nice smile.

small,
unmonitored fidgeting,
nervous laughter.
seems to force her way through small
talk with a calmed fanaticism
about previous existential
crisis.
currently being touched and
does not like to be touched without
motive.
currently being undressed.

currently turning from ice
to flood to
to steady stream of
cold, red blood.

“how guys save me in their phone”

Somewhere in the city,  I was walking. And whistling. I guess it was more like a hum but quiet. Slightly tense, I moved my hands in a gestural manner: an old habit of mine. I have a nervous disposition. My fingers stretched against my tights so I could feel the nylon. It was more dense than nylon but my shins were lined in goosebumps. My legs were wrapped in a thicker fabric like leggings but sheer so the wind cut through. I don’t remember carrying anything like a book-bag or purse. Room floated around me and it was just past dusk, slightly dark. It was night when I arrived. I had marched a long time through the city to get to this party; this specific party. I was dressed appropriately although I did not look at my face in a mirror so I cannot tell you what I looked like only what I felt like: airy, like vapor rising past an edge.

The last thing I remember before turning the corner to get on your block was that I had no idea if I had driven or not.  I had the sensation of getting out of a car earlier but truly I didn’t have any recollection of it. My body was tired but I didn’t feel tired.  I had walked for miles. When I opened the door to your place, it felt familiar; not the place but the way I entered. It was as if I always open the door on my own. There was a gathering in the center and you turned to greet me with a chilling passivity and I smiled back with every tooth. I embraced you which was out of my character for me. Not warmth I lack but ownership.  You said:

You look taller.
I looked down to see myself in boots and my knees shaking. I felt the sweater on my shoulders as you turned to put your arm around my waist. I held it there. Not you, I held the feeling of becoming my body, fully clothed and it felt sudden. This is what I am wearing. Even though you delivered a verbal tepid reception, you grabbed me like I was yours. You brought me closer to the kitchen but a dark swarm entered. I looked sideways to follow it. My friend Reagan approached me from the other side. I’m being flanked.  I was distracted long enough to ignore the person sneaking out the back door.

“Hi!” she embraced me like we were friends and pulled me to the couch. 

Funny how recollection tricks you. There was someone else in the kitchen who slipped out the back door as I sat down but I would tell you then on the couch, with her, that never happened. I would embrace Reagan like an old confidante even though I barely knew her. I would tell you it was comfortable even though I felt set up.  I looked down at my dress. A dress. I’m wearing a dress. 

“How are you?” she smiled brightly in my face.

There was nothing memorable about her except her green eyes. They were beautiful and I panicked.  I swallowed big like I was swallowing an apple core and I held her hand like we knew each other forever. Turning to look for him, she squeezed it.
“Let’s catch up, hon.”

I kept turning my head to understand the new layout. There were candles lining the floor to the stairs but the staircase was on the opposite side. When I turned back it also appeared that the stairs were in the right place even though there were none near the front door. It was like the room was cut with mirrors. It felt like a stage. I don’t think there is an upstairs. 

“ I want to see my reflection,” I suddenly said.

“Hahaha omg,” she patted my leg. “Listen, I don’t know why you would trust him. He’s an alcoholic and manipulative.”

I swallowed again and stood up.  I should confront him. Where did he go? I walked away from her and realized the entire party had cleared. It was just the three of us. He greeted me without his shirt and I saw a tattoo. There were two. I couldn’t read the bigger one.

“Are you staying or leaving?” he said.

His eyes were blue, bright and opulent but closed like a fresh paved walk of ice.

Felt like I was diving.

I headed towards the door that was on the right side even though the kitchen and stairs were misplaced. I stepped out before I could change my mind, before I could stop and pause and demand my reflection. Let me use the bathroom. There were no cars anymore. No streetlights or streets. I held the hem of my dress, once feeling thick like a sweater felt thinner, lighter, more spring but still black.  I had come to the party in an all black spring dress and now I was shivering. It had dropped a few degrees in the forest. I was staring at a forest. I was staring at a row of trees and yellow eyes were popping out of them. They were slow, methodical and walking towards me. My hands were gripping the handles of a bicycle. I can’t bike through this. Turning around to plead with him, he was already closing the door. 

“Can I just stay here awhile until the wolves go away?”

He shut the door without a word. I turned to face the forest I had just somehow safely walked through and pretended it was a street. The entire pack settled at the entrance and watched me. Gripping the bike, I turned back to make sure, yes, he shut the door. A giant red oak square with a brass knocker stared me in my face. I looked down. 

I become so enlightened at the turn of it

I start writing with a desperation. 

That’s what the note on my arm said. 

And what did the note on his ribs say?

I interrupt myself. I am scrambling to remember the whole thing before it fades. It is 5:30 in the morning and I am in pain; not from separation but from untended rhythm. Maybe I never noticed my dreams had cadence. I have pages full of them. I begin again.  I stopped myself from compulsively flipping through last year’s journal. Sitting is my weakness. The morning overcomes me and dawn is nice. I am too tired to move so I stay. It was a tattoo on his chest, not his ribs. He had two and I could only read one. They were connected over his body like a map. 

I tapped my head with my pen and sat. Sometimes the morning is foggy and I just need a second to breathe. Coffee is too stimulating and I just need a quiet moment to breathe. One was so giant I couldn’t read it like it cascaded across his whole body,  I reread my note from earlier and I put the pen back on the paper. Mania is a curse of the unrested but dutiful investigator. Jaw clenched already, my migraine set in. So I got up, beginning the walk for the day. It was 5:47 am and I was already almost out the door.

“Dream, 3/31/2016”

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”

–Anais Nin

“stay here.”

—responses from God during meditation, April 13, 2014 3:01 pm

things rage before they settle.

“Look, you can’t go back out there. It’s curfew and even if you tell them you are just walking home they may not believe you.”
“I thought curfew was at eleven.”
He waved his hands, “I don’t know but I just heard the sirens and the storm is getting bad. Probably precaution. Anyone out now won’t make it if they are far from home.”
And the thing that breaks you is the synthesis of all of it.
“Let’s move into the living room,” he began to stand up.
And the thing that stuns you is the words. The pragmatic formation of sentences meant to protect. Facts.
“I have a fireplace,” he extends his hand towards me.
And the hiss that you repress to remain cordial as your chest cracks in half. I take his hand. I grew up in a shack on the outskirts of Norfolk, Virginia that has been slowly weathered by hurricanes over time. My dad sits on the edge of my childhood bed and watches football and eats Hostess cupcakes. The floor is ruined from his cigarette smoke and uncleanliness. It resembles nothing now. Once, it was a shade of dark purple and the ceiling had glow in the dark stars all over that kept me safe in the dark. Any note I had hidden to myself has been found and discarded. My dad keeps mementos of me near, things I have written him or bought him.  He calls me once a week and attends a methadone clinic daily. The whirr of the oxygen tank fills the house when he sleeps. Our house is full of crickets and cockroaches, spiders and sometimes snakes. My dad lives there alone and I know that sometimes he walks into my dead brother’s room to cry. I place my palm firmly in this stranger’s hand. I let him lead me to his fireplace. The first thread has been pulled. The spool has begun to unravel. Theater tonight is a longing and resentment.
But at least we are warm.
I let out a short laugh, like a cough.
“Hmm?” he asks in the doorway of the fancy living room.
“Oh, it will be good to be warm,” I say.
The second siren goes off and he’s right. It’s seven pm, twenty nine degrees and eight days without electricity in this town. Somewhere in Norfolk, an oxygen tank stops and someone pulls their breath from a deep resolve and I too march.

When I recount things, sometimes they are blurred by my filter; my emotion at the time of recall. I understand that the way to get an extra brownie is to walk in the room the grinning ingenue. I watch them breathe as we continue to talk. I watch their shoulders slag. I watch their faces change into suns and smiles and laughter.  But I’m of bitten tongue recalcitrance. This is called “walking the tightrope.” When I recall things, I must remember if temper came into play, if anxiety was near, or if I was a gymnast doing cartwheels for the crowd. The confluence of each part of me is what creates the story. I must remember which part I played. What I will remember about this man is that when he poured the hot water, he smiled at me in a fatherly way, and that I was not the coquettish mouse trapping cats in the basement, but the helpless girl in the dark gripping horror films to stop her wailing.
“Yeah, we had a lot of fun.”
He put the kettle on the table and sat back down. I was visibly nervous, fidgety. I kept placing my palms face down on the table and pressing them into the wood. Then, I would retract them and place my palms together and then place them on the top of my thighs. It’s hard to do this without being noticed.
“You left your straw by the door.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you need it?”
I looked down at my hands on my thighs getting ready to start the cycle again.
“No.”
I did.
“Tell me more about yourself. Your name?”
“Ava.”
“Ava.”
“My cat is Genevieve. We live a few blocks from here, alone.”
“And you walked here?’
“Yes, I tried to go to the stores and they were already raided or locked. I started walking and then I got kind of turned around, lost, then scared.”
“And you came here?”
I dug my nails into my pants wishing my tips were longer or my layers were less.
“I panicked. Looked for light. The knob was unlocked. I was going to knock if it wasn’t. I may have been imagining the people. It’s cold and dark out there.”
“You don’t have any friends, you said?”
“I just moved here a couple months ago. I have one friend but we don’t know each other well and my dad is sick in Virginia.”
He nodded and stroked his beard. The habit seemed old. He probably didn’t realize he was doing it.
“My phone died.”
“Did you bring it with you?’
“No,” I shook my head, forlorn. “I wasn’t thinking. Is your phone working?”
“A little. I have been keeping in touch with my wife and kids. It’s a mess out there.”
I nodded.
“My dad is dead.”
“How do you know?”
He leaned forward.
“He’s on oxygen, lost power right away, no one to help him really. It’s a long shot. I would have driven but I don’t have  a car.”
Let yourself sob. A tear formed in my eye and I studied his table. Red wood like mahogany, old, antique. His wife’s. Too big to take west.
“Where is your wife again?”
He didn’t answer and instead stared at me. I deserve consolation, true, but here comes the fit of rage. I was a spool of tumult and if you pull me right, you get what you get. Let yourself cry.
“Texas.’
“Texas?’
I looked up surprised. I wasn’t expecting that.
“Got a better job. Can’t complain now,” he shrugged. “My kids are safe. If the airports weren’t closed, I’d fly out.”
“You don’t drive?”
Don’t react to anything he says. I was done crying if that’s what that was. The rage had passed. The storm. I heard sirens.
“Curfew,” he plainly stated.
Don’t react to anything he says.