i believe in a lot of things, because it is in my human condition to follow every footstep. the ones bigger, the ones smaller, the ones in shape of paw and hoof, and let the earth bite into me. i am on a plate and it is dressed to perfection. i would like to be devoured by some metaphorical beast, perhaps destiny, perhaps a long trek, perhaps a king. i give into the burrowing.

it’s only natural. burrowing. we yearn for the child’s pose as we ache, and the small corner of the room is a makeshift womb. the space to regress into kindly. when we fuck, we bury, when we die, we bury, as we form, we’re buried. the human nature, requires an underneath. ‘the underside of it is warm’,,, as all things close to earth are. the core and whatnot, the oil in between, and sometimes the vinegar on top. this truth is served fresh for you.

so place me into a decorated tomb and tell me death is not warmed by the underneath, that love is not warmed by the insides, that creation is not captured in a cage till syndromes and systems are set into skin. it is only natural. not the selection, the affection of it all. the need to be in, in, in. we only ever aim for ‘on’ to defy it.

when you are ‘on’ you play god. on a throne, on a trip, on a drug. i remember being taught not to allow my dog sit beside me on the couch, that she should remain on the ground. the hierarchies confuse that way, and it truly works like that. we call it domestication, sure. it is fair to let them up, to keep them at your level, equals. but the right way is all on the ground. eat, sleep, walk, have sex, on the ground. the lifting of furniture is anti-life.

look at the japanese, look at their crime rates. tell me they where they eat their lunches and gather for stories. tell me where they tuck in and dream infinity. tell me where it all ends up. now look at icarus, look how he died. look around the two of us and tell me we are okay here. tell me this is the right way of life. tell me we are collectors of memories and experiences and that playing god is a rightful one. we are owed it. we are owed.

sleep on the floor with me tonight, and i’ll keep the tile warm.

Colorado boy, you are handsome. You are much taller than I am, stomped into the ground like a tower, protecting me from shine and rain. Your eyes are the color of Neptune, and I am just one of your sixteen moons. Hair tufted like spindled hay, with a figure so brutal people assume you are the last standing of your species. For me, you remain kind in your flimsy smile. I love what comes out of your mouth. And I love your new haircut. You look clean, I say. To that, you smile and reply, “Was I dirty before?” I bite back to urge to say Filthy and laugh and laugh and laugh with you.

Colorado boy, you are funny. You’d jab into my side with pencils and laugh at my squirming. Meanwhile, I’d stare at your bumpy knees and imagine my teeth sinking into them like sand. Sand, sand, sand; What do you know about deserts? You are Lawrence of Arabia, and in this part of the world, they’d kiss your hands because they are the closest things to your seasick eyes. For that reason, you learn Arabic to properly earn that respect and honor. I teach it to you with my pen, the one you’ll steal in a few minutes to poke me with again.

Colorado boy, you are precious to me. You escape rooms with your best friends to retrace steps back to me, and trail behind me like a white shadow. Our jokes make sense to only us, and in it I find an unusual sanctuary. We flee society together in a small corner of the airport where you share your food with me. You tell me about back home like it’s paused and waiting for you and that the mountains will not erode until you are back there. Your camping trip stories excite me, and you promise me you’ll count all the stars and describe them to me when you’re back. You say it’ll be souvenir enough. I remember one night I was braindead enough to ask you about that white girl in your life. You promised me you wouldn’t date her because she’s Catholic. You said you never understood Catholics, and as a Protestant it just wouldn’t work out. I suppose being with me would be an even bigger sacrifice. I took what was on my plate with grace.

Colorado boy, you are angry at me. You pulled me aside by my weaker wrist to scold me for staying for the party. “You’re so misbehaved,” you muttered, and I wondered how Filthy I looked then. I pulled myself free of you and your big blue eyes turned carnal. It lasted a pinch, before your cross glinted bright enough to remind you of your place, reflecting the colors in the room, a disco ball in the shape of death. In your eyes you are tying yourself to the noose of every possibility of you staying here. The rope looks better around your neck than the gold. You do not curse. So I speak Filthy enough for the both of us, and laugh and laugh with you.

Colorado boy, you ignore me. You leave the room when I step in, and hold your breath when I breathe in. I know I’m not loyal; you do me wrong and so I leave expecting you to crawl back with apology. In actuality, I end up scuttling my way back into the seat beside you, to hold your lips with both hands and force your mouth to move into the sound of Sorry. I settle for good enough. This time, you are not budging anymore. Is your chest flushed red with something like nerves? Will you forgive me after counting till tomorrow? Or is this time different?

Colorado boy, you yell at me. In the bad place where all the men think they’re correct, and you are one more in the tally. You yell louder than you have before, and I see your tongue holding back a heavy, heavy, word. Something like Bitch. Or Slut. Or Cunt. Your least favorite. I am too detached from the English language to care, but too attached to your mouth not to. You make a fool of me, and you talk to Catholic Girl after.

Beautiful boy, I’ve killed men like you before, but somehow you’ve dug your big feet so deep into my nervous system, that even a year later, I am wondering about you. I only wish I could’ve asked you who your God really was, because you helped me with mine so often. Your cross is a heavy one to bear, and I wanted to hold it up with my hands too. I wonder where our beliefs intersect, so our hands can tangle into each other. And you can love me, Colorado boy. You can love me.

if you love me

“humans try to immortalize beauty. it is okay to kill something beautiful. you are allowed to. it would be a waste not to, really. people misplace the value of beauty in it’s chance, but it really lies in it’s ephemerality. beautiful people always die. you’ll die, i’ll die. perhaps heaven isn’t beautiful, but something big. constant. coherent.”

perhaps heaven is the air of your breath meeting mine, in this space you brought me to where we’re forced to be close, because everyone else wants to be far. to dance, to watch, or whatever.

///

you loved how i,

came back from the club,

taking my hoops off like a

heavy crown.

and how when my body washes

it’s gold from the night,

drips down the drain, to a

hungry, hungry, mouth.

the benevolence

that had managed to stick to me

like dancing air,

the heavenly silence

while the bass still thrums

in my ears and calves.

you loved how i,

came out mascara-ruined,

and lipstick-smudged with a

will to live again.

you’d heal me like a good lover,

who gives his beloved

pills when she’s ill,

and kisses when she’s

still.

if you love me...

they’ve taught me how to fish here. they told me that to lure a good one you have to kill his brother and feed it to him. a Cainine way of life. it is nature’s proverbial warning for all the things that are bound to tangle into your hair across these next years. i learned this way is rooted in original sin when they taught me how to read the big books with tiny letters. they told me that to understand it better you have to kill your conscience and feed it to Him. worship’s proverbial warning against existence. for from Him and through Him and for Him are all things.

the underside of it is warm—

where you brush my wet hair with your

weak knuckles on flimsy fingers—

while the many objects, interfering,

try to bind themselves onto your

calloused fingers, a terraformation;

zebibah and stigmata

of the bread 

while on one of the excursions, i learned that i do not have sympathy for a fish because it cannot look at me with both eyes. the same way you didn’t when you barged in, swinging the glass door to it’s extent as you entered indecently. “wrap a towel around yourself,” they scolded, and you took it as a suggestion to laugh at. nothing was funny, but we let you go on because your anger breaks the good wine glasses.

you learn how to gut and you picture someone you love as the animal you’re gutting. you wake up and realize that it was always true—your mind will eat your skull wide open for these claws to dig right back in and do the same to you. pitiful, how quickly the rabbit turns into game, and how emotionally elementary you are when pushing through this Paleolithic way of life.

they give you the book again and you shake your head vehemently. you say that gutting isn’t of human nature. i laugh at you, “neither is your indecency.” valiant, how quickly you rush back into that glass-paned cave. they will tell me to go wash your back soon, while you trace patterns onto the dewed surface. these patterns say a lot about you, you know. you are a pacifist when you trace hearts and an egoist when you cross them out.

when they aren’t looking, i wrap an evil eye bracelet around the shower head for safety. it soothes you till your lisp returns. a baby’s mouth on a man’s face, and it is more than clear that the age has missed a spot. i take it down before dinner, before the bell chimes and we run downstairs like children seeking a warm belly.

at the dining table and they all look incest-made, but i find humanity there, when the gap from eye to eye shortens. that way i know they are always looking at me, probably more than you, and definitely more than the dead fish on the table that we are chewing into—in a Paleolithic way, with fists buried into dish, then mouth. we are gutting it again.

if you love me...

My father underwent surgery this week, standard, good for his old health. Nonetheless, the masses worry for him and gift him well for good recovery. These gifts come in fruitful—or fruitless, really—baskets of delightful sweets. It has taken over the bigger parts of my diet now, a different box for a different meal. Some wrapped in gold, some in silver, some in the shape of flowers, and one giant slab of chocolate, perfectly marbled and smoothed. It is no surprise to everyone how quickly the chocolates disappear, and how the towers cave in. I’ve always been a sweet girl; my hands and feet are strawberries and honey leaks out of my mouth in large silken batches.

I lead a simple life with feet kicked up on Ottomans from the Empire, and my tush deep in seats crafted by Fatimids, as I look up at the beautiful ornate dish wall where Princess Diana’s wedding plate lies, front and center. We paid a handsome sum of five dollars for that plate. Yes, it is real. No, no one in the stall spoke or read English, let alone the golden cursive on the back that glints bright enough to blind even in darkness.

In this life, Persian rugs older than me scatter across my floors to mute the sound between my Plebeian downstairs neighbors and I. Beautiful furniture stretches and clumps across the rooms from when my father led a lavish life, young. Then when his father suddenly passed away, the inheritance went to the wrong woman and… Still, I am opulent by blood, even as we live in a humble estate where we are blessed with glorious, glorious, glorious amounts of debt. Thank you kindly, Grandmama. Your weakness brought us the last of your good silver, and no wealth at all.

Born the first, and a girl, when the angel Gabriel sent me down I distinctly remember him whispering in my ear that excellence was placed into my heart. So when my eyes opened that first time, I had already known the world, and my little palms explored with the sureness of old hands. With gold gilding each baby-fatted wrist, I was a graced child to a fortunate woman and an unfortunate man.

At two years old my father took me to Italy where he was born—an Arab Muslim boy taught nothing but Latin language and placed into a Catholic school. How tragic for him, but how splendid for me. Trips there were common: Florence, Venice, Milan, and of course, grand Rome. On that trip, I was accompanied by mother and aunt, and as they pushed my carriage over cobbled streets an old and unpleasantly loud Italian woman stopped all of us to exclaim at my plump face:

“Che bella bambina!”

On that day, in the middle of the Roman streets that rocked me to sleep, I was blessed to be beautiful for the rest of my life.

…

Growing up, I had come to learn that as much as I own, I also feel, and for each penny spent on gold, my sensations gain the weight of it instead. As each chocolate symbolizes a slight grievance, each ingot symbolizes an ego death. So while counting my wealth in my will, the realization dawned on me: My children and their young ones will never have lives as excellent as mine, because although they will inherit my art collection and my towel warmer, they will never know what it is like to bear blessings so heavy they often amputate the soul. Unaware of these great sensations I carry, they will never experience the every-other-morning feeling of sitting back against the headboard, hazy and buzzed.

How early in the day it begins. First, with all the constellations named after me stirring around my skull. Then, with the wild spirits, heavy-tongued, preaching to me gospels indecipherable even to themselves. And before a breath is able to escape, the many galaxies milk their way into my mouth, and in them are spoils and riches of past wars. At the climax, my head falls forward and my nose is stuffed with the smell of these riches—which means, of course, that breakfast is soon. At the end, with an exhale, I am garnished with the dew of sweat as the walls remember to bow towards me. Only then may I rise.

Even if I leave these instructions, detailed and packaged for them to read, their bodies won’t truly be overcome with it all. They must be salted by many prayers, and broken by many evil eyes as I was.

I’ve got pearls for teeth, and candied peaches for lips. A nose of ivory, and eyes of ancient amber. I am abundant in every sense of the word. In the mind, good and bad, the body, good and bad, and most of all in the riches, good and… stolen. The debts are paid off, and with this freedom comes a new moral compass and way of life. Trudging through it, I am what the quiet-rich call tacky, and what the loud-rich call poor. It does not matter. When they burn me, two coins resting delicately over my eyes, they will all know well enough that I am worth billions of them, because there is a heavenly excellence in my heart, an Italian grace thick on my hair, and aristocracy deep-set in my blood. Lore my children could never inherit; lore no manual could preserve. My legacy will exist in the silence that comes with death, and perhaps that is why Gabriel blessed me, because he knew I was modest enough to never share it.

if you love me... buy me a coffee

i want to ask how he felt, flung into the sky and dropped far away in the middle of a desert. he is just a few miles away from his friends, where they sit peacefully in a tent with tea and jokes. i want to ask if he was so far up that he saw the roundness of the world he would soon land on. perhaps he screamed. or cried, if so, who exactly did he cry for. was there regret in the end? did his recklessness give him a wake-up call before his long period of sleep? they took fifteen minutes to find him. i want to ask many things so i go to the most religious man i know and ask him instead.

“God has written it this way. Not out of retribution, rather out of truth. His gracious hand traces many paths, all of which are yet to occur, but only one is chosen by man’s foot. You may leave your camel out in the desert, and pray that it will stay there, but when you come back, it will be gone. Although God is with you always, he does not extend his arm out for your own leisure. He does not give you a camel you cannot leash. He does not give you a path you cannot trek. Most of all, he does not stop the consequences of what you have been warned against. God has blown life into the mud of you, and treating your body ignorantly will not only harm you, but insult him. What happened to the poor boy was not punishment, it was mercy, for the next death that was written for him would’ve been much more brutal than dying out in the desert alone.”

i still hear that goddamn machine. alone with fluorescent lights replacing angels around my head. pump. pump. pump the life back into my baby.

it’s like i’m lugging around my dead dog everywhere i go. collar torn and frayed. dragging her over rocky asphalt. dying dead, and still horrifically alive in memory. terrifyingly vivid when i’m sat in bed alone in the dark, and all i can remember is the bright white walls of the only veterinary hospital open within an hour radius. i am lugging around my dead dog, and she’s denser, her bones and body bloat. she doesn’t bark anymore, just heaves the sounds of machines attempting to resuscitate her. she doesn’t bark, just foams at the mouth the way dying dogs do. she doesn’t bark, just thuds over speed bumps and sidewalk cracks. i urge her to get up. to show up at my doorstep alive again. please. i wish i could touch her fur, but it is matted and greased with decay. filthy like the parking lot outside the hospital. filth like the sand filling my shoes. she disappears and i feel less of her warmth. it doesn’t come as a side effect of tears, i’m getting colder too. i felt it ever since i forgot your birthday. i felt it because you didn’t turn five. just rotten, buried with a $2000 fee. i hate it here. you were so beautiful. i wish we could’ve been beautiful together for a little more. for now, i count each pump the machine stamped into you, trying to bring you back. i track it like morse code. i hope it was your way of saying i love you, even as your heart failed.

i grew up with The Kiss by Gustav Klimt on the wall. mama loves Klimt. so do i, i think. we visited Vienna as a family a few years back. it was heavenly, quiet, streets full of dogs and no children. more than ideal, really. we visited Leopold and mama got to see love up close, gilded and glorious. meanwhile, i was many steps behind, staring at life and death, but mostly death. he was gorgeous, the greatest man i fell in love with. holding a club to his chest, he was dignified and wise, because he knew when to strike. eyes hollow, watching the great unwashed fall in love with each other, make love, and children, and then the children made love. darlings wrapped up in a jelly of devotion. i wished to speak with him, to rest under his cloak, adorned with crosses—a cosmos of belief. i wanted to hear his words, his teeth rattling against one another, to inhale the smog of his breath. he was the color of bruises most people gain as they clumsily make more love. this pain is proof, i say. the greatest hedonistic pleasure is life itself. for what is there to do but consume?

my favorite movie is a home movie my father and i made when i was four. a magic show. i had a favorite blanket back then— it was very like myself to prefer soothing on my blanket rather than a pacifier like an ordinary child. my mom sat on the carpet across from me. i was curled up on my father’s lap. the coffee table in front of us, a moat around our imagination. he covered us with the blanket and whispered for me to hide underneath the table. he’d pull the nibbled-on cloth back up and reveal my disappearance. my mom would gasp in pretend and i’d giggle under dark oak.

i don’t remember the last time we ate lunch all together. i don’t remember the last time she kissed him before work.

children of divorce suffer, but so do children of love, then hate, then love, then hate, then some more love, then a lot more hate. i feel guilty for being ungrateful, but not the lump-in-your-throat guilty, instead the ache-in-my-always-flubbing-arms kind of guilty. i know i am the only string that binds them together, the unfortunate product of one of their moments of love. it is alright, they say. we love you, they say.

i go out with my father every friday because he has nobody. i also have nobody, but my nobody is much softer. we sit across from each other and make awkward small-talk and he embarrasses me in public—dad-style. i know he’s trying, so i let him have his fun and get embarrassed—daughter-style. i know he sees my mother in me. they’ve been saying i grew into my face, which means i look like her, and so when he gets angry at her i’m cast off as well.

it’s hard to be in love, i’m sure, because once you grab onto it, your palm is forever marked with its stain. it’s an ugly burn, the dead skin flaking off till infinity. in my religion, there is no “till death do us part.” rather, we say, “in this world, and the next,” meaning even in heaven, we are bound. i think about that a lot, how love is such a permanent decision. that is why i avoid indulging in my guilty pleasure: imagining the taste of lover’s spit.

a man to melt in my arms and a bridge in my name. everything is romantic, and the level of my vision lies above the clouds. the birds that flock into my eyes obscure my future, but in between the feathers, i make it out just fine. i see someone who will love me better than everyone else around me is loved. i want to win the competition of love. i love to conquer.

now, these second spaces are muddled with the anger and spite of my parents. i tell myself passion like that is healthy, because what goes down must come up—you can drown in frustration, but to fight properly you must pull your head up for air. there’s a balance, and you must accept it to move through reality properly. i no longer idealize, i move forward. it is easier to take steps when you know what’s waiting is solid ground. i’ve changed my mind now, the birds have cleared a path. i see someone who will fight me better than everyone else around me is fought. i want to win the competition. i have to.

i don’t know who i am if not in the middle of most things. i sit in between these two beliefs like i do in the middle of doing and don’t. in the middle of wanting and won’t. maybe it is the cusper in me, born january twenty to no horoscope. when i read the paper, i read for both capricorn and aquarius and pick the one with the best luck. this indecisiveness is the reason my body crunches, mechanically moving through life. screws clanking, gears swinging, i crash around the beautifully furnished living room and drag through the ceiling, a bull in a china shop; i end up with an asbestos-stuffed jaw.

all i know is that i am here, and it is first come, first served, and of course, mom was first. sorry, dad. i am a traitor to everyone but not the system. not the hierarchy instilled into my mind:

god.
prophet.
mom.
dad.
brother.
extended family.
best friends.
friends.
acquaintances.
lover’s spit.

lost boy stumbles in like a chucked street animal, lugging around baggage. a good tourist with it parked up front, resting on broad chest and narrow torso. a hand reached out over the language barrier, she tucks her music away. instead, he watches her play with his eyes. aryan eyes that can’t survive the heat. eyes of generations of white men who would never touch a brown girl like her, with starry night curls of dark hair. skin tanned like schiele’s wrapping paper canvases. skin that shines brighter the sun.

enter: his mother or sister or an important woman in his life. she scolds and yells. then turns to apologize for the disturbance, laughs, and says “he was carrying our passports and phones and didn’t tell us where he was going.” boy lost, now found. unfortunate how well the bin signs work. good jackets gone to owners. good boys gone to mothers.

as he walks towards the sunshine, the tines of his eyes meets hers. she blinks and he’s dragging himself out of the store, carrying the very valuables pulling them apart. magnets of separate poles. perhaps the same magnets that are tugging at the texture of her skin. her brown skin. his of north, hers of the tropic of cancer. she distracts herself quickly, playing with the tendrils of the beast beneath her fingers. the walls echo more than just music into her ears, curls tucked behind.

“the look of love,” spoken in her father’s voice.

how desolate you were for me, vienna.

i slide out of bed, as your eyelashes tangle together. sheets bunched down at your hips, the dimples of your back are valleys i’d like to be buried in. i see villages of our future children there. i stand on the edge your shoulder-blade cliffs, and watch over them. the river of your spine flooding down into forbidden. i play god on your body. it’s tangible.

the cool air of the marble floor blows over my feet before i boldly plant them down, fighting against the cold in a rough and arrogant shiver. they trudge into the bathroom as aches bloom over my muscles like beautiful mold patterns. i put on some sleep shorts for dignity. brushing in between the bones that show, i check out my face without makeup. the dark creases that dip into my skull, the long lashes that are shy until forcefully uplifted, and the random red spots i get on my skin because i’m allergic to earth. i look down at my neck coated in graveyards of our love. purpled like my favorite hyacinths you buy me, like my grandma glasses you beg me to keep on.

to my left you are waking up because i can feel the sunshine drifting away. the doorway between you and i, a portal of last night and the responsibilities of today. you rub your big eyes with your big callused palms, disoriented by my absence. when you finally find me you blind me with your big smile, greater than the sunrise you missed. a whole terrarium blossoms in my belly, drifting up to my heart and basking it in your everything. you’re everything.

after creaking the muscles and cracking the bones under your skin, you meet me in the bathroom in two long strides. wrapping up around me before i get the chance to exhale a greeting, protecting like the atmosphere. they say that if you love a person’s smell when they’re sweaty, it’s a sign of genetic compatibility. i wonder if it’s the same for your yuck-yum morning breath.

my cheeks begin their daily workout of constantly being stretched up over my eyelids by an unstoppable show of teeth. the truth is, i’m not one to flash, but you make me shy. we whisper and giggle about little secrets that no spectator would understand. i only need eyes from you.

we’re irresponsible and end up in bed again. for more twirling and dancing. you print your devotion onto me in glossolalia. your movements are dreamy as you drift back and forth, in and out. i frighten myself with my docility, and your eyes are wind catchers. you lean closer and breathe in my ear. the silent statement that although you’re above me, we’re both under a wave of ecstasy. drowning in the metaphysical. we gasp for air and climb out of our shock.

we splay, starfish on this tapestry, tossed onto shore. our bodies rain with every hormone released. you kiss me good morning and tell me you love me. we mate for life.

i’m getting repetitive, i know, spare me. will be getting creative when my heart and stomach wills it. i’m simultaneously emotionally rich and starved. don’t quit on me and keep on loving me. fruits will be beared soon. for now, tell me how you imagine being worshipped.

dream more,

girlfly

…

it’s june and you’re a pity party i’m willing to celebrate. it’s my mistake for misreading the invitation. i just love to get out of the house. it’s funner in a stranger’s. to sneak into their bedroom, a pervert concerned with only posters and CDs. it’s like snorting a line between the wrinkles of their cerebral cortex. i haven’t even made my way into your skull yet and my toes are tipping. curiosity, kill me slowly.

we lie on grass like summer people do. there’s a bas-relief of us in the sky. fragmented in clumps of dead ponds filled with microplastics. it’s your fingers in my mouth and my tongue in your ear. an image of me whispering prayers and sweet dreams down your spinal cord, and you clogging my throat up with your complaints. parasitic in nature, but beautiful in stone. carved by baby angels. struck at by cupids for strength. may romantic love never degrade this.

broken men are useful for tools. they sharpen knives and harden hammers. they’re made of steel and stubbornness, and most of all, their love for the wrong women. that is why we made good friends, because you never loved me and i remained virgin to your fury. just occasionally a mannequin you undressed with your mind, and stabbed into till you found a flash of your past sweethearts. the light blinds you. nature must’ve selected you.

all the abiotic factors in the world work against you, and you call it a hopeless case. i believe you’re awful in all universes and karma is hunting you down. i wonder if your girlfriends are as bad as you say they are or if you bring out the worst in women. because right now as your mouth siphons out grievances, i’d love to hurt you. bull to red. moth to flame. magnet to steel.

we split like cells, frequent and unregulated. they die around me. floating up like balloons that yearn for a ceiling, i lick them off the petri-dish street lights. the chemistry between us drowns in chlorine and breaks apart. i am set free.

…

i’m sitting on this lawn chair letting the sparks in the sky sprinkle onto my body. cheese grated onto pasta. the synthetic material gropes my bare thighs in lines. marked by manufacturer. as i burn, i try to swallow all the oxygen in the world to get rid of my gag reflex. the experiment leaves me with a result of cracked lips and dry mouth.

i take my sunglasses off to butter myself up, but there you are, standing before me, just close enough that the shadow of your head cools my ankles. i ignore you till my hopes of blending into my surroundings dissipate. till the tang of sunscreen makes the air around us sticky. i give in and look up. we make eye contact through your ugly browline glasses. i petrify you.

weeks later, i walk into you in the middle of where i knew i’d find you. i step over you on the pavement. the bas-relief of you bloated inconveniently. i crouch down to tie my shoelaces and make eye contact with you as my foot rests on your neck. your eyes are big, punished, and guilt-filled. your tongue lolling out like that of a dead fool. maladapted in nature, but beautiful in stone. carved by all your ex-girlfriends. stomped on by me for strength.

i’m missing your sweaty palms and breathlessness. your heart rate back then and mine now would sync perfectly. we would be one, but we’ve never been good at harmony. your path waveform, and mine linear. we intersect once in a while. for a glimpse or a fake smile. it’s too quick to speak, too slow to wave. whenever you pass by me, i can hear you heaving behind me, losing yourself. you’re so unrestrained. you have to be in love with me. i invested a whole orbit in our ill-fated future. i saw a home on mars with you. i must be carbon dioxide poisoned already.

shadows dance on this cave wall and it’s all so hypnotizing. i’m looking around at the rest of the girls with their stupid fucking boyfriends on their phones. everyone’s in love. everyone’s smiling. bumping. rocking. the room smells like expensive perfume, something you could’ve never bought me. my heart has jumped on it’s feet, trying to run out of my chest. i’m laughing. i’m dying. i’m passing out soon. i’m out of breath and excuses for you.

i blink and we’re on the phone four tuesdays ago. classic love story with you sitting on your windowsill, breeze rustling into your microphone. your voice matches it’s cadence, but your words are meaningless. buildings built with bricks and no cement. you tell me you’re tender towards me because i understand you and you appreciate that. two hours later, you confess that you’re infatuated with me, that you’ve been so for the past year. i must’ve pulled the string too hard because you’re saying “ew” after every i love you.

“all relationships end badly, that’s why i didn’t tell you. i didn’t wanna be your boyfriend temporarily and then lose you. i wanted to be your friend forever.”

you’re kind. you’re faithful. you’re good at keeping me captive in our best interest. i wish you’d be a real man for once. you say me too. i think we’re agreeing. i think you’re a pro at this.

the bathroom’s heady with other bodies and i’m a mess with my foundation caking. i could go for cake right now. the idea of me stuffing it all my mouth, frosting everywhere, excites me. i’ll make everything sweet for you. life with me, it’s heaven. i miss bad frosting. the one with sugar granules in it. grainy like this bass. it sticks, just like i do. you’re gagging, and it’s beautiful. i’m so disgusting, i know, but maybe if my mouth tasted sweet, the words would come out delicately.

“i miss you.”

how vulgar.

the bathroom door mutes the party noise seamlessly, and this is the perfect time to call you: forty minutes after midnight. i don’t tell anyone i’m relapsing. it’s a party trick that i’ve memorized your phone number. i’m the luckiest girl in the world because you call back five minutes later. i answer. for one short minute i stay quiet. your greeting comes in like a bipap for my heart. i missed your voice. my words are prepared but i’m unresponsive. my voice withered and weak from screaming against the symphony, i finally manage to say hi back. you ask me what i want. i ask if you hate me. you laugh at me.

“is that all?” you ask before i can.

i remember us facetiming. i’m doing my makeup and you giggle like a little girl. you’re sick. you’ve got is a big fat fucking smile on your face, and i want to punch it off. you made me wait a year for this. you look at me like you’ve earned me, when all i can feel as my blush brushes over my cheeks is the ache in my calves i’ve earned from chasing you for this past year. from pinning you down and waterboarding it out of you that you loved me. i had to force it because you were too busy idolizing me to realize that i was just a girl in love. who wanted you to say it back. i wanted our connection rammed into stone. i didn’t care that you were broke and going nowhere in life. you were everything. now i’m tuning you out because you’re less than what i was promised. you’re not interesting. you’re no one. i waited a year for this. we were better off friends. i make my camera the bigger screen on facetime because i can’t stand your face.

yes, that’s fucking all.

i’m back out in the party and i’m a stone cold sober heartache. snow strippers are exploding in my ear and i’m hallucinating your face. there’s salt water running into my mouth. divine intervention knows i’m thirsty. my tongue’s black and i can’t tell if it’s from sucking off your lies for so long or my drugstore mascara. the tempo and my heart rate are syncing. this is a sign. music is the love of my life. i want to make out with the big black box singing in front of me. instead, i untie my hair and take my earrings off. i’m dropping it down and kicking it back up. i’m broadcasting myself on the big screen. i’m a stain on humanity and owning it. i’m finally fucking free.

it comes to me like a vision. i was a snapdragon blooming in death and you were hungry for beauty. you could never feel my pain because you saw me as an idol above it all. you put me on a pedestal so high it dehumanized me. empathy was a foreign concept. shrine engraved in your bedroom wall, i haunted you in both true and false. reality and dream. you wanted me forever, and you’d make yourself a bad man for the closest thing to eternity.

i was never the love of your life. i was utopia.

an angel coaxes me out of the fog and i am shocked at the coolness of the deck beneath me. there are five other angels hovering over me, concerned and all beautiful. tallest one tells me i’ve been crying like a child, and that i had collapsed. i look down and my ankles are all over the dance floor. my top’s riding up with sweat. my face is sticky with shame. i’m the dizzy one now. they baptize my face and help me back up on my feet. i am met face to face with the black machine. lil uzi vert whispers a secret to me:

once you wake up.

it’s just a dream.

“just one more.”

pluck. i am a woman now. with brows tweezed. i hate being brown sometimes.

there is a massive problem heady and heavy and i’m hacking and gagging on it. i think i’ve got a cancer of sorts now. yes, i’ve accumulated sixty mutations in one gene in these sixteen minutes. sitting in a different waiting room, i am waiting for salvation. i told her my dog died three minutes ago, and she ended the phone call immediately. she is seven minutes away. i stare at a wall and think of god. i try to picture him reaching a hand out to me, telling me that my number’s finally called. i feel as though it would be warm in his hands, not cold in this air-conditioned shit-hole. not in this waiting room of what seems to be an illegal clinic, sat here alone with two women staring at me funny. i don’t even realize i am bawling, in pieces, aching. i should clean up, but instead i watch as they pet their alive-cat and i wonder if they’re trying to rub it in. i tell god, with his hands reached out through the high ceiling, that these women will one day feel the humbleness of a loss, and that when someone is glaring at them while they are alone in a horribly decorated clinic after their now-alive cat dies, they will remember empathy. the vet who gave me the news earlier comes and gives me her condolences, she walks away and i get a glimpse of her very ugly four-leaf clover tattoo on the back of her neck.

is this god flipping me off?

salvation walks in five minutes later, and i am dead on the floor, but no, it isn’t my turn in line yet. i am just needy for cold tile. i spend five days waiting for the ache to pass. i figure out, a week in, that even when the agony dissipates, it is only ever fully resolved if i bury my heart beside my baby. my baby, angel.

there is a massive problem and it’s been two months since i have first dreamt of them. i know they are thinking about me. i know they are waiting. i know i am waiting. there is no number to be called, though. the only number i have are the days since, the days i’ve forgotten, the days i remembered, the screenshots i’ve lost, and the messages together. i feel it in the back of my mind 24/7, a broken neon sign. only one number beams on it. 222. the time i last texted. AM. i punch the sign and the digits do not change. i throw the batteries out and it is like a fire alarm, relentless. eventually the hazardous yellow numbers harmonize with the rest of the interior of my mind. empty.

i’ve started to miss you out of lack, not reason. there is already an opening in my sternum so large it is concerning. but you couldn’t fill it if you tried. it is the massive problems before me that stretch it out, and you would only be an atom in this black hole. i cannot reminisce on what we’ve had because it is only the ending scene that i see. the part before the tape stops rolling. like how i can only picture my dead dog with her blue gums and foaming mouth, not in her spirit. i only ever remember you in the way i need you, and even then, it is a memory of you with your back to me. god, i love you when you give me your back.

a bitch in my film studies class asked if she could give me a makeover. she pointed out that my glasses made me look 50. at that moment i remembered you liked my glasses. i needed you then. to keep me sane, to be my friend again. now i understand that if you were to come back into my life, i would see you with blue gums and a foaming mouth. i would be resurrecting a soul against it’s will. i would immortalize you. i would hate you. and still, i would miss you.

[i suppose you really are an evil vampire.]

even though i’ve forgotten our inside jokes, your voice, and my excuses, i have a feeling you miss me too. i do not know what to do with that. it is like a hair to be tweezed. i suppose your absence of closure is another shovel digging at the gaping hole in my chest. i still care about you, after all, and as much as i imagine myself screaming at you for still thinking about me, [which i know you do, because although i’ve forgotten everything, i remember your soul] i wish you nothing but goodness, because i know you wish the same for me as well.

all this to say, i am not angry at you anymore. i can barely be angry at all. it is that feeling after witnessing life’s guarantee, that you have mercy on everyone. that you care for the evilest vampires, and see everyone as a child one slip-up away from being no more. that you finally touch soil and forgive it. when you witness the infinite cycle reach you.

i have a massive problem and they are these nails underneath my bare feet, stopping me from cutting in this long line.

they make me want to yell:

maybe i want my number to be called. maybe i want you to call it.

epilogue.

i’ve called you many times now. you’ve only ever called once. you’ve read all my writing including this piece. you’ve never seen me naked but it’s close enough. i bore my spirit to you brightly, but you only saw the shadows it made. you used to look at me with love and sweaty palms. i used to tell you to catch your breath. i made your world spin, and you made mine stop. we were caught in all the wrong moments, hook, line, and sinker. i would say maybe in another life, but in this one i have enough loathing to scatter seeds in all the other possibilities. i was right. big men make big heartaches, and you were no kinder. fangs and all.

an old piece of mine, as well a slight extension, hope you enjoy.

she was virgin and unkind. always cold, always cranky, always drooling over fantasy and scratched up desks. eyelashes transporting her between her many ideals. she made a home in the totems that inhabited these worlds. based on an untrue story, they were pieces of youthful ecstasy manifested in erotic figures. she knew it was unbecoming. knew it was vulgar for such a beautiful girl to have such thoughts and play with them. she wondered if her forehead was made of glass, and that people only smiled at her out of pity. it was natural for her to ponder if anything was honest when all she had done in life was revel in the dishonesty of daydream.

the fact was that she could easily materialize her fantasies if she had only batted her eyes back into reality. she had the means— the body, mostly. the bunny-teeth smile, the dimple on chin, the prominent cheekbones, and the philtrum perfectly sized for a kiss to be placed. she simply preferred lazying in bed, hallucinating, sober.

after the mole, she began describing the notions that were revealed to her. the image of a beautiful man, with no features at all. how somewhere in his dust, there was a toothless smile that made the rest of him shine with seed. he was naked, but not in a lewd way. in the way boys will be boys. wild creatures recklessly running free of range. splashing, sprinkling everywhere, and growing the grass greener on every side. she tried to write about the female body the same way, but quickly realized they are too desired to be innocent. they bring out the wild animal that recklessly devours. temptresses unwillingly.

the man’s light was the size of a galaxy and crushed like supernova. his skin was the perfect temperature. one hundred degrees fahrenheit. brushed with milk and honey. she made sure not to touch him, knowing she’d be submerged in the glory. she closed her eyes and took it. it felt like cold air being blown into her from every hole. air conditioned body. she was tranquilized. botoxed and buoyant.

just like she had spread herself, she opened the journal perfectly in the center to draw the icon that had been revealed to her.

what true sex looked like.

framed and centered, a single feather. brown and frayed at edges, creamed and tight at center. a gentle wave guided her finger down the barb, and as she traced the fragile thing, it came apart. the unraveling steadily following her. her breath had wandered off to an unexplored level in heaven, right up until her finger had reached the end of the quill. by then, it returned to her in childish, giddy, skips. with her inhale, the afterfeather that floated in the atmosphere flooded into her. the barb sparkled and dematerialized, and all that was left was soft white tufts settling at the bottom of her belly. she was pregnant with a pleasure.

fifty-eight years later, chastised and ineffectual, the encounter was the one matter her dementia had permitted her to talk about. the nurses would ask if she was a nun, and to that she took much offense, tutted in dismay. she never committed to other people’s imagination of the divine, she’d cough out. the young caretakers would all scatter off, laughing, wondering where the sense was in the old lady. timidly, the youngest always stayed back to ask:

what did it feel like?

it took her a few minutes to thrust out the line her teeth were to weak to repeat:

she was buried with her journal in the cheapest coffin. in her long life, her soul was constantly bursting, while her limbs remained apathetic. for this reason, she barely made any money, but just enough so that she wouldn’t be burnt and tossed away, unarmored. two faces appeared at the funeral. a college professor that had become infatuated with her aloofness, and her brother who had stopped speaking to her after twelve. they stood far away from each other as she was lowered into the core of the earth. the priest said his words. the two faces said no words at all.

what was left was a woman who had done nothing but sit in her skull having an orgy with enlightenment. she was unremembered, and to every visitor who had unknowingly stepped over her grave, unremarkable.

thank you dearly to the reason i keep writing, , for reading the draft so thoughtfully.

i was born with a prayer in my ear. in the voice of grandpa and father. the first good daughter of the family, they agree. it is not true, though. there was one before me, by less than a year. her father was a bad man then. when we reunited i was greeted with her eyes, big and beautiful, shaped in the words of a good prayer. she has a laugh like a hearty meal. i should envy her, but when i look at her i see the perfect woman we would make if we put all our good traits together like clay. she would crack in the kiln. we are not so different, just gifted a separation in lifetime. a sisterhood born in silence. speaking rides us on trails of unmatched dialogues and dialects. i end up tripping over her words.

it rained for four days. thunder and violence in the sky, stirred into a long sound of unwavering anger. it’s a thumping in my ear, a second heartbeat, louder when pillowed. we could lose our water any day now, so the rain is god pressing his merciful hand over our soil. mama teaches everyone that our geographical location is abrahamically sanctified, and therefore those who wrong us, wrong themselves. that is why the oil prices are high. unfortunate, our lives, but so fortunate, too. we were blessed with a lot to give up. the women in my family are jumping over bridges between gratitude and grudge. all our legs are sore.

i have lately been overcome with the feeling that these are very much my last days. i try to step through the world as regularly as possible, but each foot is growing heavier with the need to go back home. an instinctual ankle monitor. driving, i stare at the road and sky with big eyes. i picture death as a camera flash. i picture a missile arriving in front of me, greeting me with a beaming smile. a smile like saddam’s. my hand reaching out in a desperation of a statistic, before i am paused. remote in god’s hands. are you still watching?

i’ve aged into every year of my life, possible and past. i stride with the grace of youth, and perch with the bitterness of old. i wax and wane ordinary. constantly under-stimulating myself because at night there is a lightning like a camera flash outside my window. i will sleep standing tomorrow. i will eat breakfast at 4PM in the name of god. the orison grandma taught me is mumbled rarely. the ankle monitor’s melody is in the tune of warning whistles. everything is singing together, the harmony of call to prayer and sign of danger. a few minutes later the birds will join the choir. the world is singing me to sleep. what a blessing it is to be alive in the last moments of your life.

my fish in thinner than yours.

i lie every time i tell people i don’t enjoy pity. i must have no self respect, or so much of it, because this is all an act. when i am down on the floor, i am performing for you. i do it because the oak brings out my eyes. i do it because it’s good for you. i do it because i’m good for you. meanwhile, i pick at the splintered wood. my mind is stimulated with thoughts of your guilty face after this, and the ache in my side is nothing but an incessant knocking. when i get bored of it all, i switch perspectives with the corner of the ceiling. i am enamored at how much worse of a person you’ve become in minutes. you don’t even know i’m looking down at you from up here.

eventually, your legs will stop working, and you will find yourself lying beside me, awakening into a body that had been stolen from you for the past hour. why else would you hurt such a sweet girl? derealization looks good on you. not even snapping fingers would do you good. i’m proud of you. later, in the night, you will beg me to carry you out from the bed you punish yourself under. the ants will have gathered and bitten you back. you’ve knocked down too many hills, and your big boots had stopped counting them.

still, i am no fool. i know my legs work. i only lie on the floor because it is the position i like best when we fight. the perfect excuse to yell because your head is far, and your feet are so tenderly close mine. you look down at them often, contemplating. i see it flicker in your eyes, seven times in the midst of all of this. you wonder if your boot is hard enough to knock me out. i fantasize about it one more time than you do. in fact, when i stick my tongue out to provoke you, i angle my head to the sole. peer into mine and ram your combats into it. i give you better access, generously. however, i do not boast of my charity. you will know this is all an idea of your own. you are the bad person here, and i will break down all the mirrors in the house for you.

in my softness, i am honest; and in my hardness, i am even more so. it is a phallic kind of thing. i am merciful when you need me to be, but tough never did you wrong, especially when love’s placed beside it. it works best in small doses, i’ve noted, or slipped into the drinks you ignore. you ignore most things.

in the middle of a standing fight, i pick at that flaw: your ungratefulness.

for me. left hook.

for your life. right hook.

for your fortune you’re too busy complaining to be responsible for. uppercut.

his lips part meaningfully,

“you’re just like my exes.”

knockout.

“i’ve been really into the wwe, recently,” he told me at dinner.

“yeah? isn’t it all fake?” i reply, hypocritically.

his fork pauses before his mouth, anticipating. he looks at me with the cousin of hatred.

“maybe. who the fuck cares, anyway?”

i lie on the floor again, dribbling tears, sweat, saliva, that spice the tangy wood. someone waxed these floors recently. i lick it all off the floor. you look at me and feel disgust, because this is what you made of me. or so i’ve posed myself.

“i don’t like that,” i choke. “i’m sorry,” i gurgle out in cycles. on our wooden floor, i am the picture of innocence. the portrait of a sweetness. the perfect forensic photograph of a victim. it’s time to tape around my lying body, you’ve killed me. cue the fake blood.

i’m not sorry. i’m far from it. i just want to tuck you underneath my bed again. then, when you’re finally ready, i’ll pull you out like forbidden midnight snacks. carefully dabbing cream over each red spot the ants gave you, i’ll whisper, “it isn’t your fault.” i’ll wipe your tears away with my sterilized thumb. i will be the good in your life. you need it, i know you do. that’s why you’re using me.

“you’re in california. you can’t stop me from leaving,” i blubber through my chipped tooth, chin tilted up, barely grazing your knee. your denim’s not my style. i like it rough. you cup my cheeks and whisper pleas. your vows. what you believe are your final words. i know you whisper them for a reason. such shame in such a skinny body. where do you keep it all? i lean into one hand and snap my neck back into my role. “i’ll stay. for you.” you smile big, your fangs bright. i’ve dulled them down with a nail file. i do it after the tear-wiping. when you can’t feel it.

you like your boots shined everyday. you ask me to polish them before you head out to the evil women who treat you like the scum. you say the world isn’t fair. you say that it’s built against you. the women you love insult you, beat you, and throw you out like a stray. you’re lucky i like to feed strays, but once again, i am not loud with my charity. i am simply one initial away from all of your exes. i am the good woman at the end of the tunnel. the one you can’t fuck. so, you fault me when i tell you i don’t think we can be friends anymore. say it is the least i could do.

i know my place, honey. it’s familiar. it’s scratched at. it’s seasoned in bodily fluids. i’ve got it memorized like the back of your hand. i’d like to make you a frame out of it. you could put that forensic photograph of me in it. keep it for my sake. but you don’t want me to leave. you fight for me. you listen to me. you help me up on my feet and tell me you didn’t like the view from up there. that i’m so beautiful when i’m this close. your lips form different letters:

“close enough.”

you’re a man, after all, and there’s no humanity in you until i drag it out like heavy rope clogging your throat. until i toy with the last bits of your mommy issues so bad you’re crying for her. until i torture your virility out of existence. until you’ve pushed too far and it’s my turn to stomp. i am your favorite cigarette, standing tall, in the middle of winter. it is a phallic kind of thing. you will crawl back to me like i am the last one on earth. that is fine with me. i like you best when you’re on the floor. i wonder where you got that from.

breaking news, they call it, but it is twenty funerals to plan, and only so many days left to grieve before it’s you next. don’t worry. that fate is easier. heaven is a much better place than the middle east.

she was eight. her birthday on the seventh. the first birthday wish she made that wasn’t for her sister’s health. she whispered “i want the war to end,” and it did, but only for about seven hours. she tried, i tell her. you were braver than all of us. wasting a birthday wish on a reality we cannot reach, not even with spaceships and unicorns. a reality we watch flood the sky in orange hues, dawning. plague our ears with sounds of squealing speakers, warning. exhaust our fingers of counting minute after minute, waiting.

“did it hit?”

“not yet.”

“is it over?”

“patience.”

“have they intercepted it?”

“they did, but the shrapnel killed an eleven year-old in the comfort of her house.”

just a few weeks ago i was visiting my grandmother in the hospital. her body creaked and croaked on the bed as she shivered out her infection. “i want more water,” she begged, and all i can wonder is if life has a pulse or if we are the last to hold it. if cigarettes are sustenance or merely a promised consequence.

“she’ll choke if we let her drink,” my dad explained. “she’ll get her fair amount every thirty minutes, through her nose.”

she was living through her own hell, and all i could do was sit there and watch and wish that if it weren’t for the superego, i’d give her a sip when my dad wasn’t looking. now i am in my own hell, but instead of no water, i am not permitted to leave the house. my phone is full of “stay safe” texts, and i am now the woman looking from the hospital bed. begging, whining, croaking. these words couldn’t shield me from shrapnels if i printed them out in big and pasted them all over my walls. they couldn’t grab the fragments of violence shooting over my head. i don’t even bother ducking down anymore. i should’ve thanked my own peace when i had the chance. i should’ve thanked it hard with a rough handshake. or a kiss on the forehead. or whatever form of affection god needed me to give it. i would’ve tied it’s shoelaces. i want more water, too.

“the little girl was asleep,” they attempt to comfort me.

i stay away from windows. i stay away from glass and second floors. i stay away from outside and yet somehow also inside. i have not left these walls that could crumble at any moment, have not moved out from under this ceiling that could cave in in seconds. i wonder if i’ll be agoraphobic in a month. i wonder if this will last till next month. i bite the skin off my lip and pick at my nails. i break apart everything i have control over, while everything i don’t have control over, breaks apart before me. i would like to urge everyone to thank their peace, because it can be swept from underneath you like your floorboards.

i wonder when the last time i bless the day before i sleep will be. it is oncoming, this terror train chugging over my tracks that weren’t built until a few days ago. fast fashioned tracks. they call it development. and they call it my suicide, my coordinates. i call it and tell it i hope it’s family is safe and to stock up on water because the strait of hormuz will close and so will the graveyards. i am ready to see the mass of dead bodies stacked up into a pile unnamed and unidentified. i am ready to be tossed onto that mass. i am ready to die.

i listen to the lord’s word before bed, i count it on my fingers each word as i shift side to side. i stop because i sleep beside my mother now. “i’ve lived through this before. we’re fine.” but why did you have to experience a first? the brunt of the land of the free’s mistakes. why does their freedom come at the expense of mine? why does each word your jaundiced president speaks equal to a drone strike on our land? on our frontlines? on our innocence? on our birthday wishes?

i don’t want to die in my sleep. that feels like rape.

i said:

i don’t want to die in my sleep because it feels like rape.

i have a hunger; i starve it. a malnourished plant begs for sun, but even if you give it a glimpse, it will still crave. dead tissue does not regenerate. dead tissue does not regenerate. dead tissue does not regenerate. [your stretch marks are forever.] you cannot force something into loving something it did not know existed. instinct does not exist in isolation. the plant will turn to ash in the sun, and ash is best only on wednesday. when i can indulge. because thursday i am busy and tuesday i am useless but on wednesday i am a new sect of my own religion.

i ask a machine to scale my strengths and differences. the number starts with six. i divide it, distribute it, find the value of x, y, and z, and then realize i am not good at math. but i concluded that this makes me a three. my favorite number is seven. i must’ve computed wrong. i eat a gluttonous slice of cake. the frosting makes me gag. the sugar granules stick to the roof of my mouth and i do not want to be a victim. you are too old to have an eating disorder, i tell myself. god sharpened me into a weapon and i stab into myself over and over with each complaint and contradiction i create. i cut another slice of cake.

i’ve got a headache and i need someone else’s thumbs to rub it away. because no hands ever reach for me, i stretch the wrinkles on my forehead out like ironing creased clothes. i smell like laundry, they say. and i loathe it. i loathe that even in scent i am homely. if only i smelled like femininity. without a second thought, i buy a perfume with the small amount of monthly allowance i permit myself to spend. i splurge. i call safety-net dad. after five sentences, safety-net sends me the money. i cry in the bathroom for two hours. i am guilty but at the very least i smell good. i hope every passerby is grateful for my sacrifice. maybe then when i sit with dad for lunch on friday i can tell him it was worth it. that our combined sacrifice made me one more step to seven. and when i find a way to connect this materialistic need to my academic success, i will be rid of this guilt.

when i speak of god intention, i speak of god’s permeable membrane. it denies and permits, and i am yet to be smuggled through. within that membrane there is the best spot of heaven. it is the size of the thumb-print birth mark on my left hip. in it there is beauty. real beauty. intellect. passion. curiosity. discipline. they are weighed on the scales of justice. i was given what had fallen off such opulent plates. i caught them in my mouth. the coins. the tears. the colostrum-colored dust of luck.

at least i have perfect teeth. i suppose lady justice peeks out of her blindfold every so often.

and i want to climb a mountain.

i have always been in a constant journey to be scholarly, to memorize names and scriptures. to quote. to reference. to debate. for once i would like to climb a mountain. i have never walked till my feet got sore. i have not walked much, i realize. i only now believe it is much better to walk than sit idle for the sake of exercising the mind. perhaps because my mind is yet to be exorcised of it’s constant disillusionment.

what is experience if not bodily? i could speak to you of all the books i’ve read. of all the art i’ve seen. of all the movies i’ve watched. but if you were to ask me what flavor the wind is at high altitudes i would not be able to tell you if it were sweet, salty, or damp. i would not be able to explain to you that snow feels like holding a melting hand. if sore feet feel like triumph or worship.1 to climb god’s creation. to mount it. to plant feet into barely marked soil and claim it as achievement. as a beast capsized. as a vessel slain.

make a hole and say you’ve dug it. build a hill and say you’ve climbed it. nothing compares to rain-carved mountains. to snow tumbling off of it like sweat wiped off a temple. to feet tripping over it like stuttered words. to bouncing backpacks like a heart thudding against lungs thudding against ribs. once this determination becomes physical in footsteps treaded up a high peak, i will be able to acknowledge the futility of my attempts at achieving perfection in my display.

i could walk around this idea, or i could walk over it. the biggest mountain to climb over is the one of my incessant ungratefulness and lack of action. i am a coward. i am a woman of lettered leisure.2

anti-desert planes. dead burial grounds beside homes full of laughter and luxury bags. apartment complexes, two blocks away, some with penthouse parties, some with mold. this nation contradicts itself in every ten-minute walk.

raisin fingers. gum-torn teeth. stumbling as you step out of the shower you are the pinnacle of innocence. epitome of softness as your skin’s hairs are thinner than your eyelashes. “you look like your father sometimes,” i tell you in my mind. except i know you do not like being compared to absence. just ball-pits and foam jigsaw pieces on playroom floors. you’ve got your name on your kindergarten’s carpet. you’ve got your name in my heart, too. i brush your teeth before bed. it’s funny how you argue you are old enough to do it yourself, but i explain that i like to do it anyway. i like to memorize each little alabaster lump. you’ve got three missing in the front. seventeen in total. i make sure you’ve got no cavities after you spit out the foam. you are the only thing that keeps me alive. i cannot afford for you to rot and i bear witness.

i tuck you into blankets as old as i am. i handed them down to you. your father couldn’t afford new ones, and i couldn’t afford to ask him to work harder. they’ve got cartoons from the 90s. cartoons you’ll never see on DVD. just cassettes that don’t have the proper player. on weekends, i tell my sister to find us one so we can watch old home videos, but she tells me she does not wanted to be reminded of our own absence. the one my mother took up in the form of night shifts and microwave lunches.

we live in a studio apartment. it is a simple life. simple life with sake bottles stacking up on the side of our dining table. absence built the shelf to line up all the empty bottles, to commemorate every instance we could not stand reality. last time absence was home he knocked one on the ground because he placed it on the wrong side. angel cried before it shattered. she is the kind of saint that does not despise loud noises, only recklessness that causes it. i know this because she hates absence’s loud laugh but not mine.

“baby tears are the closest to the fountain of youth you can get to, you know,” he spoke like a detached philosopher, taking a gulp from a new sake bottle. truly, he was no philosopher at all, merely an observer with radical words and alcohol breath.

“i never said i wanted to get younger,” i replied dryly, carrying angel to bed and placing her in her cot. a cot absence was able to afford. i tucked her in under princess sally-patterned softness before walking back into the living room to find absence cleaning up the glass with his bare hands.

“you should use a broom.”

“it isn’t that bad,” he replied, palms facing upwards, bleeding downwards. gravity always brings us down, like he does.

i sat back at the table and finished my dinner as he crouched on the floor, pathetically picking up the tiniest shards, the ones that look like they’ve returned to sand. there was good blood pooling beneath his good work shoes. everything he does is wasteful.

“thank you for cleaning up,” i tried to sound grateful, but the disdain peeked out in my emphasis of consonant sounds. he was quiet as he continued to kill himself slowly. i was quiet as i stared at the wall across from me, ignoring the nagging clinking sounds of shards dropping back on the floor.

there was a day that i had yelled at him. he simply stared at me the entire time, i saw him counting the seconds down in his head. he tried to look through me, see if my skin revealed anything. or the goosebumps on it.

i had been acknowledged just as much as the wall before me stared back at. the wall with a picture of absence, angel, and i. and no love.

after he threw away the broken glass, i washed his palms clean and wrapped them well. i kissed and prayed over them, hoping my devotion to god would make me more devoted to him. he kissed my forehead in pity.

while he was in the corner of this studio apartment, sleeping in our bed, i was cleaning up the blood on the floor, crying. he pretended not to hear me, but these walls are closer to each other than we notice. the reminder being our next-door neighbor’s drunken yelling at his girlfriend. at the very least, we are better off than them. we do not display our drunken anger in the form of verbal abuse, rather in the form of wooden rows, banged into the wall by nail, holding carcasses of moments of silent inebriation.

i placed the dishes in the sink to wash in the morning and slid into bed beside him. the sheets are always cold and he never offers warmth. absence takes up most of our bed.

my nightly routine had consisted of me counting his eyelashes as he sleeps. you’d think he’d weaken in this vulnerable state, but in his brow crinkle i can see how much he hates it here. in his brow crinkle i bury my dreams. he’s got sixty-six eyelashes on both of his bottom eyelids. they’re the same color as angels, i envy him for it. i counted them while he was awake. i am not stupid, so i know when i count them as he sleeps, i only see them in tangled bunches with no seperation to indicate abundance.

our daughter counts sheep and i count the hairs he has never cried through over me. only over our situation.

our simple life.

absence left when the sake shelf was full. when he threw his first sake bottle in the trash since angel started going to school. there were times we extended the shelf, times we added new ones on opposite and adjacent walls. i suppose it symbolized our relentlessness to give up our unhappy position. we excused it with the unspoken idea that it was sacrifice for angel, but truly, it was an excuse for our alcoholic tendencies to live on.

nowadays, i have a lot of room on my bed, the walls are finally a good length apart. so, angel sleeps next to me now. her cot is only tucked into the opposite wall, but i want her close. she knows why, even as she whines that she is much too old to be sleeping with me. that the kids in her class don’t do it. she knows i cannot sleep without heaviness lingering somewhere, reminding me of responsibility. she knows that if she is not clenching the hem of my shirt while i am deadened, i will never wake up. because in this simple life, i count the days till balance is restored. till i confess i have become my mother and finally ask my sister for help. instead, i conclude with myself that i am no better than this generational curse i live in. in fact, it is the most important responsibility, and it would be sacrilegious to stray from my roots. it would be insult to my origin. it would be looking at my mother and saying, “you could’ve raised us better,” and i haven’t done that since i was nineteen and pregnant with angel.

on sundays, i go to church with angel. the wooden building has a working heater in the winter and a working AC in the summer. i pray because my devotion to god brings me farther from this epiphany, reminds me that i am his strongest soldier for walking the path less chosen. the pastor tells me i am doing everything right and that he is praying for me. i am grateful somebody cares that i am alive. he told me that because absence refused to go to church with me, god taking him out of my life was a blessing. he wrote it down on a note and blessed it for me because i asked him to. he hesitated, explaining that i shouldn’t worship the note, but rather let it remind me to worship. he wouldn’t have explained this to other church-goers. he knows me, though, knows how i spiral and start doing things wrong.

i taped it up on the wall next to a picture of angel and i, just to ensure i don’t worship it. it gives me solace, the scribbled down lines. it is the eyebrow-crinkle i bury myself in peace in.

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