dream I was being pulled out of my body. I ran downstairs. My neighbors were watching their old vacation videos and I asked them to come upstairs. I made the sign of the cross the whole way up. When we got back to my apartment, I saw myself next to a Christmas tree, like I was hanging decorations. I had cat eyes. I said “out demon out demon get out of my house.” My house was the same as it is in waking life except for the Christmas tree. I looked like I did when I was 22 and living with xxx. It was the same tree. Later I went to (redacted) and told her what happened. My face was beat up and I was crying. I also attended a Modest Mouse show for free. A cat was being circulated in the crowd and I pet it. I was alone but genuinely having a good time.

Morning was short today. I got to sleep in. Til about ten. I couldn’t believe it. Normally, I am up by 6 am and I can’t stop it. It’s rare if I go to bed later than 11. I am usually sleeping from 10-5 or 11-6 and no more. It’s not the sun that wakes me up but a distance. I can’t explain it. I feel like I am rising with someone who is also rising. 

Today I practice the spine game. It starts with an affirmative statement to test. Same with the pendulum. IT started with the pendulum actually. I would practice a few times and determine yes was right and no was left. However, I noticed the same thing happened inside of me when I played with the pendulum. I began to make statements. Not questions. I would walk around making statements and feel the energy in my body shift one way or another depending. Now, it’s hard. The stasis. Finding what’s true. So I began to test it.

I sit centered in front of living room altar. I can see two candles on top and a picture of my brother and I. I am a woman. I feel the tingle of my spine rise up and to the right. I am a man. I feel the tingle of my spine drop and hit the lowest point of my back. I am 31 years old. I feel it rise again and sometimes my heart will burst too. I attend Temple Social Work school. It’s like a light vibration up and down. Here is the tricky part. xxx is thinking about me. and it shoots like that, up and towards the heart. 

I’m giggling. We know not to bet on anything that talks. We also discovered the spine game. 

“Ok,” I say out loud. “I am going to begin the name game.”

I turn over one card and start laughing.

“It’s the King of Swords again.”

My cat is on the window staring at me and I am legs crossed, becoming floor. Or rather, becoming the name game. That is, I begin to list them. And here is the tricky part. Be careful what you say. I turn over the next card.

“It’s the Magician Reversed again, Genevieve!”

I look to my right but she has gone somewhere else. 

“Isis.”

And a slow, overpowering wind moves up my back and I am grinning like I’ve been eating shit and spitting it. 

1/3/2017

I agree the weed is complicating things. This is why I tell no one of my habits. Avoidance is key. 

“I’ll sort this out,” I say cheerily, passing a family of five. 

Smile. I smile at the young girl and her mother looks me up and down. The streets are crowded. I keep my hood up and try to lay low. Anytime someone on the street taps me for something, I am startled. If anyone asks for anything, I just poise like I’ve been shot and they retreat, alarmed by my dramatic shock at their intrusion. I’ve been known to gasp or shriek. We back away from each other. I have started to wear my old wigs sometimes.

“Just to get into character,” I say, waving my hands.

A woman with two children passes me and I don’t think she knows I am wearing a wig! I’m delighted and smile big at her children and she veers around me, her eyebrows furrowed.  I am what you call “full momentum.” If I go on two walks a day, I call that “a failure.” Three has happened but I am usually upset by something. I can walk from my house to 2nd and South on a bright day. That’s about an hour and a half and then an hour and a half back. The snow has started. Generally, it’s getting snowy. I think I’ll take the bridge but then I can’t possibly muster it. Today is a one day walk but I am at 2nd and South. I don’t buy anything. I just look at all the windows. Think. 

“I should buy something.”

I go in the crystal shop and touch everything I see. I pocket things sure. Who doesn’t? I say out loud and a clerk turns her head to look at me. I buy a little round black obsidian to assuage her suspicion.

“Any plans for the weekend?” a man with many facial tattoos asks me.

It’s 8:18 pm, Friday night, 31 degrees and dropping.

“Oh, just gonna get some rest.”

I hand him a five dollar bill and put the change in my pocket. This is a good exchange because I am loose. The wig helps. I feel unrecognizable. Begin the hour and a half walk back. Sometimes I stop and stare into windows so it can take two hours instead. I receive many texts. I think to myself avoidance is key but I say it out loud as a group of couples pass me and one smiles. I reach out and touch his elbow. 

1/12/2017

“You want to take me to a place called “Alligator River?”
He handed me the brochure.
“It’s a wildlife refuge.”
I took it if only to get him to stop holding it towards me and flipped it over to see the address. Somewhere in North Carolina.
“You want me to go with you on a camping trip where we sleep in the wild and then kayak down the river in a place named after its scariest inhabitants–Alligator River? A river OF alligators.”
“We will just walk and I will point out the alligators to you,” he brushed me off.
I stared at him. We were both in his car in front of my hotel at the oceanfront. I had been discussing my dream again. The one where I am in the water, treading and they just start swarming me from the bank.
“Alligators like their young. They are family animals,” he shrugged.
“They protect their young. They will kill their young if they have to.”
The brochure sat plainly on the console.
“Don’t alligators eat their young during famines?”
“Hard times befall us all.”
I got out of the car, holding my bag of groceris and leaned into the window.
“The refuge is called Alligator River.”
“Yes. It’s a good time at Alligator River,” he smiled.
I half twirled debating walking around the car to my entrance.
“E x p o s u r e, ” he said.
How do you debate these things?
“Take me kayaking first. Here.”
“Of course.”
I waved him off and walked confidently into the hotel. I was seeing no clients here anyway. 

“The Dream of Alligator River”

I suddenly started and could not stop thinking of you. It was intrusive. I spent minutes staring at my friend feed to see what you were listening to and believing, deeply, that you could see me on the other end.  These things are not retractable. I cannot hide from them but I also cannot explain them with perfect linear direction. I know you watch me You watch me. You watch me. Or you feel me. I have very little left in my life.  Fire is magic. Dissolution is magic. Lust is magic. What’s more, they say truth and love are magic.  I was thinking of you and dreaming of you constantly and wanted nothing at all to do with you ever again. 

I laid curled on the carpet, my forehead touching my knees.  My yoga mat was beneath me. Some efforts had been made to hush myself but I was not in pose but a pleading locution that you would see me again. I would demand it. I wanted to immediately rectify some minor transgression that had taken place, but was never clear on what it was I did or if I did anything.  We both shared this edge; this tension that held us in a cloud. I had known about the power of intention, the power of symbolism and mythology for much longer than I could verbalize. I’m not the best writer or orator when I am rushed. I discovered blue alyssum was the karmic blessing of all witches and being drawn to the violet shades already, I closed my eyes and sent you a bouquet. I made my own declaration and then demanded my amends. Within seconds, I was overcome with a feeling of severe fatigue. I needed to lie down. It was about 3:30 pm, Saturday. I never nap. I rarely rest. I have double walks day. It is unusual for me to take the time to go to sleep during the day. I was still in a phase where lack of productivity meant failure but I could not keep my eyes open. I could not stay standing. I had to lie down. I could not stay awake. It felt like I was eating fields of poppy. I was passing out. I got up from the mat to climb into bed, pulled the covers over my face and within minutes was knocked out. Not only knocked out, but within minutes I was already dreaming.

I was taken to a house full of women. Someone told me the rest of their family was coming. I asked nothing of anyone the entire time. This house felt very familiar but I had never once been inside. The people felt familiar though I had never met them. I peeked out the window and saw it was snowing. There were lights in the distance; a small town. We were, what appeared to be, nowhere. I circled the house and saw my mother in bed. I felt the presence of someone else’s goddess. Someone I was borrowing to understand myself better. Yemaya. I was using her because I was scared of what I opened with Lilith and was trying to find a way back home. I passed the same door several times without noticing it. I needed to retrieve something. Show me my dragonfly. I stared at the wooden paneling on the wall. It was that cheap wooden paneling people use to pretend they have a house made out of wood.  But it was plastic. It was all plastic. I didn’t have to touch it to know it was linoleum– brown linoleum and oddly, covering real wood. I was standing in front of a pile of toys. Well, they weren’t toys so much as trinkets or totems for others, I suppose.

In some cruel gesture the owner of the house had purchased real wooden decorations that a child would long for but couldn’t derive real joy from playing. They didn’t have that bend, that softness that young children need to enjoy their fantasy games. You couldn’t move the pieces, couldn’t twist them, chew on the legs of the wooden dolls, couldn’t feel it. Really, they were all geometric blocks of wood in a pile and fake wooden walls to cover the real wood underneath. All brown blocks of wood, decorative logs, next to a brown wall so everything blended together. Good trickster. Nothing flew past me. My guide lay lifeless. I saw the pillared wings, I saw the little tail. A wooden dragonfly in the middle of the pile resembling a tiny stick. Probably hand carved, probably the work of someone with delicacy, a meticulous eye.  I turned my head and a little blond girl’s hand appeared from nowhere and showed me the knob on the door that I could barely see the five times I circled that small house full of people. I asked no one where I could get some fresh air. I asked no one why it was all women. I asked nothing of anyone the entire time.

I opened the door and if this had been a moment in history in my flesh form, full body and palpable, standing and seeing what had transformed in my small demure act of keeping quiet and holding a violet bouquet between us, I would have broken. I would have teared. I would have approached you. But I took in the scene. It had been less than a year since I visited that same cabin in the woods. Only then it had been full of wolves and I had been resentful that you were so much like me but denying it all the time. That there is something here. It was the same cabin and it lit up from the inside as if someone was home. I did not approach it. I did not go inside either. I watched. Surrounding it, where there had once been wolves, the yard was now full of glittering golden does. What’s more, there was not a buck in sight.

 

“The dream of the cabin–1/7/2017”

dreamt about xxx. she said what did you learn during your Saturn Return? and it was about me.

–God
–The Virgin Mary
–Lilith
–Isis
–Osiris

I understand what they mean when they use the phrase manic episode but knowing your affliction doesn’t quell the energy and it doesn’t let you sleep. At 5:30 am, I was already up and making lists. The sun was barely seeping through the blinds as I sipped my second cup of coffee.   I didn’t even begin my coffee until I’d written down my dream and this morning the french press was next to the window by 5:15. I don’t remember doing that.For a couple hours, I puttered there hunched over my notebook, spine twisted into a permanent scoliotic state. There were a few birds out that morning; unidentifiable black birds with unidentifiable songs whirring around me. Sometimes I paused to gaze out the window, watching one land on the branch and perch. I watched it til it flew away again. Mostly, I paced on paper. My wrist hurt. Not from writing, but the straw. Nothing of substance stayed on the page. I reread my work:

Remember: divination, and politics get in the way.

Honeysuckle.

Tonight is a double moon light.

“Nonsense,” I shot up from my chair, startling Genevieve, whom I forgot was there until I felt the claw graze my big toe.

It was 7:45 when I decide to take a shower and get dressed. My stomach rumbled but I was caffeinated, somewhat rested and supported by a long light I couldn’t touch but felt was everywhere. It’s hard to explain these things to an audience so I pretend I have one in my room and begin the narrative again. It always starts in winter…and wave my hands over the floor, twirl, embosk myself in actress. I vacillate between dangerously ungrounded to stoic and frosted and when I feel untethered, I play the part of dancer for myself, the mirror, the spiders in the corner. Rehearse, rehearse I whisper at the mirror, to the elusive centipede, to the corners of the room.  I spent an entire summer once oblivious that I was conversing with a dead spider the entire time. I drank tequila nearly every night and told stories to it’s eight upward legs and slow-desiccating body. I hadn’t thought to check the web for two months and when I did, I was conflicted by my insolence, not my psychosis.

“We’ve been talking all this time,” I began. “And you’re dead,” “I spoke at it again, sweeping it up, disappointed in myself for not checking sooner.

This consumes another hour or so: an hour of pacing and explaining in gestures and fractured sentences to my invisible theater.  Double moon light. It wasn’t until 9:30 am that I was out the door. Sometimes chunks of time are missing during these episodes. Besides the moments at my dining room table, I do remember sitting on my bed naked feeling the drops from the shower run down my leg. I remember feeling the sun stream across my shins through the curtain. I remember the spreading, sardonic grin that announces to the world this is mania, let me in as I sunk into the mattress. At some point, I was splayed  across the comforter with my arms above my head. It was freezing but I ignored that and stared at the little flecks of glitter dotting the beige ceiling; a present from the last tenant. They look like constellations, a lucky man said once. Get out.  I could stare at the ceiling for minutes and draw conclusions. Squint to see fairies. Make lines of the twinkling teal.  I glanced at the clock again: 8:03 am. Getting dressed was difficult for me. Not so much the choosing of the outfit but accepting that I was going outside today in an effort to be confirmed and seen by the rest of the society. I do exist, my saunter says. What I wanted was to hide so what I forced myself to do was go for a walk every day. It is isolative but not as lonely.

“Have you taken your prozac?”

I shake off that memory. I get through my issues fine. I needed comfort for the storm so I put on my brother’s old sweatshirt and my favorite gray cap. I wear leggings under my black pants and thick socks for warmth. It was supposed to snow. I wear combat boots with good tread. I put on my long coat and wrap the lower half of my face with my biggest scarf. You can barely see me save my eyes. Good. I do everything with caution. My hair and head are covered completely. I feel the sanctity of my shrine life slipping away.  Every moment counts. By the time I was at 32nd street, it was 9:37. Time fades and when I remember, I check my clock. That’s a bad habit, my mother said once. That’s not the worst. At 32nd street I had to decide how I was feeling. The snow was light. My eyelashes were grazed with little droplets of white. I looked down and saw the sidewalk shimmer in silver tint. Ice. I do not trust myself on ice. Sometimes I won’t take the bridge. Sometimes I won’t leave the house. Sometimes I face everything no matter what and talk to myself and tell my audience to wait. Today I stand at the corner of 32nd and Hamilton for an unknown amount of time before being pulled. I take the university city side to get to the trail. It was going to storm. I was afraid.

Given the fact that it was cold and about to begin snowing, the campus was rather deserted which was nice. Men don’t bother me out here and women don’t make an impression at all, but people in groups distract me. I prefer men the least. They have roving eyes and a presence that stalks even in passing, even with their hands at their sides, even with their partners. I look down as I pass them or up to the sky or I suddenly check my reflection. Sometimes I will stare at them the whole way until right before their eyes meet mine. In an act of petty revolt, I will glance another direction when we are close enough to engage in small talk, to entrap each other with a nod or a lifted eyebrow. A smirk spreads across my face as they pass, as they shrink from the woman suddenly needing to check her lips in the window or adjust the volume on her iPhone or look away for no reason and feel them become smaller by the impasse. Even momentarily, these feelings are worth it. In our short lives, we are all entitled to feel giant sometimes.

The women give their onceover without much exertion. They are subtle like me. The women with men let contempt build a little in their shoulders so I only notice if I am facing them. They tense and adjust their posture but briefly and without much show. I catch them from time to time. A light shrug or shiver is all you will see.  Some let their eyes roam from my head to my shoes. They always finish with a finger tucking thick hair, the thing I lack, behind their ear and a smile his way, pulling him closer. I don’t purposely provoke envy but even apathy is dangerous when you are tall. I am armed with length and they know I am going nowhere. They know I have nowhere to be. They see my leisurely gait; one knee always braced in case of sudden fall which has created a bit of a limp but a strong limp- a limp on a journey. It is not what I look like. They can’t see me. My face is masked by my clothing and downward gaze or upward gawk. It’s not what I am wearing. I am not cool or put together the way these women in choreographed packs look. They wear boots with heels and their jackets match and they have color schemes for miles.  They see me alone and going nowhere. I am mismatched unless I am perfectly manicured and on those days, I avert my eyes from everyone.

What they really covet, maybe despise or admire or grasp at, and it only lasts a second or two, is the air I possess in my awkward gait. My arms don’t swing when I walk. I clench. My knees hurt from the tension of waiting for a fall so I sometimes have to suddenly straighten or relax in my step. I am in pain. I think this is obvious to everyone but the way they play with their hair and laugh with open mouth, pulling his fingers closer to their waist and looking right at me, maybe I am wrong about what is obvious. A lifetime of covert motive has created elusion.My jaw is usually clenched with my fist in my pocket and I am always clutching at something: keys, straw, stone, cell phone, and staring straight and stolid like a brainwashed soldier. They resent the space beside me; no one walks beside me. What is it, Cat? What they want from me is my violence contained. I am my own container of blades, drawer of swords and growing illusions and they see it as I walk past them. My teeth grinding into my gums so I don’t suddenly bite the necks of the men they deign to love. Women know. They see me dripping in blood. They see me dripping in blood and not a man to stop me. They see me contain myself. What do men see? Only my rejection.

I continue to walk to Walnut St. There will be crowds of people now. I will blend in quickly and disappear like a concrete chameleon. I walk aimlessly for hours, waiting for and wanting nothing. My leisure is a gift from God. I pass storefronts without notice. I pass by dozens of men. I play the eye contact game the whole way and this brings me small joy. I smile on accident. My smile invites a man in a blue cap with kind, blue eyes and gray skin to loosen on his toddler and smile back at me. Instinctively, I look down and walk faster. I am at 13th street before I realize I passed the bridge entrance and I feel some strange relief. Do I want to take the parkway? Do I want to turn on Chestnut and play it safe? Hours seemed to have passed without me checking the time. It’s 11:30 am! Two hours and I have noticed nearly nothing. I look around and see couples gazing over. I see an old woman desperately trying to read the streetlight, her hands gloved and her neck craned towards the sky as she leans on her walker.  She has those big black sunglasses laser surgery patients wear and it’s overcast. Should I intervene?I narrow my eyes at her and from the sideline, I see a group of men in puffy North Face jackets walking her way, stopping next to her, looking my way. They aren’t talking about me, but I can’t be sure. Let’s go.  I see the woman nod at the“Don’t Walk” and she backs up a little and holds steady with the walker. I nod.

 

I am stopped on a rainbow in the gayborhood outside of a sorbet shop. This is so usual. Should I make use of my time? I can’t imagine buying sorbet in this cold except I do it all of the time. It’s like you don’t realize you’re on autopilot until you’re suddenly transported to Capogiro asking to try the pineapple, the pineapple you have tried a thousand times before. You know what will happen. If he is cute, you will smile and lick the spoon and ask for strawberry after you finish with the pineapple. If he is not, you will order the mango immediately. It’s a game that you play every day, but yet, here we are, denying it.

A young white girl was working the counter so I ask for banana. I already knew I liked it and I didn’t want to waste any more time. 11:42 am. Damn. I’ve done nothing today. I sit in the back of Capogiro for a while and look out the window. A couple comes in. They are boisterous and laughing and drawing a lot of attention to themselves. Because I am already facing the door, I can see them: young and both wearing blue scarves and falling in love. I cloak myself in rage fast.  I can tell they are in falling in love by how loudly she laughs when he tells the story of his friend’s bike accident which isn’t funny or even that tragic and he keeps emphasizing all the wrong words and I want to interrupt.

I hear him say, “It was, like, fucking epic. So stupid.” He is waving his arounds a lot. “He was going over the trolley tracks and then swerved suddenly, sharp and missed the guy with the DOG” and he emphasizes this for some reason which I think is the wrong thing to emphasize.

She says, “Oh no” and giggles and touches his arm to encourage him and I am clawing at my pants.

He continues, “And then, AFTER (he emphasizes this and I want to scream at him that he is emphasizing the wrong part of the story) he has gotten over the trolley tracks, past the dog and popped a wheelie to avoid the oncoming car, he FALLS anyway. Right on his side! Just falls like someone pushed him.”

He shows her with his hands, pushing them back against the air like his friend was standing there. And she actually laughs.

“Yeah, and I was like “FUCK DUDE ARE YOU OK??”

He cocks his head to the side like a puppy and my nails are digging into my thigh and my mouth is open.

“Oh my goood,” she says and it’s nasally and I’m sort of standing up but also trying to contain myself.

“Yeah, it was crazy. He was totally fine though.”

He made a gesture to the air before FINALLY stepping up to the counter to order. He had to finish his story first. The white woman had been patiently waiting for him, blank expression and completely docile, professional, watching him ignore her as I watched them, as I made every effort to sit and stay and behave. The tip of my tongue is between my teeth and I am crouching over the chair, adjusting my ankle beneath my leg for show. I need a reason to have stood up suddenly. I plop back down, let my shoulders reconnect to the back of the chair and what was I going to do or say when I stood up? I don’t get the point of this story. It would have been funnier if after all of that he died or had a severe head injury that rendered him paralyzed so his last moments were fruitless and as he lay dying he could think: I almost didn’t go outside today and I did and when I did I thought, don’t avoid the dog, hit the dog, but here I am, dying because I avoided the dog. He fell off his bike. He didn’t hurt himself. He fell like “someone pushed him.”  I want the attention back on me. I want to walk by him and whisper “I’m dying and you’re boring and below average in looks and she deserves better stories and I bet you don’t even go down on her enough” and I am seething at the window as two children are staring wide eyed, right at me. I do not notice I am muttering out loud to myself but they do. To transition, I drop my wallet on the floor so the couple turns to look at me and I don’t have to SAAAY anything. They stare for a second and order soy lattes. I get moving. 12:10pm. How did I get here? I brush his elbow on the way out and smile to myself.

Outside, I deliberate. If I take the parkway, it will be a longer walk and I will have to cross the bridge but I will have more leisure time. It’s icy.

“I know it’s icy out!” I shriek to myself.

Two men in gray hoods turn the corner and I know they heard me so I bow my head down. I reach my fingers out to tap one of them on the thigh. He turns around and I decide to make a sharp left into Starbucks. I understand Starbucks. I don’t have to think. The line is long but I have headphones on. I have been wearing headphones this whole time with nothing playing.  Nothing permeates my shell. I am the milky fog on the window that shimmers but obscures and it’s freezing to the touch. I deflect on instinct. There are several men looking at me from a table near a window. I bare my teeth but look straight as if I don’t see them and I wait until I feel their eyes move back over their phones or their casual conversation before I unclench my fist. I smile. You sneer. I never enter a conversation I didn’t mean to start.

I wait about ten minutes without doing a single thing to prepare for ordering. Intensely focused on avoiding the gaze of everyone, I only snap out of my trance when I notice movement in front of me. People scatter and I am suddenly in front of a young black girl with a green cap and ponytail and a look of general dispassion displayed across her face. Her attitude calms me but the performance around ordering wasn’t rehearsed properly. I place my book bag gently next to the register and begin to pull out my cup. I have waited this long to do it for no other reason than I forgot. This annoys everyone in line and I can feel it. It irritates them because my cup is buried underneath everything else I own. Pulling out my wallet, keys, bag of pens to mark the passing time on my hands or write errands I have to run on my palm, chapstick, comb, I smile. I have rehearsed this the way kids rehearse their classroom speech and are braced for feedback. The kid knows everyone’s asleep, but that doesn’t mean the kid doesn’t struggle with a sense of grandiosity. They’ll all remember me, the shaking child believes. The cup is last. The girl remains deadpan. She furrows her brows slightly at my bag and then at me. I am tall. I am charming.

“May I have a coffee with soy milk in this cup, please?”I straighten my spine and hand her my plastic mug, quickly removing the top as I always do, praying I can get it off.

It pops right off today. Please, God, give me another no mistake day.

“Do you want this rinsed?” she grabs it, lowers it so I can see inside.

There is milky residue everywhere. I have washed that cup seventy times and it is never clean. It is filthy.

“Yes, please,” I look down, filled with shame, as she fills the cup with hot water.

As she begins the confusing coffee shop coffee process, I am sure I am being rude to her and that everyone can see it. I continue to pull out a notebook, then a half empty bottle of hand sanitizer and a gum wrapper before I get to my lipstick which I suddenly have to put on while I wait so I am not just standing there waiting for someone to serve me my coffee that I think I was rude to and everyone can see. My nerves are on fire. Today is going badly. I feel unnerved. I don’t like when I am unprepared. I should have had the cup out. I say this out loud on accident and I know because the woman behind me makes a weird squinty gesture when I glance back at her. Stop saying things out loud. I don’t make any small talk inside. Things have been rough enough with ordering. I pay attention to her name tag in case I need her name as she hands me the coffee back: Crystal. Ok.

“Thank you, Crystal.”

She rings me up and says you’re welcome under her breath and I fiddle with my wallet. I have cash. That makes it easier. I receive the change easily enough and throw it in the bag and zip up the wallet.   I move to the side still carrying the wallet, upset that I will have to fish the loose change out later but grateful that I am out of line. I can put the wallet back now, over here, by the counter.  The line has grown behind me. I was fastidious enough. I want to scream and see if anyone will look up from their phone but I also want nothing to do with the world. It is a terrible ballet between constant fright and need and the in between is that I keep confronting my own shrinking mortality. I am somewhere floating and I see the men staring again, this time at my cup as I stand, murmuring lowly to myself. The thermos is green and black and says “Safety Starts With Me.” Nothing I own is that significant but it always draws attention. I decide to ignore them and sit. I check the time. 12:42. I don’t have anywhere to be today. It’s Saturday. 

Someone knocks over the sugar container behind me and I snap out of it. I drink too much coffee, I think. Jittery, my body is in motion, gnawing on the straw I keep in my pocket without noticing. I don’t remember taking my hand out of my pocket and pressing the straw in between my teeth. I was gnashing it loudly before I even felt my jaw bend. Grinding your teeth is a subtle grounding practice that everyone admonishes, but it is the only thing keeping me rooted to this Earth. When I am like this, I sometimes do not come back fast enough. When I am in public, I rely on mechanisms to save me. That’s a bad habit, my mother said. You should see the others. The men at the table near the window catch me muttering to myself again. I look the other way hoping they do not see the flush of red hit my cheeks or have the density to assume that I am just coming from the cold and that is why I am so rosy. There is no escape. This exotic prison. I glare on instinct. I get up suddenly and leave without warning as if I remembered something.

 

You ghosted me.

 

What?

 

You ghosted me, he said.

 

I did not.

 

You left without saying goodbye?

 

That’s how I leave. You knew I’d come back.

 

I never knew anything.

 

These conversations play in my head as I walk the street.. I am turning the corner of 22nd and Market already and I let my fingertips graze a stranger in a thick black parka. He has brown hair and a beard and I don’t recognize him.  These conversations play in my head. I am never alone. I let my fingertips graze a stranger so he is not alone anymore either.

 

“1/8/2017”

She took him down a long corridor and up a flight of stairs to a single room at the top. They passed a couple doors on the way but the apartment was silent.  He heard no movement in any of the places but their own and even his lady walked with a bit of a tiptoe.

“I’m renting for the night before I drive home tomorrow,” she stated, placing the shorter silver key in the slimmer silver door.

“Where are you from again?” he asked her, removing his hand from her back to check his phone for the time.

Flinging the door open, she tossed her pocketbook on the end table, ignoring his questions. She turned around suddenly and placed her palm over his phone.

“Get undressed.”

 She had him tied to the headboard and blindfolded him before he could register the time or check his texts. He was naked and she was tying his feet to one of the posts as she began.

“I don’t like chit chat and I’ll review the rules once more,” she said.

“Can I see you?”

“No.”

She watched him lick his lips.

“Can I have some water?”

“No.”

He licked his lips again.

“Rule #1: You will only be allowed to touch me after you follow all of the rules. If you do get to touch me, you have to ask before you do anything. Do you know what that means?”

He hesitated, bound to the wooden frame and unable to see her; her apathy and mocking eyebrow lift as she cooly sipped a tall glass of water out of his reach.

“I have to ask before I touch you.”

He licked his lips.

“But what does that mean?”

She moved closer to his face.

“That before I touch you I have to ask.”

She licked her wet lips next to his ear.

“But why didn’t you?” she whispered

“What?”

“Why didn’t you ask all night?” she said loudly so he winced.

He said nothing. She took a sip of water and let it dribble down her chin but caught it in her palm before it hit his lips.

“I don’t know.”

“Let’s keep going.”

She placed the glass on the nightstand next to him.

“Rule #2: You must repeat after me when I say ‘repeat after me.’

She waited.

“I said you must repeat after when I say repeat after me.”

“Yes, I will.”

“No, you don’t get it. REPEAT AFTER ME.”

He licked his lips again and moved his head to the right slightly.

“You must repeat after me when I say ‘repeat after me.’ he said and grimaced a bit.

She opened a drawer and took out a metal pinwheel and pressed one of the edges to his nipple.

“Ooh. What is that?”

She bent down and licked his cheek as she moved the pinwheel across his nipple and over his chest.

“You’re very hairy,” she let her tongue run up and down his cheek close to his ear.

“Yesss,” he smiled.

“Repeat after me,” she whispered. “Rule number three.”

She kissed him on three.

“Rule number three,” he repeated, catching on.

She put her mouth to his mouth so she could breathe directly on it.

“My name is Hecate and I enter your dreams every night.”

“My name is Hecate and I enter your dreams every night.  Oh, wait. Should I say your name is Hecate?”

She picked up a red lighter from the drawer and lit one white candle on the nightstand.

“Say it both ways.”

“My name is Hecate and I enter your dreams every night. Your name is Hecate and you enter my dreams every night.”

She picked up the candle and sat on the edge of the bed.

“The first story I am going to tell you is about the woman who saw her own death and tried to out run it. Your job is to listen and to figure which story is true.“

He laughed, “You’re fucking something else.”

 She let one drop of wax hit the same nipple she had been running the pinwheel over.

“Esssh,” he let out a noise and a wince with his jaw. “Ok, how many?”

“I will gag you if you talk during the story. You are only allowed to talk when the story is done. You may ask only one question,” she let another drop of wax hit, “but you have to wait until I finish. Yes?”

“Yes!” He winced a bit and raised his voice.

She reached for the glass of water and raised it over his lips.

“Open your mouth.”

He licked his lips and parted his mouth slightly.A tiny shudder passed over him that only himself, a trained psychologist, or a trained sadist would notice. She let the cool liquid dribble onto his lips at the same time she let the hot wax trickle over one breast to the next. Reaching his neck toward her, he lapped at each lip.

“Good boy,” she said. “No talking. I’ll give you drops of water as you need them.”

She stood up and walked around the bed to sit on a stool that was placed at the end of the bed near his feet. Letting her platforms drop loudly, she placed one bare feet on the post spreading her legs wide, wide enough to reveal the sheer black panties underneath her blue and cream and floral sleeveless dress that inexplicably matched the groomsmen the way the body shimmer and the tinsel neck piece had. She placed the other on his ankle.

“It starts now. It’s called The Woman Who Saw Her Own Death. First up, the dream about the alligator.” 

She saw his Adam’s apple move as he swallowed his own spit for moisture.

When he turned the corner, I turned the corner. When he stopped at the orange hand,  I stopped at the orange hand. When he jaywalked, I jaywalked, although sometimes that’s when I lose them. I moved with him. I learned how he moved. I watched his gait, his shuffle, the way he was always running his hand through his hair with some timed tension-breaking. He held space for his own self-assurance; feigned and toxic and unable to yield. He would play with his keys sometimes, or a pen and his forearms brushed people constantly. He would always have his head way up or way down and in his phone but never on anyone unless it was me and it was intimidating and it was meant to invoke subordinate laughter. A subordinate curtsy.   He was heavy on the sidewalk, heavy in the air.  He stomped his way through people, indifferent to the chasms he cut into couples walking.  He passed right through them like a ghost. Like they were ghosts. They were forced to make their point abruptly or cut the thought short or turn around in disgust and the mood would be inevitably lost no matter how they chose to approach it. They came together aware of the split, aware they can be split, aware they are not one. They came back together and then I did the same thing. I walked through them, cementing it. 

 

  I mimicked his carnal prowl, the way he ruined things, the way his arms hung at his side like a big, hungry primate. No purpose, I saw, but to smash rocks, strangle things, dangle things above me. I made my movements wider.  I flexed the whole walk to make my arms stronger, larger, strong and large enough to smash rocks, strangle things, dangle my sex above them.  I channeled the Earth’s orbit and became giant space behind him. I wanted to loom. I wanted someone to feel something looming behind them. I wanted them to be the victims of a person constantly walking in and out of their relaxing silence.  

 

They demanded interruption. I became stifled violence. I became indiscriminate in my hunt. Sometimes whole groups I would follow. I would be in front of them to start, choosing all my movements slowly, carefully, deliberately, aware I was being watched. I was being followed. I would tense and untense my hand so they had something to focus on; so they could see my nails ripping at the inside of my palms and then releasing. So they could see my nails were sharp and sharpening. My biceps flexing so they could see my arms were strong and strengthening. So they could see my palm was pre-callused. Sometimes I sauntered.  Sometimes I turned around without warning and walked the other way and caught all eyes now locked straight on my pussy. It was my ass they were just hungry for. Sometimes I laughed loudly to no one right in front of them and at them. Sometimes I relaxed; stopped dead in my tracks in front of them to check the weather forecast for the evening.  I responded to texts and let giant groups break in two just before hitting me, move around me, a wave crashing right before my feet and parting their own sea. I lingered there, responding, taking my time with my choice in vocabulary, choice in emoji sequence. They assumed frivolity. I assumed a wider stance and let another group scramble to pass me gracefully and then I suddenly changed direction.    

 

Sometimes I’d make eye contact for five hundred feet, or if I felt confident, I’d make eye contact for a mile. I walked right towards them my lips set in a straight line. My eyes unblinking. 

My intent muddy. I waited until we were close enough to get a sense of each other. I stared until we were close enough to catch a whiff of each other.  I could smell their begging cologne from the first five steps of this mile. They anticipated a contact, maybe a word spoken, an observation about the mild winter we were having, a rehearsed joke, or unrehearsed nervous choke. They hoped for something unbridled.  At least, a once over we both would perform and a smile. I was walking theater. I held a bit of a smirk, but never anything wider, and then I looked up at the sun suddenly, looked directly at it. As they passed, I stared up at the sun the entire time. My head was completely back and I gawked.  Or if I was passing a window, checked my reflection. I ran my hand through my air with a feigned apprehension I watched my dogs perform and repeated it in front of them.  Whole groups I saw in my peripheral looking at me, waiting for me, watching me, wanting me to interrupt, but kindly. But please do it kindly. And I always checked my reflection, my lips set in a straight line just waiting for it.

 

“Hey girl,” they started.

 

I would suddenly change direction, running.