really tempted to post my book in linear order but also tempted to remain inscrutable and give hints at the premise like this, the permeation. the stance she takes is how fond she is of things, this:

“my favorite knife is a paring knife,” I say to no one. “to cut apples, of course.”

“All my means are sane: my motives and object mad.”

–captain ahab

me
im a liar
watching my men like clocks

overturning the ace of swords,
things just have to start and

the come up is hard. sometimes it is better if I am moving. depends on how much I swallow.  I had never taken all caps until today. when I took the rest of them, I did it with a bottoms up approach. throw to the wind.  c’est la vie or c’est la tien. before it started I made sure I was hydrated but not much else. definitely not fed. you want blood: c’est la tien.  now I am dancing, taking long strides across my hardwood floor to get to the other side then back.  I have pushed the dining room table aside. I have pushed the chairs in. I am moving my shoulders up and down. I am in agreement with myself, stretching fingers, preparing. 

it feels like a tendril wrapping you to begin. the surrender is subtle. it is the faintest buzz from within moving all ways like a metamorph, the pressure of a wave slapping the water below at different intervals.  think of a spiral staircase but made of density or air and pulses, like jelly,  to move quietly around the entire length of yourself. and with different velocities. or pausing.  you are done dancing and now focused on the brightness of your eyes in the mirror and the lineament of your eyebrows, expanding. you have traced the upper lid with black pencil again and you have made your eyes more almond. you have learned to draw sharp points. you are focused on your pores that you refuse to shade completely, immured in the image of yourself spotty but realized true. the bags under your eyes. the lips, full but dry and the teeth: new, sparkling, your pride.  your smile is crooked. it has begun to wrap your feet already as you think

some times you can look in the mirror and it’s best to do it when you can. 

other times I have told myself not to look. specifically. before it starts, I remind myself that the mirror can be a haunting place. it is not so much that your face will warp, as it might, but that you will see yourself while also grappling with incongruencies. you might be wrong about everything. your face reflects it quickly.  I move away from the mirror feeling only a tingle of joy moving up my thighs. it is close, not here. it is arriving. c’est la tien. I recalled my notes from  last time briefly:

when I laugh
I feel illustrated

however this felt a gloom
in its indelibility,
intense and unabashed.
  I was hoping
for a little charm,
of course. but lets
get to it. 

“first wave”

I want to insure my life suddenly. I want to insure the rest of my years.  I got up suddenly. That’s how I always get up anyway but I got up to end the bath ritual. I toweled myself without thought, quickly and ran back to the bedroom. I wanted to wear my favorite shirt: a blue velvet peacock transparent thing and underwear that made me feel unrestricted but pretty.  these transparent black boy-cut shorts with white stitching on the front. both outfits see through and the top loose: long sleeves and flowing. I just got under the covers. needing the weight. taking the pressure. humbled. careful. reorganizing thoughts as they trickled down reorganizing time. there is no time. reorganizing structures. plainly accepting while also scrutinizing my reactions to this:

I want to burn everything down. I wanted to remove every item from my house and then maybe torch the house. I wanted everything gone.

I had a dream of the Dysons the night before and I could see now that I had been dreaming of them for days. they were summer friends. the friends I spent with at the pool. they were both on the swim team but I couldn’t get up at six am or commit to sports. I was an excellent swimmer though. I was unafraid too. I used to dive off the high dive. I always told myself the same thing. it will be over by the time you remember even doing it. by the time you leap, you will have hit the water. I just had to be careful not to go to far forward or my calves would smack the water. often, I was good. I hated if I did it and no one saw. I’d have to do it again.  I turned to face the tile. I didn’t want to live in reverie or the past but just feel the loss of that ability. both the bravado and the lung capacity, the daring, the quickness. I was a rival to all the boys at the pool. I could outswim them. out dive them. hold my breath longer, touch the bottom faster and this was a great deal to me. not just the competition which was fun, but the new sport. the new game: the boys. always ranked above us and better than us before we even had a chance to form an opinion about innate abilities–who is better at swimming men or women? it’s always men. then women. I didn’t want to be the first of all the girls. I wanted to be the first of the whole pool. I wanted to date the top boy. or whatever we did at nine. be my crush. buy him now n’ laters. watch him get tan and smile only at me.

this time I’m obsessed with depth. my cheek is cool and I commit to feeling the way the tile rubs back against me. how long I’ve really been thinking about my childhood vs. how long I have been twisting slowly to get to this place. the other side of the tub or just a new arrangement. I still couldn’t focus my eyes so I stared at the white linoleum. clean.  last time I was obsessed with dirt. this time I’m obsessed with depth. at the same stage.,this beginning burst where your body is beginning to acclimate as you warp into the thing you are seeking: clarity, forgiveness, hope. water. swimming. I look back down at the tub and watch my feet again and then slowly drop my hands in the water. then watch my hands again. I have more than five hours of this left.  

there was a lot of thoughts at once. I may be translating it incorrectly because there was a lot of pausing to take note of environment. to stand still in the tub. to twist to the tile and press it and rest face. to move back and look up at my shower head dripping. to hear the smoke alarm reminding me I need batteries. to notice the cat isn’t here. the sun through the window. the thumb nail waving in a ripple. the way my fingers can dance on top of water to make ripples. the way the cat jumps on the corner. but it was a constant movement to come back to nothing. to realize the want was nothing. my iterations: repetition, pressure, organization, pressure, time, people’s time, attention, pressure, validate the wound, pressure. my head full. my jaw clenched. my fingers around the straw. I knew I had a secret double life;  my functioning a product of survival and safety.

“It’s not what they think though,” when I speak like that I am referring to the idea that I can read motives of people and am not projecting.

I could be projecting. I am afraid too. Ebby sits on the corner and watches me. her eyes are bright yellow and I know she wants to come closer. I thank her for being there and offer her my cheek. we rub faces like that for maybe only three minutes. maybe five. I pull back and gaze at my arm. I go back to her face. gaze at my arm. back to her face and remember how she almost fell once trying to reach me. I had been sitting closer to the tile with my back against it playing the ripple game with her and she wanted to get closer.  I have a scar going down my rib where she scratched me trying to stop herself from going into the tub. it doesn’t bother me. I have many scars actually. I don’t care.

but you do or you wouldn’t do it? a voice says.

I am uncomfortable.

“I am humbled,” and I laugh because I didn’t expect any of this. nor the pandemic truly. 

“I am humbled, I am careful. I will be careful what I say. No, don’t show me my death.”

the drug is humbling. the power. it feels like walking backwards. I have this urge to watch Midsommar because I keep thinking I need to participate in the viewership of something to calm my brain. I like this idea because I’ve seen it twice and it’s like Mulloland Drive for me, a movie I’ve seen three times. I am trying to figure it out. I like puzzles. I like thinking. I want. to see it from her lens as she went through it. I can’t find anything that is comforting here. in this tub or a grip on anything.  there is no comfort.it is such a dark film. I remember the surfing videos. it is not a bad trip I am having. it is simply I do not know what to focus on. I go back to my hands. Ebby is still there. we are still cheek to cheek off and on. no, I will watch it now, I feel fine. I move my head to prepare to get up and a long wave hits pushing me close to the water again.
not like I can’t move but like I am swirling on the inside and any sudden change will require me to adjust to the new place I have settled.  

“I am humbled,” I laugh and lift my hands up. “I am humbled by the drug that I have no control over. I will stay in the bath.” 

I feel like I am glued to bottom. I am having private conversations with Hecate. I don’t push that thought away.  I understand what breakthroughs these are: to be present and feeling. to be feeling and thinking. the synthesis of logic and intuition. I have compartmentalized into disorder. I have wrapped myself in a safety net. we are undoing, reversing a web of me vs me vs them. I am scared too.

me, im a liar watching my men like clocks. 

I looked at the journal again. the journal information about sun. this brief nebulous of him but really me, not us but the relation I need. comparison. speculation and mystery.  and also relating. I turn the page. in big letters I had written DONT BE A MARTYR. I saw that downstairs. too late for that. 

“am I always the lamb?”

I envisioned myself crying earlier and then I felt the beginning ripple as I stood on my bedroom floor, suddenly up again.  I wanted to stay lying down but the shadows all over my walls moved. I could feel it rise in me. I would think of hecate. this is what you asked for. this what you got. nothing. I started to sob unhinged: loud and childlike. knowing that your parents will vanish and so will your childhood having hardly any remnants left of it living. many things gone too. the structure of your family had been dissolute for years. and the shell of it, me, here. heartbroken. missing so much of my childhood that will never be again or be seen again. the house itself is rotting and falling down. it will be abandoned. it will be torn and something will be rebuilt on the land. I cannot explain or mention these things in passing, therefore I don’t get into them. here I am. only a second has gone by.

I began to run the tub. I needed a change of environment. I could relax here and even if I cried it would feel nice. the tub is a familiar grieving place. when I was a child at my heaviest or weakest, I always took a bath and sobbed. I was a cry baby also. I loved the containment. the colors. I threw a yellow cap in, no wrong definitely looks like urine. I threw a red tab to make the dark pink.  I can’t take anything less than wide open, spacious. all walls were seen as constricting. I also feel the need to be swaddled like a baby at times and with things 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. I 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 thought 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 felt downward till my forehead touched the water. I remembered swimmingL 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.

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. 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.” 

my father knew me. even when my mom and I painted the same identical portrait at the paint and twist, he was able to guess which one mine was because I “always took up more space.” he saw me. I was seen by him. to be seen by someone and to emulate them and to grow distant from them to then try to get closer. how tragic. I hate this. I turn the water off.

“The ‘happiness’ most of us settle for is whatever transient belief or exuberant diversion we can sandwich in between atrocities: ‘the pause that refreshes’ before the next calamity.”

-Theodore Roszak, the Making of a Counter Culture

“It all boils down to disaffiliation for them–and the distinctions are of secondary importance.”

-Theodore Roszak, the Making of a Counter Culture

sometimes you can look on the mirror and it’s best to do it when you can.