. I was careful in the morning but never again after that.
    It was usually 9:30 by the time I left. I rose around dawn and did nothing for hours just waiting to take my walk to the bridge. The outside was brutal. The city closed multiple times that year due to snow and I was careful.You would think someone with a suicidal plan wouldn’t worry about the tread of their boots but that’s all I worried about. Mornings were long. Not just the layers but the careful concern, the way I studied each outfit in the mirror all of them swallowing me in fabric. I am anemic and hate being cold. In winter I sustain by tea and leggings, scarves, hats and sweatshirts. Electric blankets cover me at night. I hate being uncomfortable but I have to cross the bridge today.
    Today is the day I jump off the bridge.
    I got up at dawn, drank coffee, fed the cat and then puttered around getting dressed, taking a bath, getting dressed again.The walk wasn’t that long. Sometimes I listened to the people pass me on the street but most of the time I had headphones in to distract me. Head down, I appeared confident, determined about a location. There was always a steadfastness to the way I marched and I appeared non-threatening in my puffy jacket and glasses. I didn’t want to jump off the bridge,I had to. Compulsively, I walked every day to complete the task.
    No one was out this day. It was 9:57 when I reached the edge of the railing where I was now crossing the bridge instead of the sidewalk. There was a couple cars but hardly anyone had passed me and today there was a woman on the bridge. She was also covered but gazing outwards. I felt seen by her even though she hadn’t looked my way yet. I continued. If someone is on the bridge, I feel like my performance will be rated. How well I leap to my death is important to me and that is why I have not done it yet. She would surely stop me.
    I remained as brisk as I could, however, the ice startled me. It was in patches but it was on the bridge.
    Today is the day I slip and fall.
    My head was down so I didn’t see her climb up but I did look up to see her right leg still on the railing and the rest of her horizontal and then falling. My breath stopped. I remember that my breath stopped. I did lean over, despite my fear of heights and ice, to watch her fall right in the middle; a sliver of water in ice, the river dotted with freeze. I thought that was lucky. I imagine a fall like that would kill you but the ice would cut you first, break you hit. The thud would be remembered. I wanted grace; the way the water would simply freeze you and fill you and hold you like a mother. There was no one around now. I looked behind me and then back and not a single car or person was there.
    Today is the day I jump off the bridge.
    I checked my laces and I put my right hand on the railing and then my left hand on the railing and then my leg. I let go of the straw.

“The Woman Who Saw Her Own Death”