you’re stuck somewhere in the middle, first person but at a remove.
there’s a ghost typing these letters sluggish motion drifting through air thick as jello as implacable and impossibly fluid as non-newtonian liquid
am I the observer or the observed? you’re not sure you can tell the difference anymore. is there a difference?
I’m resting my forehead against a thick pane of glass the coolness dissipating under the hot fog of your breath condensation clouding my vision your tears wet and hot and silent slipsliding down skin to splash against the clear backdrop
I’m smiling now, and laughing, you’ve just made a clever joke, a quick one-liner response automatic and easy as breathing easier, even
you’re idly thinking about buying an oximeter there’s never enough oxygen in the air around here I don’t mind the high of it, though it makes it easier, sometimes
is an absolute bitch, jsyk. in case you haven’t ever had the displeasure of trying and failing to meet her, because she’s always running late except when she’s running early and she’s always wearing someone’s stolen clothes.
(stolen, not borrowed. she never asks.)
in a crowd, she’s always moving, always talking, as inescapable and incomprehensible as the crush of bodies, the layers upon layers of interrupted conversations. she blends in, you see.
(by the by, the bitch also stole my concealer.)
his pronouns change along with his surroundings, they’re schrödinger’s gender, determined in the instant of observation. of course, all this depends on your personal level of situational awareness.
(what’s your passive perception again? hmm. interesting.)
they don’t like their name, and so they go by alex. or lexie. or thyme. any trip to Starbucks is an exercise in confusion. the barista tries, bless their heart, but when they become he become she in the space of a single espresso shot how is a sharpie to keep up with the changes?
(side note: check out my kickstarter for nametag change history!)
she has no sympathy for your inability to keep up. identity is a construct and names are a prison, and what do you expect her to do about it? it’s not the queen’s fault if you lose her in the shuffle, she told you to watch carefully. look closely now: closer, closer, closer–
(didn’t anybody ever tell you? the closer you look, the less you see.)
it’s not like anxiety and I were strangers when the lockdown started, when the world abruptly shrank to the size of my apartment.
no, we’re old friends, anxiety and I, although usually she comes and goes. she’s like a cat, appearing and disappearing at her own leisure, completely assured of her right to your undivided attention, hissing and lashing out when cornered or the alarm goes off.
friends might be the wrong word. nemesi? frenemies? partners in panic?
whatever we are, we’ve been it a long, long, l o n g time. she is a quiet constant, invisible in her familiarity, a startling shocking lack when absent.
she purrs, and the tremors in my hands keep time. the rapid pulse of my heart thrums back, and the two become one become the hum of thwarted adrenaline, the rising pitch barely contained within my bones.
she and I are an unplanned symphony. this orchestra has no conductor, no rehearsals or curtain calls.
is it stretching the metaphor to say that she gets stage fright?
because she does. the stage lights leave her light-headed, and she curls up around me, overwhelmed and burying inward, sulking like a child and taking all the oxygen in the room with her. I try to comfort her but she’s also stolen all the moisture from my mouth, the sense from my syntax, my mouth a desert,
my mouth adessert, gummy gums too sticky to speak, my stomach a dizzying and sympathetic storm, a roiling ache that could be hunger, nausea, cramps, the yawning void of grief, the terror of a life unlived–
the weight of it, the depth to it, all of it overwhelms me. I am still that small child getting pulled under by the sucking drag of the receding wave, still caught in the salt and furor and sharp scrapes of skin on sand as the next one bowls me over. my breath gets knocked out of me, again and again, my grief is an ocean and I’m drowning in sight of the shore, unable to call for help or regain my balance, knocked over again every time I manage to rise on shaky feet.
finally, a lull in the crash and the loam. I scramble my way to the shore, stumble and stagger in this almost-forgotten inescapable gravity, the way my sodden swimsuit suddenly weighs a hundred pounds.
I reach the beach towel and throw myself upon it, exhausted and overwhelmed and somehow shivering with cold despite the sun. my eyes sting, my sinuses burn. my mouth still tastes like brine.
I lie there and slowly the sunbeams sink down into me, heating me through to my bones. I hear the crash and roar of the waves, ever present, steady, almost soothing. I look out towards the water and remember the earlier terror, muted now, a faded memory of the thing.
my parents ask if I don’t want to get back in the water, warn me this is the last day at the beach. they tell me they don’t want me to regret it tomorrow, leaving the surf like this. they say look, see how the waves have calmed. look, see how the tide recedes.
I shake my head, stubborn, certain. already the stinging crashing tumble is starting to feel like some too-clear dream.
I am tired. I ache all over. my skin is crusty with sand and salt. I am ready to be done with this vacation. I just want to go home and sleep.
goodbye, gravel driveway. goodbye, stone steps. goodbye, azaleas and your yearly blossoms. goodbye, holly bush and your sharp pricks. goodbye, tall poplars and your canopy of green.
goodbye, time, space, all your changes. goodbye, kitchen with your cracked pink tile. goodbye, chain link fence I used to climb. goodbye, old porch built by my uncle. goodbye, dented screen door and all your slams.
goodbye, lost keys and exasperation. goodbye, waiting on the stoop for parental rescue. goodbye, bathroom window my brothers through which we squirmed. goodbye, doors we eventually stopped locking. goodbye, locks we never learned to pick.
goodbye, green space where my playhouse once stood. goodbye, yellow paint and bright blue trim. goodbye, real shingles and linoleum. goodbye, not so secret hiding places. goodbye, small door that opened and shut.
goodbye, flat rooftop with your stairs and railing. goodbye, home, spaceship, crows nest, castle. goodbye, soft spots and warning creaks. goodbye, wood that began to splinter. goodbye, eventual deathtrap in the making. goodbye, envy of all my friends.
goodbye, trampoline with your safety netting. goodbye, dogwood tree felled by a storm. goodbye, airplane swing with all your twisting. goodbye, tree stump and the dirt you were becoming. goodbye, soccer ball lost beneath the house.
goodbye, old shed we children were forbidden. goodbye, new shed I still thought of as a stranger. goodbye, mossy steps on which I slipped.
goodbye, climate control and my always cold mother. goodbye, thermostat battles we always lost. goodbye, old boiler and tiny water heater. goodbye, baseboards and radiator pipes. goodbye, cold floors and the burnt smell of winter. goodbye, hot summers and stifling stagnant air. goodbye, window ac units, overworked and bleeding. goodbye, condensation and how it dripped.
goodbye, early morning coffee. goodbye, bed where my mother drank hers. goodbye, couch my father always fell back asleep on. goodbye, walls thin enough for his alarm to wake me. goodbye, bed that would coax me back to sleep. goodbye, my own alarm continually blaring. goodbye, the disgruntled reach for clothing. goodbye, brothers and bunk-beds and how I would yank off your bedding. goodbye, cranky complaints and my complete unrepentance. goodbye, the way they’d otherwise go back to sleep.
goodbye, bus and your public transportation. goodbye, always first plowed street. goodbye, desperate scrounging for quarters. goodbye, sticky plastic seat.
goodbye, tori amos. goodbye, tom petty. goodbye, saturday morning cartoons. goodbye, rooms somehow always full of sunshine. goodbye, late afternoon tea. goodbye, first home that I remember. goodbye, heart and hearth and the seeming safety of forever.
how did five people fit in such a space? granted, my brothers and I were smaller then, but if anything, I think we took up more space, not less. the universe was a vastness constantly expanding—
impatient and curious as water, we spread out into all the empty spaces filled the rooms with mess and laughter our voices loud and our opinions louder, as inescapable as gravity—
gravity being the force of attraction between two objects, a handy excuse, we thought, for why we kept running into each other, although our mother disagreed—
you did not shrink, I know. you have undergone no magical transformation. just this once, it really is a case ofit’s me, not you.
house, you will always be the first thing I think of when I think of home.
I think of home and it all muddles together, the red brick of your walls the worn wooden floors the white paint of the trim the not-whistle of the broken tea kettle—
how we all learned the sound of water as it starts to boil how the low roil of it would grow into a higher-pitched frenzy impatient and expectant—
how we all never forgot it, even after the kettle was replaced how my brothers and I would compete to be the fastest the first one to the pot—
little victories, but we enjoyed them. the rules of the game were simple: put the kettle on for tea, then go put on tv, read a book, anything so long as you leave the room—
how even now in an apartment of my own I still keep one absent ear open for the gradual rise of sound reach the kitchen and turn off the flame just as the hum turns threatening whine—
I make tea as the kettle tries and fails to whistle. it always tastes like home.
I remember that back bathroom, still that strange shade of green, the one my mother hated, the one my father said reminded him of peas—
I remember the edge of the sink digging painfully into my determined flesh as I stubbornly wiggled and wormed my way forward—
I remember the vindictive sense of pride, the sharp satisfaction of success as I turned the faucet handle all by myself and all alone I washed my hands.
there’s a poem in this somewhere, but I can’t seem to write it. perhaps I don’t have theright to write it. perhaps I don’t have the words. perhaps there are no words. perhaps the only words I have are the ones we are sick of hearing, the words too desperate to bear, the world too indifferent–
I can breathe, but I can’t seem to write this poem. I should be grateful for the first, and perhaps I am, but all I can think right now is that there’s a poem in this somewhere, I’m sure of it, there’s a poem waiting to be written about last words and last gasps, about the weight of a man’s knee on a person’s neck, the weight of deciding what patient gets the last ventilator, the weight of lives in the balance–
there’s a poem in this somewhere. I can feel it in my bones. it’s too convenient, the way the tragedies overlap. God’s being a little heavy-handed with the motif, in my opinion, but I suppose she’s fed up with us failing to get the point. I can hear her now, dropping her head to her desk and groaning dramatically, wondering how much more blatant she’ll have to get before we start to understand the metaphor–
I can breathe, but I can’t seem to untangle these threads of fact, of history overlapping. I have a degree in understanding metaphor, but the thing is that a metaphor requires context. it requires a beginning and an end. this novel is still in progress. this chapter is still in progress. we are only on page 7–
page 7, and already my head is dizzy with the echoing refrain. there’s a poem in this somewhere. why can’t I seem to breathe?
it’s not that I never tried to learn, because I did try, again and again, as a small child, an awkward tween, drunk at a college frat,
it’s just that the lesson never seemed to take.
I tried, again and again, but all I ever managed to produce was sputters of air, spittle, not-quite-smothered snickers.
the rest of my family can whistle, always have. it’s infuriating.
why should I be the one unable to whistle? it seems like a cruel joke on the part of the universe.
doesn’t it know that humans are meant to whistle?
I am left walking silently in the dark.
II.
whistling comes in many forms, and not all of them strictly musical.
the robot sculpture in the front garden wears a fabric mask. it has recently been replanted a careful six feet back from the street, from which responsible distance
it reminds passersby the importance of social distancing.
my father, an apparently essential government employee, goes to work wearing a red shirt, an iron-on starfleet symbol, and a sharply sardonic smile.
I’m not sure my sci-fi indifferent mother actually understands the joke.
I’m sure I won’t be the one to explain it to her.
III.
my brothers have started playing apocalypse bingo.
neither of them has won yet, but they insist it’s only a matter of time. neither of them has lost yet, either, so I suppose there are worse games
for them to play, like Life, which is, let’s be honest,
an absolute horror of a board game. it’s worse than Monopoly, which is both impressive and what Alanis would call ironic, since after all
monopolies are one of Life’s many monsters. they ask me to play—
I tell them it’s too dark.
IV.
I am trying again to learn how to whistle.
it seems only appropriate, given the givens. in a movie, this would be a perfect illustration of a hastily-added last-minute and ham-handed metaphor.
“I learn how to whistle– and how not to be afraid of the dark!”
real life doesn’t quite work that way, as much as I sometimes wish it would. I don’t understand why I can’t do this one stupid thing.
how does a person whistle, anyway? it’s easy, says my youngest brother.
I am not the protagonist. I cling to that, repeat it again and again like an invocation or a prayer. This is not my origin story. This is not my story at all. You will never even know my name.
You don’t need to know my name. After all, I am not the protagonist. I am no hero, no savior. All I am is montage fodder. Again - I am not the protagonist in this story. Other voices drown out the words of my prayer,
which is for the best, really. Prayers must be said with care. Like names, they have more power when kept secret. A story needs its twists and turns. A protagonist needs a background to be held against for comparison. It’s all
about drawing attention. Look, all! Salvation is at hand. Our prayers have for once not been in vain. Again and again I repeat my protective charm. Names have power. We know they are the protagonist because we know their name. The story
has told us their name. The story does not care about me. All it cares about is the protagonist. So again and again I repeat my prayer. I am not the protagonist. My name is my own. I mouth the words again
and again and again and again. I am not the protagonist in this story. You do not, will not know my name. I will admit this is a gamble. All things in life are, especially prayer. I am not the protagonist.
I say it again, all quiet desperation. Please, story teller, hear my prayer. Do not name me the protagonist. I will fail.
I saw my father today. He came to pick up groceries from where the instacart shopper left them outside my door, and to drop off my now-clean laundry— an exchange of sorts. A familial return to the barter economy.
I glimpse the shopper as they go— they’re young, thin, attractive in a distracted kind of way. There’s a crease in their brow, a thinness to the tight line of their lips. They don’t look hungry as much as they look hollow.
I whisper a prayer for them as they hurry down the stairs, back out to their car and their next turn at the new game of American roulette.
It’s not enough but it’s all I have— a prayer and a hefty tip.
It’s all I have. As my father ascends the stairs, I can only pray it will be enough.
We observe the maternally-mandated airlock protocols. He separates the food into two piles, mine and theirs. He takes their bags, backs up a grave’s length. Then and only then do I dare approach.
He waves at me from across the landing, a cartoonishly exaggerated gesture made even more ridiculous by his absurdly open eyes, his wide, open mouthed grin.
He cups his hands around his mouth, calls out hello as if the distance were fifty feet instead of just under ten. He makes his voice wobble, just a little, simulating an echo effect.
My dad, ladies and gentlemen. esteemed persons of all genders.
As ridiculous now as he has always been. As willing to play the clown, the fool, the sacrificial goat.
I’m laughing in my doorway, can’t help it, which (of course) was the point.
Leaning up against the doorframe, I wish it were him, wish I could dash across the landing and throw myself into the arms that once threw me into the air, laughing and utterly without fear, knowing without question that I would always always be caught.
His smile is less over-the-top now, softening into something quieter, something sadder, something a bit more real.
I hug myself, pretending he can feel it, pretending that it’s - if not the same - as near as to make no difference.
I am an adult, after all. A grown woman, just a few years past thirty.
I don’t needa hug from my father. I don’t.
It’s an unnecessary risk and we both know it. An unnecessary act and we both know that, too.
I don’t need a hug from my father, my mother, my brothers—
the world isn’t ending and i’m still not writing poetry, unless the world is ending, in which case this (i suppose) might be a poem.
twenty-eight days later, and still no sign of zombies. small mercies, i suppose. i get to keep my brain.
i get to keep my brain. how small can mercy shrink? when does it turn inside out like the rest of the world? these are the questions i don’t ask my shrink.
the world isn’t ending and i’m still not doing chores, unless the world is ending, in which case this (i suppose) might be a chore.
twenty-eight days later, and still the cough lingers. large mercies, though– the fever’s gone. i can breathe.
i can breathe. how large can mercy grow? when does it become too heavy to hold? these are the answers i don’t want to know.
the world isn’t ending and i’m still not panicking, unless the world is ending, in which case this (i suppose) might be a lie.
twenty-eight days later, and outside the world changes without me. inside i and portia talk about mercy. i wash my hands.
fearless, my child self was a sun in the making a wild spinning thing pulling everything into itself and spitting it back out again with bright eyes and ringing peals of laughter
she was not brave, did not know how to be, did not even know what bravery was.
all she knew was the fierceness of emotion, the exhilaration of flight, the sting of skinned knees nothing against the balm of self-satisfaction
unable to conceive of failure, my child self was like the ocean, endless and inevitable and constantly in motion drinking in the world like she was made of thirst greedy for the all of it, gravity growing
like weeds in summer, like dough rising, like the carefully marked lines on her bedroom door
all she knew was the bright certainty of tomorrow, that somehow, someway, all would turn out right, that good always wins and evil gets redeemed, that someone would always catch her if she fell—
brash and bright, she sings through my veins out of key and without a care;
a golden shovel poem after william carlos williams’ so much depends
I am too tired for creativity, so I am leaning into intertexuality, much like another poet might call upon the old standbys of form, the wheel- and-axel of stress and syllable, row after row after row, old bones glazed with new shades of meaning, with coy glints of connotation, linguistic reign and poetic license turning wine into water and back again— self, this is beside the point. you’re losing the thread again. focus again on the white fluff of feathers. this is supposed to be a poem about chickens.
you don’t feel particularly poetic at the moment; it’s hard to make poetry out of pain.
physical pain, I mean.
it’s hard to not make poetry out of emotional pain, which is why you write so many poems to begin with—
it comes on slowly but suddenly a ghost of a sensation suddenly become blood and flesh
and synapses screech in protest muscles twisting and turning desperate to escape the merciless ache screwing itself into sinew burying itself into bone
there is no escape from this no reprieve no way out but through–
close your eyes and count
count moments count spasms count bit off cries and swallowed swear words count tears and frustrated flails of fists–
