I think it's normal to miss
my best friend
from middle school
things were far more
simple
with her
and even when they weren't
her freckles were
a constancy
I welcomed most of the time.
I don't know who is genuine now
people are awful when they're older
even though they were cruelest
when they were children.
most days I write like a child
I like to think in simple terms
and I remember Dr. Keikus
whose name I still don't know how to spell.
He was the first to try
and help me
simplify.
First with board games,
whose colored spaces
seemed to fade even more
over the course of 45 minutes.
Then with
the Grieving Process.
"Are you worried you'll go to
H-E-Double Hockey Sticks
because you're mad at God?"
I don't remember nodding
but life progressed
as though I did.
A success story
for Dr. Kekuus.
He was a little bit fat,
like me.
I think I liked that.
How do child psychologists know
if their patient who sits
on the floor across from them
picking at a scab
with sticky fingers
and wandering eyes
isn't just agreeing
so that they can fit one more
round
of Guess Who
into their session
because not everyone has that game
at home.
If I saw Dr. Keycus today
I'd probably like to tell him
that dead skin is the number one attractor
of cockroaches
and that I think of that every time I clip back
my hangnails.
If I miss just one
don't notice it fall to the floor
leave the room
I imagine Gregor Samsa himself
will be there when I return
cowering in the corner,
drooling over it
in shame,
because truthfully
he wants to be there
even less
than I want him to.
1:18 I'm Feeling Lucky
Google search: how to swear in French
does
pee really turn red in pools
why
didn’t I trust the kids with mechanical pencils
If I wear a hat
that says I’m angry, does that mean I am? You’ve had complicated questions long
before there were instant, uncomplicated answers.
I saw my mother
alone in the window. I don’t want to say anything else about it, except that I
wish we had finally put the curtains up, so that I didn’t have to see my mother alone
in the window.
Google search: why are parrots so smart
how to
tie a bandana in your hair
how to
tie a bandana in your hair so it stays
how to stop feeling so alone
My mother’s
puppets. They lived just a wall away, slept just a wall away. Lived in their
old yellow and red boxes so soft from time, the aged cellophane a blanket over
their everywhere-jointed little bodies, lifeless, still and connected by
strings. There were over 30 of them and she ordered more each day. Each afternoon
I’d come home to an eBay window on the monitor, an active auction counting down
for a clown or an old man or a ballerina or devil. I’d see that she was always
the highest bidder. I’d see that she wanted all of them, wanted to add each and every one to her little
family. The strange, boxed family of a pseudo-collector. They lay in their boxes
like tiny bodies in coffins. She opened them all once when they arrived, showed me once, made
them dance for me just once, but only for a little while. She spoke of the giant
puppet theater she would build one day for my children, and then that was it. Back
in its box it went, straight into the closet, next to all the others, on top of
all the others. At night I imagined each new puppet in its box, its eyes moving
round in the darkness, buried alive, its painted smile still frozen in cracking permanence. I
swore I could hear them breathing in their paper coffins.
Google search: my mom is lying to her therapist
why do they make us read crime and punishment in high school
will i ever be
loved
When he runs
into you again someday, you will have just bought a very soft and warm robe
from a department store. It will be in a large plastic shopping bag, but the
top will be open just enough so he can see the light blue (or pink) plush. He will think that you must be getting on well, to be buying such a lovely thing for yourself. You are the sole beneficiary of a soft robe from
a nice department store. He’ll think about that for a second or maybe two as
you both walk back to your respective cars, your robe in its plastic bag
hitting your right knee – then the back of your left – as you fumble for your
keys. He won’t know that you could have cried because the woman who helped you
pick out the robe had been so nice that you’d had to pretend to drop something,
had to bend down to keep water from falling out of your eyes when she’d asked
what had brought you to the very nice department store on that day. Her
question had been innocent but the hardest ones always are. You’ll wear the
robe for the rest of the afternoon, the night. Fall asleep in it.
I’ve always found Raskolnikov to be a
strong, solid name.
4:46 Cold cuts
(4 AM doesn't take kindly to strangers, it doesn't care either way if you skin your knee or if you make it home at all.)
The woman who walked by me in the packaged meats aisle at Target smelled of something rotten.
I didn't know what to make of it. She didn't bump into me, but still I said "sorry I'm so sorry" and she turned her awful misshapen back around and looked at me like I'd come at her with a cleaver.
I'll never get over my first love, or the first time someone scolded me for doing something truly wrong
(I was in preschool, with a tendency to argue)
And I'll have a hard time forgetting the first time I tried to wish away my face when the wind was far too cold, because of course it's easier to have not than to have,
I'll imagine the flashes of certain photographs taken
and smells of meals I might eat were I able to
stomach the sheer density
of meat that day
(sorry I'm so so sorry)
Looked at me
looked at me like I was rotten.
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