you and I are from
the same place.
I start to pace
the block once more.
my fingers
on the handle
but in my own yard.
my steps are ever
silent and my
dry lips pursed
lightly, pucker,
press the back of your neck
as you stand face forward
to my closed
front door.
lick the last drop
of cedar cologne
as I wrap my
pointy candy-apple
colored nails
around your
throat.
and I start humming.
“rage”
when do you decide to kill and what
stops you?
God.
pause.
uncertain
of myself.
and what do you want to learn from all
of this? she waves her hands over
the fire.
pause.
uncertain of
myself.
but there are the men
and they are giant
but it is not just men
the things that I’m bound
by, namely vitriol,
a weakness, how they
pervaded throughout my
gelid days when I could
have been comfortable in gray
cocoon save these little birds
and having no
right to be there, I can’t decide
if it is better for me
to keep my hands pressed
firmly together or
will you teach me how to kill
my God?
or if it is better palms
open in subservience
to her.
“Hecate”
you know I’m dense.
ice cold, flush with
forked tongue ready to
puncture someone.
i’m lush;
maintaining a sense of
dam and containment
even in my most berating
fits of temper or panic,
I manage to remain
frozen these days
like a cracking lake.
you say I am
sharp and
bitter.
but underneath my skin,
that blue-lace casing,
a carnise river:
little tributaries to
the turning of the world
in linear order.
delivery is bitter.
and you say
casually, so
full of rage.
“the doe”
precocious and blazing
hot, I become
a long bending desert to
warm you up:
fields of sand to cover,
infinite high noon run,
no moon to come,
hollowing the others with
deprivation,
promising mirages,
a wide and weaving
ever-longing
desiccation,
sudden sidewinders and a
slow and draining
drip that never hits and
dehydration,
never an inch of rain
and you
find every trap
I laid.
“the desert”
what does all of this
mean to you?
wave to no one, fixed
on the corner of
an antlered profile
in the corner of a
smudged mirror.
you say it’s important,
ask me to tell it in
“linear order”
but how can I get away with
things telling stories
with honesty?
I have survived time
and cage and aged
in linear order.
my proof:
I flex a ripped tricep
endless strength and
brimming veins
that have learned how to
whistle when your girl
walks by me.
‘the doe”
I went from being a frozen tundra:
algid, wide and growing fields of
ground to cover with
no visible tracks to follow
unless the wind was kind
and left the prints
which it wasn’t often.
taciturn but for some
icy speech and bleak;
caustic prose in
squalling breezes that freeze
and stick to your cheeks,
harden bite your tongue
in frostbit chomps so it takes a while
before we cut those
meek coughs off.
before they form into spit,
white noise, handwritten
cards,
I sprout into a raging sun
“the desert”
taciturn but for some
icy speech and bleak;
caustic prose in
squalling breezes that freeze
and stick to your cheeks,
harden bite your tongue
in frostbit chomps so it takes a while before we
cut those
meek coughs off
just as they start.
before they form into spit,
white noise, handwritten
cards,
I sprout into a raging sun.
when I took the first half tab, it was a beautiful winter day and I was so lucid, I was able to walk into the Apple store to buy new headphones. I was able to walk into Target to grab some juice. I was able to give my juice to a woman on the ground outside. I was able to smile, buoyantly carried across town, text a friend and laugh gaily. the second half tab was blustery. new year’s day. a week later but a storm in between and there was too much ice out. i was stuck indoors.
sometimes I pretend a man is asking me something and it forces it to be truthful, blunt, terse. I don’t lie when I am in my imagination in this way, but I do lie. or rather, I twist things to see them from all different sides and I can land on truths that are more beside me than in me. the term is distortion.
it was noon when it hit me. I was afraid to go outside. afraid I would slip on the bridge and fall into the frozen river below. some recurring vision. now, I looked around at my cartoon apartment; pasted, covered in bright postcards I had made to guide me through the year prior. like a map. suddenly a choir of men:
what do you all day, Ava?
they say the first hour is the hardest but I know it’s the third when it’s fully digested. they say it’s one man but I say it’s three. they say I wanted options and to name them. they say what do you want, AVA? they say I’m gonna kill myself and
I say
I think about killing myself all day.
draw the third heart on my hand and exhale. focus on not crossing the bridge all day.
“the third hour”
sometimes I pretend a man is asking me something and it forces it to be truthful, blunt, terse. I don’t lie when I am in my imagination in this way, but I do lie. or rather, I twist things to see them from all different sides and I can land on truths that are more beside me than in me.
distorting things into options that are more malleable. what motivates me? water. i’m always in the water and I always was. swimming. dancing. I used to love doing twirls and flips in the water. I was a very graceful gymnast at the pool and in the ocean. even from a young age, I could keep up with my brother and Amanda, my friend, two years my senior. I was fast and reckless. I loved touching the bottom of wherever we were: lake, ocean, bay, deep end. I always had to prove I could my hold my breath. my tactic was tried several times like a video game. if you have a ledge grab hold and push. if not, find strength right there in diaphragm. then swan dive, feet first, quickly to the bottom, touch it with force, hard, hit it, really feel it and launch yourself back upwards to the top before any of the other kids. I especially loved challenging boys.I was very fast. I pointed my toes and I only needed the impact of the top of my feet. I was used to that stance. my dad always pointed it out. that I was always on my tiptoes and prancing, sort of twirling and also flapping my hands a bit.
I was messy too. like my dad. that’s where I get it from. spilling everything.
“I am my father’s daughter.”
I am in a bathtub in the middle of a pandemic but I am also being pulled slowly into the sea sometime in the nineties. there are three hearts on my hand and I am here in a cartoon apartment pasted with postcards like compasses
and I think about
killing myself
all day.
“the third hour”
I began to run the tub: a familiar grieving place. I loved the containment. the colors. threw a yellow cap in. looks like urine. I threw a red tab to make it dark pink. I can’t take anything less than wide open, spacious. all walls were constricting. I also feel the need to be swaddled like a baby. I like pacifiers. something in my mouth, something to hold me. something to press upon me. I walked back to my room unsure of myself. I was trapped in a bad place and a bad place. Philadelphia, America. grabbed jasmine oil. walked to tub, sprinkled. walked back. put it away. I didn’t think about anything while I did it even how steep the stairs are. the ritual was nice. the movement. there is no time.I got into the tub as it started to fill. a habit of mine. I couldn’t wait for it to finish and I wanted to listen to the water run. I noticed my feet first: lanky, bony then my legs, different, bigger. my hands though: young, like when I was a child. all my acrylic nails off except the two thumbs. one of them wavering under water, loose, ready to be pulled off. I watched my hands turn in the water like that slowly as it filled. noticing my calves against them. it looked like there were bumps up and down my shin bone. my legs have changed. my hands have grown. one day, they will be wrinkled. the water on top of my hands felt nice and was pleasing to look at. even though my nails they were beaten brittle short like when I was in elementary school, I could feel my young hands grow out of that place. I could feel my old voice say you have to take the pressure off and then I just moved downward till my forehead touched the water. I remembered swimming. spending days at the pool, hours in the water in the ocean or the bay. waves didn’t scare me. I liked riding them in the surf. the deep end didnt scare me. I was an excellent swimmer. then what happened? the male voice says. and me answering without pause, and then one day i developed an intense phobia of water. I could see my toes, curled on the porcelain, the way they were when they were feeling for mole crabs. I could see my head falling under and an intense
and
inescapable
fear of drowning.
“I carry a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other hand.”
—Rabi’a
daturamoon.com 