you are only as sick as your
secrets the old man says
and I nod emphatically
like I was willing to part with
any of them, like I
am going to unabashedly
review my inventory
right here but
well

 I have just
applied a fire engine red
gloss to my lips before
walking in and
I didn’t know this was just
for men, readjusted myself
in the middle of five.
I’m all black
monochrome
and partially velvet,
hostile,
internal,
set out for departure
since arrival.
my friends say I have a
clever  way of falling up
and the ones I fucked
said anything but easy
but taste like strawberry
which gets me in the door.

I start by confessing
that I shoplifted the kombucha
that I am drinking
cuz I honestly
just have to start.

“doors #2” or “confessions”

(being obsessed with inequity
creates lines on
your face.
your teeth clenched
with scowl and stress
but it provides a catalyst to
all movement. people are scared
to admit a big motivator
to success is
their unremitting desire
for vengeance.

and money helps
take away the change
of facial shape.
and money assuages.)

“They don’t mean to cause offense, but it doesn’t occur to them that clarity of facts can ever be offensive.”

this next section is called: the snake.

“I feel trapped on a lonely star.”

–Audre Lorde

the score was 7-5 when we saw the salamander and I gave them and extra point because I had never seen a salamander on the ground before. had watched them in the pond turning circles in the autumn morning light but here it wriggled over the leaves like a living gummy worm. a translucence to its skin that made me want to poke through it with a stick. both of us admitted later we were tempted to pop it into our mouth to chew its tiny legs like gum.  this one was bright orange like a fox or fire. it means fire and water. salamander does. that’s what I told them. not then but 

“(redacted)”

I was entranced by its movement when they said my name quietly. no one was there. you could yell if you wanted. first, I saw their face, foreboding. clear in its focus and delivery. I looked to the right and saw the lumbering outline. people say in crisis you cease thinking but you don’t. you have a million cogent thoughts a second that coalesce to

“don’t run.”

we had prepared for this because I made us prepare for this–going over a thousand times what would happen if it happened. turned and walk up the hill, brisk, no running. don’t run. a few steps up and my deep breathing began. they said they heard me when I started. I have a metronomic heart. we could time the seconds by the steady pulse if we ever wanted to. I remembered the years of hearing the run and the go right when you want to go left and rarely employing it. never making sense but always wafting around my encumbered head. there’s a lot of thoughts in times of stress. there’s a lot of thoughts in me at all times. its the opposite of what everyone says. crisis is instinct deployed and brain on overdrive but body–body is moved by a deep well of force. head is scrambled but legs almost swim. 

 for a split second I veer.  I saw the divet to the left and felt confused even though I had confidently turned when it popped in again: go right when you want to go left. heart bored against the bones looking for escape. my breath kept my feet on soil.my breath kept us straight. gmy breath kept me. nothing felt so airy as the top of the hill. nothing felt so good. that path was particularly dark and overcast and suddenly; sunny moments before we entered.   I remembered before I said it, right before I spoke to them again, I remembered the three webs I walked into at the beginning of the trail, exclaiming this is Arachne’s forest.

“they said it’s 8-8,” I began before turning around.  “we both get the bear.”

they said I said we’re ok now but I don’t remember that. I remember a shiver leaving my fingertips and

they said I said we’re ok now but I don’t remember that. I remember a shiver leaving my fingertips and asking to leave and like a snapshot– the large, lumbering black body walking towards us from thirty feet away, repeating.

 and I remember the cloak of gray sky pregnant with storm encasing me.

“#12 or Arachne’s Trail”

I am somewhere close to the edge and  the last thing to go is the fear of death. that’s the fifth. kind of a bonus is being labeled batshit.

the nodule in my throat. that was the first to go. showed up on a catscan then never appeared again. asked me if I had two throats.  but the first thing that happened was I choked. the second thing that happened were my legs went numb. the third was my breath being stuck and the steady rise of water. 3:13. that’s the formula we are looking for. the audience is buried beneath a lake of ice until I need them again. wait back up there’s no order here. 

ok, the first thing to go was my mind. sit on the carpet and thank god. the second thing to go was my throat full of acid. quite literally caustic. the third thing to go was my breath. the audience is six feet under a snow covered bank.get on with then.

but I snap back to the British voice in my head. I will tell it as I please. there are three things that happen in order and there are thirteen deaths I see. 

the visions, the cabin with MS or the reaction to adrenaline perhaps and the pandemic with the robberies, the police on the swat team aiming at me. the suicidal thoughts. the jail. the mental hospital. the women ganging up. the bridge and car accident. the bombing. or it’s gas this time. there’s a tornado. a hurricane and a flood. the music and the seizure. the waves. first i have a near death experience but there’s so many i can’t keep track, and there’s an alligator somewhere. 

wait, no there’s a snake somewhere. they said it would either be a snake or an alligator and so wait, there’s more. I guess. it’s kind of hard when you realize all the women in your life turned out to be snakes but they didn’t kill me so you start looking for the alligator just in case.

“13 stories: the woman who saw her own death”