I heard screaming sounds
and wondered when I order
absinthe what they substitute
the green fairy with
I wondered what poison burns
through my system
in this late night, the floor
crawling up to meet my trousers
I stumbled away from her,
from myself, from the person
I used to think I was, stumbled,
muttered fuck three times
I wanted to order another drink
and wondered again what they
use instead of absinthe
wondered how small changes
affect the taste of life.
This is America:
I have a hundred dreams of you
Crashing your car
Into stop signs, off the Verrazano—
Each time your car falls out
Of your control
It always takes longer
Than it should—the longing
Comes too late.
Sometimes I wait all night
For that low, deep growl
In my ears,
That animal understanding
As if I knew it was there
All along—what some call
A woman’s intuition—that
Intention to murder someone
Else’s god
Just for fun—when the R
Finally arrives, I shut my
Mouth & take off
My clothes, forgetting what
We were fighting about
& wave the white flag
of my skin, praying someone
else’s god will bestow
mercy.
In the ground, in the bed, in the streets.
Where I was is a location without location, a gem lost deeply in miles of soil,
the brilliant cuts without hope or safety.
I saw you, I saw where you entered the room, I saw you come into my body
in unspecified places. Parts of our bodies were joined, merged,
the parts I instruct the daughter to cover—
this isn’t for everybody, I say—
and your eyes closed, your mouth shut,
any small exit for the psyche was cement.
Where were you when you were in me.
He doesn’t ask me where I was, the lies and truth
are simmering somewhere we don’t see, or don’t touch, don’t kiss,
no moan, no moon in our black sky.
A look may convey confusion, misunderstanding,
we have lost agreed-upon meanings.
I like to watch the looks between couples, between pairs,
between self-proclaimed better halves,
and pretend I can read them, imagine myself
an evaporating tear carrying mascara,
like I have meaning everyone could see.
Matthew told me when the frying pan hit his leg,
flung cast iron across the living room floor
and the accusations trailing like strobe lights,
he knew it was over. She had shaped her own answers,
the truth was useless, there was no use for truth, there was no use for the body
any longer.
For all my flailing, I could not see the cruel thing that stood before me...
I try kissing you, as I normally do when I want you to remember I exist. You turn your head with a smile and place your hand on my thigh. Without words you say “not now,” which is a phrase, a concept, a feeling I have grown used to in loving you.
But I am persistent.
Feel my warmth. Feel my love. Remember me. Remember that I love you.
I touch your face. Maybe you have a beard; maybe you’ve shaved it. I tend to remember you with a beard, because I love the way there’s a certain pain every time we kiss, a physical pain that mimics what happens inside me. A discomfort I am addicted to, like flossing until I see blood.
My thumb traces the scar that runs through your right eyebrow.
“Tell me the story again.”
“It’s not much of a story.” You let out a sound somewhere between a scoff and a laugh. Without words, you say “not now.”
“Oh, come on! It makes me smile.” I am persistent.
“I was like 4 or 5. It was before my mom left and Mike stole one of my Nintendo controllers when I beat him at Street Fighter,” you begin with a smile, not a smile for me, but a smile for a simpler time, a happier time. “I always tripped over my own feet. I guess I hadn’t grown into them yet. Anyway, he was running off with the controller and I grabbed the wire that was dangling behind him. I wasn’t looking and I ran right into the doorframe. Blood was everywhere. And right as I fell on my ass, Mike shouted 'HADOUKEN!' like Ryu from Street Fighter. It was really funny and I wanted to laugh, but I couldn’t stop crying.”
I smile, like I do every time you humor me. I like imagining you as a child. Your scrawny legs and tiny ankles that make your basketball shoes look so big. Your curly hair that grows upward, like the tall sculpted bushes that grow and shrink outside the gated communities neither of us grew up in. You — alone — the youngest of the children who your mother abandoned. You — the only product of your mother and father’s marriage — two people who never learned to love. Not one another, and not you.
There you are, stepping off the school bus with your tall hair and your big shoes, at age 6, a latchkey kid. You are trying to make sense of why half of the stuff that once filled the empty space of your father’s home is now gone. You tell your neighbor you thought you had been robbed. She hugs you until you put the pieces together and realize your mother has left you. Left the brothers and sisters you grew to call family — the sons and daughters of a man who is not your father, a man you never met, but might as well love you the same as your own. Both men are absent in your life; it’s just that one manages to do so while sitting at the same dinner table. There you are — alone. How I fear you feel when you sit at the same dinner table with me. Afraid you’ll come home to one less toothbrush in your bathroom, to missing framed photos, to a half-empty top drawer where I keep my most comfortable T-shirts that always end up smelling like a strange combination of the two of us.
“Both men are absent in your life; it’s just that one manages to do so while sitting at the same dinner table.”
“Why do like that story so much?” you say, shaking your head, in confusion or annoyance, I can never tell with you.
“I like to imagine I was there,” I say, tracing the scar again. “Then maybe…”
I think about how I could have helped you. I could have stopped the bleeding or held your hand while you cried. I could have ran and gotten your mother, and convinced her to care, to stay. To not just follow the steps a parent knows to follow when a child is hurt, but to really care — to stitch above your teddy bear’s eye so he had a scar just like you — you know, to really, really care. I could have stood by your side as you scanned the half-empty rooms of your father’s home, wondering where your mother’s hairbrush, throw pillows, and floral loveseat had gone. And I would have been the one to hold you until you realized she, too, was gone.
“It’s OK.” You smile at me, knowing that I live in a constant state of guilt for never loving you enough to make up for the years you never knew love.
I run my fingers through your hair, as I often do when I want you to remember that I’m still here. That my toothbrush, my most comfortable shirts, and my dark brown hair that clogs your shower drain are all still here.
I pull my body close to yours, but you’ll only let me get so close.
Feel my warmth. Feel my love. Remember me. Remember that I love you.
You are sure to leave space between our bodies. Without words you say “not now."
“I’ve always wanted to be lovers with the sheriff,” I mused to Harry as I turned over in the bed to face him. In my head I reminisced on my girlhood crush for this stoic, gray man, and which events allowed me now in my early adulthood to share a bed with him. My thoughts felt white.
My car wasn’t working, so he lent me the sheriff’s truck. This way I could leave town for a few hours; he said I would find him when I came back later that afternoon.
I took the only road out and stopped while still on the main drag, before the road continues on into the mountain, bare of houses and buildings and electricity for 100 miles. I pulled into a motel at the last light in town. I’d driven by it countless times, and although I pulled in right under the vacancy sign, I couldn’t be bothered to look up and read its name. It stood two stories tall with pathetically tiny “luxury balconies” attached to every unit. They jutted out the face of the building, awkward and shameful, exposing themselves to the street.
I shut the engine off, but left the radio on and turned it up. I dropped the driver's side door open, and I dangled my left leg out of it while I lit a cigarette and started intuitively bobbing my head.
I wasn’t sure how long I had been gone — probably no more than 15 minutes. It was the type of early summer afternoon rife with possibility for the coming weeks. The sun was heating up the upholstery of the car, releasing the familiar stale odor created from years of driving and lovemaking and chain-smoking, a scent so enveloping and comfortable. It had become untraceable in the cold dead air of the prior winter.
I viewed my tan legs, and languidly took inventory of my things: wallet/smokes/lighter/notebook/pencil, all of which were piled awkwardly in the center seat without the confinement of a purse. I didn’t remember the familiar clumsiness of carrying those items at once by hand, which led me to notice I couldn’t remember leaving the house that morning.
I turned my gaze back to the street in an effort to recall, just in time to catch a young man at the passenger window.
I recognized him. I couldn’t place from where or under what circumstance to have made him so friendly and confident toward me, but when he asked me for a ride, I didn’t say no.
He eased angularly into the car, remarked on the warm air, and without words I turned the ignition and lowered the window for him.
Instinctively I spewed a few polite, short sentences about how I don’t mind driving him, and should be getting back to Harry anyway, although at that point I had probably only been gone a half hour.
As we moved further from town, my eyes began the ritual scan back and forth between sidewalks, looking out for a man in an entirely khaki ensemble, and a large yet stout sheriff’s hat. His gait would be deliberate yet cautious, with impeccable posture, and a jawline so strong you could almost see it through the back of his head.
Of course he wouldn’t already be out to meet me, but it was force of habit, and I kind of enjoyed the idea of “looking” for him.
At the threshold of the small residential downtown, the atmosphere and landscape drastically changed.
Upon making the first turn off the main road, the street became covered in snow. Not a white, fluffy, packing snow, but a rigid, chunky, blue-cold snow. One already littered with flecks of dirt and flora debris, as if someone had stirred it up on the floor of the forest before blanketing the town in it again.
“Not a white, fluffy, packing snow, but a rigid, chunky, blue-cold snow.”
There were people on the street, mumbling amongst themselves. And there were wolves. White ones. Almost five feet tall, with lean faces. Their gazes moved from body to body in the patchy crowd, yet somehow remained fixed. I slowed the truck almost to a stop, and looked over to my passenger for companionship in this turn of events, only to find I was alone.
I thought of Harry, but I could no longer remember anything from this morning. If he had actually lent me the car, or if the opportunity had finally come for me to kill him for fun, and I had just taken it.