He turns on his axis and says goodnight to anything with eyes. So this is the beginning.
Three animals, I think, honey-maple frame. Cats, swans, squirrels painted into the furniture, the walls. Hot air balloon carrying the dead dog somewhere else. Linger there. Goodnight. Goodnight. Goodnight.
I don’t know where the light is coming from. In the night time, we could be anywhere. The curtains are painted with starlight, the ceiling smiles back at use, the sun and moon with the face of my mother. Greenhouse on the carpet. Imaginary animals lining the headboard. We have accounted for this. But in memories, it feels like a prison. Dim. The smell of hot dust. Gazing through the corner of the ceiling, down. Waiting. How. How. How?
The child is mummified, the gate is closed, the blood is held, the night unfolds. Again. Again. Again.
That place was perfect to me, then. Impossibly big, inside. It was clean, something like a dream. I remember chandeliers, a deep carpet, a dining table. Warm, artificial light. Cool touch from the windows. Crown molding & medals. We would pretend to be asleep so my mother would let me stay the night. At least a few times, this worked. Once, my father was in some kind of surgery. Maybe an emergency. They left that place, and suddenly, it could be anywhere. It was old, peeling, with nothing alive. I walked barefoot through a construction site and came back like Jesus. We became too different, I became a bad influence. I ask her mother about surviving. She asks me about college. We look at each other like ghosts.
Growing up, I enjoyed language arts but not in particular. I always knew that music was my “thing.” My first few years of high school, I was above average in everything except English, which gave me the impression that I was a bad writer, which was okay because I was a singer, not a writer. For those three years, Mrs. Gibson glided around on her gibby-glider with her British accent, assuring me that English was my worst subject and that I certainly was no writer. “Liam!,” she would delightfully and loudly mispronounce with a long i sound. “Liam! Your work is faaahbuulous!” “Oh Liam! What does the red pickle dish represent, Liam?”
The red pickle dish represented Ethan and Zenobia Frome’s sex life, by the way, and looking back, I think Liam was teacher’s pet in more ways than one, and likely not consensually. My senior year, I had a wonderful teacher, Mr. Cicchetti, who made me realize that I was not a bad writer. I’ll never forget how much he loved my paper about a vampire named Lemur, who I named after a real-life jerk from my after-school job. One of the best student papers he had ever read, he told the class. Still, becoming a writer was not something that had ever crossed my mind.
You scan the dim park and there she is. The most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen. She is illuminated by the sun. You can’t help but focus on her. Her blonde hair, twinkling blue eyes, and cherry colored lips. Her face, expressionless with her lips slightly parted. Suddenly, a raindrop rolls down her cheek. Her face refuses to change. You can’t help but wonder, why?
You look around and see that the park has emptied. The sun is beginning to set and the wind is picking up. You wonder, how long have you been staring at her?
You look back at her. The drop, still rolling down her face, has made its way to her jaw, falling off of her face. The sun has set, but in its replacement is her.
She stood as she felt the crisp leaves crunching under her feet as she walked down the street, leaving the park behind her. The breeze sweeps her bangs into her face. She pushes them out of her way and grips the coffee in her hand. She feels the hot liquid fall onto her hand, but she keeps walking.
I would reinforce there is no noise and that is the sacredness of the place because I find myself in all of it. A place to unwind in the every season. Watching the reflection of the sun on the water making it look like glittering stars makes me feel that all the pain all the trauma has hope to become glittering stars.
The library looks like it does not belong here amidst the old homes. It is imposing, impressive, and imperfect. The marble pillars stretch seemingly endlessly. Scholars debate the boredom of everyday life on the stairs leading to an old wooden door. The smell of coffee emanates from their bodies and takes away every last breath in the already static heat.
I cannot stand it: the heat, the people, not even the beguiling library. I reminisce about a time in my life that seems more like a movie scene watched in a feverish dream. For a few months, I lived the life of another.
But the old red brick building with its tower was nothing like her. The cloudy weather, the silence, and the snow in stark contrast to her personality like liquid sunshine.
She is my memento mori. My reminder that everything is temporary. It is why I am back in his godforsaken city with its self-announced philosophers trashing the stairs to a place filled with unlimited knowledge with their cigarette butts. They will never experience this ecstasy of paid-off research as they will never step foot into the cooling rooms filled with books. They stay on these stairs like chiseled marble figures. Just like I stay in this heat, unable to return to the place of snow and silence.
Dahlia learned to drive at fifteen. She learned to drive while she was still at that other school, an hour east, down a hot stretch of asphalt that sliced through the mountains. It’s winding and forested for the first bit, then breaks out into an empty highway where you can go 90 in a 40 and never get pulled over, then spits you out into the countryside. The first time she drove me down this road I fell in love. It was something that belonged almost to us—which isn’t a luxury fifteen-year-old girls are often afforded. We were scared children, but on that road we were women; wearing white button-downs and driving a black SUV.
I spent most of my time on that highway. She did too. I still have each turn memorized, each roadsign tattooed into my skin. For us, it was never “do you want to go to the movies?” or, “wanna go to the mall?”. Always “do you want to go on a drive?”. We would get takeout and eat on the mountainside, dip our heads out the windows and listen to Fiona Apple. We were both angry girls for reasons neither of us could place.
The road raised us. It saw our fighting attempt to be our own mothers and took the role instead. Sometimes I think that I am more comfortable there than anywhere else on Earth.
Regardless, women we became. Our palms became callused and we let our eyes grow tired. If I could speak to Dahlia and I, fifteen, maybe I would’ve told them to slow everything down. Maybe I would’ve made them ride a bike.
“Love is… a commodity. Love is a currency.”
“The difficult part had been pulling herself up off the freezing grey tiles which lay neatly across his grimy bathroom.”
Love is a commodity. I bargain with myself as I let you love me. I wonder if it’s doing more harm than good sometimes. Love is a currency. I’ve been spending all of mine on you, and I worry I’ll resent you for it.
My tapestry’s falling down. There’s rotting food in my fridge. How does food even rot in a fridge? My dishes have mold on them. It’s too late to dry to dry the flowers you got me; all the petals have moulted off.
I’m unmedicated, unchecked, and untethered. My laundry won’t ever be put away. Therapy and exams lay forgotten at the rock bottom of the barrel. My plants have slowly been killing themselves. I can tell they’re angry with me, and I can’t blame them. The sauces still in their packs, still in that greasy paper bag.
My worry for you won’t waver will it? You want what you were before, and I have to hurt you to make sure you grip reality, as I slowly but surely lose my own hold on it.
My friends’ stiff smiles sting just a little everyday; not resentment, but resignation. And my reward is responsibility for your relationships? Is my reward really being left alone with my thoughts in the room of my pandemonium, a room more foreign everyday?
You tell me that for you to help, I have to speak. You say I can’t stay silent. Yet the space surrounding us screams out the quiet chaos which is driving me insane. Now I have the difficult task of pulling myself up off the freezing grey tiles which lay neatly across your grimy bathroom, bringing myself back to the baseline which I maintain for your sanity and my survival.
7 responses to “2-in-1 Exercise —Weds”
He turns on his axis and says goodnight to anything with eyes. So this is the beginning.
Three animals, I think, honey-maple frame. Cats, swans, squirrels painted into the furniture, the walls. Hot air balloon carrying the dead dog somewhere else. Linger there. Goodnight. Goodnight. Goodnight.
I don’t know where the light is coming from. In the night time, we could be anywhere. The curtains are painted with starlight, the ceiling smiles back at use, the sun and moon with the face of my mother. Greenhouse on the carpet. Imaginary animals lining the headboard. We have accounted for this. But in memories, it feels like a prison. Dim. The smell of hot dust. Gazing through the corner of the ceiling, down. Waiting. How. How. How?
The child is mummified, the gate is closed, the blood is held, the night unfolds. Again. Again. Again.
That place was perfect to me, then. Impossibly big, inside. It was clean, something like a dream. I remember chandeliers, a deep carpet, a dining table. Warm, artificial light. Cool touch from the windows. Crown molding & medals. We would pretend to be asleep so my mother would let me stay the night. At least a few times, this worked. Once, my father was in some kind of surgery. Maybe an emergency. They left that place, and suddenly, it could be anywhere. It was old, peeling, with nothing alive. I walked barefoot through a construction site and came back like Jesus. We became too different, I became a bad influence. I ask her mother about surviving. She asks me about college. We look at each other like ghosts.
Growing up, I enjoyed language arts but not in particular. I always knew that music was my “thing.” My first few years of high school, I was above average in everything except English, which gave me the impression that I was a bad writer, which was okay because I was a singer, not a writer. For those three years, Mrs. Gibson glided around on her gibby-glider with her British accent, assuring me that English was my worst subject and that I certainly was no writer. “Liam!,” she would delightfully and loudly mispronounce with a long i sound. “Liam! Your work is faaahbuulous!” “Oh Liam! What does the red pickle dish represent, Liam?”
The red pickle dish represented Ethan and Zenobia Frome’s sex life, by the way, and looking back, I think Liam was teacher’s pet in more ways than one, and likely not consensually. My senior year, I had a wonderful teacher, Mr. Cicchetti, who made me realize that I was not a bad writer. I’ll never forget how much he loved my paper about a vampire named Lemur, who I named after a real-life jerk from my after-school job. One of the best student papers he had ever read, he told the class. Still, becoming a writer was not something that had ever crossed my mind.
You scan the dim park and there she is. The most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen. She is illuminated by the sun. You can’t help but focus on her. Her blonde hair, twinkling blue eyes, and cherry colored lips. Her face, expressionless with her lips slightly parted. Suddenly, a raindrop rolls down her cheek. Her face refuses to change. You can’t help but wonder, why?
You look around and see that the park has emptied. The sun is beginning to set and the wind is picking up. You wonder, how long have you been staring at her?
You look back at her. The drop, still rolling down her face, has made its way to her jaw, falling off of her face. The sun has set, but in its replacement is her.
She stood as she felt the crisp leaves crunching under her feet as she walked down the street, leaving the park behind her. The breeze sweeps her bangs into her face. She pushes them out of her way and grips the coffee in her hand. She feels the hot liquid fall onto her hand, but she keeps walking.
I would reinforce there is no noise and that is the sacredness of the place because I find myself in all of it. A place to unwind in the every season. Watching the reflection of the sun on the water making it look like glittering stars makes me feel that all the pain all the trauma has hope to become glittering stars.
The library looks like it does not belong here amidst the old homes. It is imposing, impressive, and imperfect. The marble pillars stretch seemingly endlessly. Scholars debate the boredom of everyday life on the stairs leading to an old wooden door. The smell of coffee emanates from their bodies and takes away every last breath in the already static heat.
I cannot stand it: the heat, the people, not even the beguiling library. I reminisce about a time in my life that seems more like a movie scene watched in a feverish dream. For a few months, I lived the life of another.
But the old red brick building with its tower was nothing like her. The cloudy weather, the silence, and the snow in stark contrast to her personality like liquid sunshine.
She is my memento mori. My reminder that everything is temporary. It is why I am back in his godforsaken city with its self-announced philosophers trashing the stairs to a place filled with unlimited knowledge with their cigarette butts. They will never experience this ecstasy of paid-off research as they will never step foot into the cooling rooms filled with books. They stay on these stairs like chiseled marble figures. Just like I stay in this heat, unable to return to the place of snow and silence.
Dahlia learned to drive at fifteen. She learned to drive while she was still at that other school, an hour east, down a hot stretch of asphalt that sliced through the mountains. It’s winding and forested for the first bit, then breaks out into an empty highway where you can go 90 in a 40 and never get pulled over, then spits you out into the countryside. The first time she drove me down this road I fell in love. It was something that belonged almost to us—which isn’t a luxury fifteen-year-old girls are often afforded. We were scared children, but on that road we were women; wearing white button-downs and driving a black SUV.
I spent most of my time on that highway. She did too. I still have each turn memorized, each roadsign tattooed into my skin. For us, it was never “do you want to go to the movies?” or, “wanna go to the mall?”. Always “do you want to go on a drive?”. We would get takeout and eat on the mountainside, dip our heads out the windows and listen to Fiona Apple. We were both angry girls for reasons neither of us could place.
The road raised us. It saw our fighting attempt to be our own mothers and took the role instead. Sometimes I think that I am more comfortable there than anywhere else on Earth.
Regardless, women we became. Our palms became callused and we let our eyes grow tired. If I could speak to Dahlia and I, fifteen, maybe I would’ve told them to slow everything down. Maybe I would’ve made them ride a bike.
“Love is… a commodity. Love is a currency.”
“The difficult part had been pulling herself up off the freezing grey tiles which lay neatly across his grimy bathroom.”
Love is a commodity. I bargain with myself as I let you love me. I wonder if it’s doing more harm than good sometimes. Love is a currency. I’ve been spending all of mine on you, and I worry I’ll resent you for it.
My tapestry’s falling down. There’s rotting food in my fridge. How does food even rot in a fridge? My dishes have mold on them. It’s too late to dry to dry the flowers you got me; all the petals have moulted off.
I’m unmedicated, unchecked, and untethered. My laundry won’t ever be put away. Therapy and exams lay forgotten at the rock bottom of the barrel. My plants have slowly been killing themselves. I can tell they’re angry with me, and I can’t blame them. The sauces still in their packs, still in that greasy paper bag.
My worry for you won’t waver will it? You want what you were before, and I have to hurt you to make sure you grip reality, as I slowly but surely lose my own hold on it.
My friends’ stiff smiles sting just a little everyday; not resentment, but resignation. And my reward is responsibility for your relationships? Is my reward really being left alone with my thoughts in the room of my pandemonium, a room more foreign everyday?
You tell me that for you to help, I have to speak. You say I can’t stay silent. Yet the space surrounding us screams out the quiet chaos which is driving me insane. Now I have the difficult task of pulling myself up off the freezing grey tiles which lay neatly across your grimy bathroom, bringing myself back to the baseline which I maintain for your sanity and my survival.