ODE TO NAANI AMMIone two beads strumming down her pink thumbs & astaghfaar astaghfaar she sings for her fears are all too real. My naani, her anthem of bliss is for me. Her moonlight of the times when she lit up the cowfat lamp. Her beeping radio sound before blackout Our veranda flooded in eulogies whispered by naani. she gifts me talismans she kisses for the umpteenth time before bed. her poems are mercy. She calls me mercy. calls me soothe. butter ghee. calls me the warm oil she floods my hairline with. Her touch - all feeling Now When the gappaywala wails, wait wait, let silence brood the air & this is harbinger, she is that autumn tree I'm preserving. Don't you see She is me. She/me thumbing tasbeehs I collect pearl lotuses and embroider her sapphire necklaces. her tinted hairline down the equator ON BEING FAT & DYINGEmbrace me in dying light no whispers, no moving jaw. sealed mouth you carry me – in your quake singed with all the powers of manhood/perfection. The first time he called me fat & sick & useless like the Chinese leftovers, Trump and armpit hair. He meant it. He meant it when he staked chemo faggot through my pelt. I blame DNA like an unwanted reality, like that surgery scar kissing my belly. My war prize. 46 chromosomes and my dying light 46 chromosomes & nowhere left to go. He meant it when he pushed me down the concrete sidewalk, smell burnt tyre & sugar spit like it’s heavenly. like chomping down nails is an act of god. He asked me to shake the dust & I prided forever. in sap, skin – all the flesh & this saturated oil in everything in me. No blood, no room to call home adipose a native city. Plump, yet mellow Whisper in my skin & love me no more
Lately, I can wade into the ocean without imagining drowning I don’t consider the feeling of opening my skin with every sharp item I encounter And I can hold a pen without contemplating ramming it deep into my skull So now I’m not entirely sure what to do with them How do I write if I’m not doing it to keep the pen on paper and out of my forehead? I know my rage is still there, I never have to fear losing it But it’s resting for once and I’m afraid if I try to pluck a poem from the blue-hot embers I’ll wake up every flame
i watched you die last night and left you in the snow packed ice against your ribcage keep him like this forever, i tell the coyotes that gather at your boots he loved basketball and his father, i think or just basketball. was i meant to survive this your diary on my bedside table. that long finger tracing the veins of my cheek. i was always blushing. now i wash my mouth out with soap. erase the grit. i meet my dad for coffee and tell him that you left because we weren’t in love anymore and it can be true. and i put more creamer into my coffee. and i try to feel something again. i retrace my steps down chase avenue. past UDF. deleted voicemails. the newsreels. the national crisis. your blue eyes. your dirtiness. oh my god. you kept me so hot it was like you were alive. on the street we used to live on, i can become anyone: your mother, a carcass, streetcleaner, your boss the woman that lives in the alley telling me people are so goddamn mean, a little boy, banging a stick on lampposts down the street, yelling each time oh my god, another one? he’s laughing. it’s a game, his mother asks him to keep up-- oh my god, another one? oh my god, another one? lover, are you eating lover, meet me where we vanish into white i can’t find your body anymore was i meant to survive you oh my god, another one? oh my god, another one? oh my god, another one? oh my god
RITUAL: TURTLEarms and legs tuck to make a cradle: a turtle dream. i snuggle into an alcove of thoughts and sheets silence replaced by the echo of whitecaps. warm darkness beneath the blanket lit up by bakugou’s explosions, izuku’s countering kick, the sensation of flying. i pretend to be epic daydreams of dodging attacks, saving pedestrians, telling a joke that’ll make someone smile. i want to smile. i want to grow flowers and firecrackers inside bone cocoon, shell full of ocean sounds, anime cries, someone telling me that i am good enough. there’s a yolky sunlight dripping into my eyes. i collect what i can and dive until only a lump can be seen above the waves. i sustain myself on iced tea, poetry, and boku no academia. i stay caught up, still indecisive about my own on my future. i am wondering when i will stop referring to this shell as external. i’d like to be a hero to someone. no poster or news articles. i’d like to make someone smile because sometimes i do not remember how to and maybe by enfolding another person inside the shell-- i am nudging my head out from beneath the sheets. forgive me when i forget to reply to text messages or am too tired to call you. i am not ignoring you. sometimes, i cannot handle the noise of the outside world, retreating into my own music. there are times when i desire to be condensed, full of energy, a blind star overlooked by telescopes and astrologists. content to stay a secret for a little longer. i wake up, sit in the morning like a turtle opening itself to the outside. loneliness is not a bad thing. being soft is not a bad thing. this body maybe more soft than hard, but i have survived this long without being eaten, without losing myself to scorching sun or birds of prey. i bend the blankets around my body into a functioning carapace and plastron. it solidifies, hardens. i am safe. i am solid, strong. i have not been eaten. nothing will eat me. my shell is the resonator of an instrument. someone is singing, airy and tangible like the universe. it might be God or the wind or both. i am here listening and filling myself up. the airwaves are full of low-fi and sea sounds. you might think that i am afraid of something. sometimes i am. there are times when i do not recognize my friends. my eyes fissure over, everything far away, dizzy. sometimes they wave and i miss it by accident. i have been trying to wake up. sometimes i catch them. it confuses them, when they get a few feet away and i suddenly say hi. i see their confused expressions, the why-didn’t-you-see-me in their eyes, and i do not know how to tell them that I am a sea child far from home, making do with two legs, classwork, winter months. that sometimes i am sleepwalking, sleepwaking, that sometimes i am only a sometime presence. i return to my sea cave and unpack my tension from the day. i love the mornings. when i wake up, there is a brief moment when i am warm, still drowsy and genuinely love myself. i wish i could stop saying sometimes. RITUAL: BODYsalt. sugar. light abs make a gradual disappearance, jelly a soft replacement. love handles firm yet malleable in my hands. i grip the smooth flesh, pull. the flesh is warm and spiderwebbed with stretchmarks. trace my growth around the curve, down between thigh and spiral outwards to return to the handles, rub them over. do not wonder whether or not someone else will one day grip these handles, want me against them, want me to stay. salt bones, sugar muscles. flab that hangs, flaps like heavy wings. my arms hide small diamonded muscles beneath their plumage. these lungs can carry a song through a storm. these legs can take me anywhere, even if they’re burning. this larynx can capture and release stories. i hold my body and my body holds me and we, as one, continue learning how to navigate one another. i name every place i touch with a memory. weight is always a scary thing for some reason. that slump over the border of my light blue jeans is easily seen through certain shirts. can’t tummy tuck. i used to wear my body like another thing to deal with. thighs felt too big. never had a flat stomach. couldn’t aim the ball into the basket. couldn’t run fast enough to win the game. i watched anime and imagined being able to command my body, be in tune with its movements. flying kicks, backflips, hand-to-hand combat, limitless pain tolerance. sometimes i still wonder if i can fly or if i am too heavy. i am tired of being told that this body is a project that i must continuously work on. i can eat pizza and greens too. vegetable stir fry or chicken salad then wash it down with water or a stewart’s orange cream soda. i like to wear baggy shirts not because my rolls will roll but because i don’t like things that feel like an extra layer of skin and maybe a baggy shirt is like wearing a hug, which i don’t get enough of. i don’t want a man anywhere inside my perception of myself. i am not chocolate or caramel or any other flavor don’t look at me as if i am something to order off of a menu something exotic or greasy. i taste like clay, wobble like jelly, sway to a rhythm of church, rain, lo-fi, loneliness. i cannot forget the trauma inside the black body. i am a crossroads of two kinds of suffering which creates a unique kind of suffering. i see this in the way my sisters and i are told to wear ourselves as if always ready to be taken, to defend, or to run. i am in the constant process of separation from historic and current subjugation. i have experienced joy. i have jumped from swings and for a free-falling second, caught summer in my hands. i have danced at a party with several friends and held the dancefloor like my personal bedroom jam session. i have been held close, been told that i am soft, that i am beautiful not despite of these curves, this skin, love handles and soft tummy, but because of them. i have touched myself in the shower, not for need of release, but because i like that i am solid and present, and soft. my hips are blessed because my momma’s hips are blessed. the most stable and tree-like hips. every time she says something about her weight i hug her and say she’s the most beautiful woman ever. she is one of the only reasons i know how to call myself beautiful. we are the most beautiful houses. the most beautiful oceans. the most beautiful minerals and gradual crystallization. we are glass and shatter, rock and erosion, tree and roots, spirit and levitation. i touch every bodypart with a memory, with magic, saltwater. i will return again and again until the chant is a prayer renewed and answered in every new layer of cells.
If we match, message me with what song you would Gone Girl yourself to. Do you like Santigold? Lorde’s new album? Have you ever felt hunted? Or crazy? Have you ever been called crazy? Turn another book/movie adaptation about a woman framing her husband for her own murder into a verb while you’re at it. Does it comfort you? Do you feel something when you picture yourself getting away with running away? I don’t want to tell you about what I’ve gone through. I don’t want to tell you about how I came to be both the loudest and quietest survival tactic. What about Beyoncé? Imagine Gone Girl-ing yourself to a Beyoncé song. Let me know how often you drop the word bitch like a spoon, or a piece of paper. Let me know how often you pick bitch back up off the floor because you are able to. How much do you think a single word is capable of? What do you think your own two hands are capable of? Sorry, I know these aren’t the type of questions you ask when you’re trying to get a date. Let me start over: did you grow up here? What’s your favorite song? Have you ever called yourself a feminist and meant it? Have you ever told a woman in your life that you loved them and meant it?
I don’t know you anymore, and I will never know your last name. I don’t know where you are, you don’t work at Paint It! anymore. So I am going to write this, and print it out a few times. Maybe staple some together and put them on park benches and under windshield wipers so at least other people can know how you factored into my life. They will read it, but it’s not for them. You won’t read it, but it’s for you. Sometimes that summer when you and I knew one another, I sat in my room for hours and refused to think. Sometimes I felt pathetic sadness incapacitate me. Once it was triggered by an offer on a Popsicle box that said you could get a “free mp3 download” if you went online and entered a code. This offer was presented in a neon green starburst. Another time was when my mom got my brother Angry Birds pencil toppers for his birthday and he screamed. Screaming happened every time my brother experienced a gift-giving holiday. “I don’t like Angry Birds!” was what he yelled this time. “I thought everyone liked Angry Birds,” said my mom. “It’s only for iPhones. I might play it if you gave me an iPhone.” My mom tried to hide her sadness and frustration. The rubber pencil toppers are in the one drawer in my kitchen that nobody opens. I might throw them away sometime. I’d like to think you’d understand if I ever told you these kinds of things. Mitsuko had been my best friend since 9th grade. You might have seen her paint mugs with me at Paint It! a few times. She wore cat eye makeup and bought the shortest tank tops with the thinnest fabric she could find. She was intensely jealous of her twin Haruko and her boyfriend Mikey, since the two were super in love. Haruko was the one who looked like Mitsuko but wore more neon rave gear. Mikey was the tall one with a flowing head of red hair and a lot of moles. The two were always graphically making out in public. Once he shot an off-duty police officer with a BB gun in a park, then sped off on a bicycle. Whether the bike was stolen or not, the details are lost to time. He got convicted of a felony and spent a few months in juvie where phone calls were $15 a minute. Haruko spent the money and waited patiently, then reunited with Mikey despite the restraining order that the mom filed. Now he’s somehow on this reality show about people in 12-step programs. I watched it once. They bleep out half the things anyone says while royalty free g-funk backing tracks play in the background. Mitsuko, Haruko, and Mikey always came out of a store carrying something they had stolen. Mitsuko would fish out a candy bar from her pocket as we walked down Cross Avenue, nibbling the chocolate inside. I tried to let it go. I even tried to support them to cool down my built-in hatred of shoplifting. I would say “It’s a dog eat dog world” or some other halfhearted cliché. Fun fact: I am one of the only people in the world who can tell Mitsuko and Haruko apart. They’re fraternal twins, but that doesn’t seem to matter to the rest of the world. I was working at Pier 1 Imports around that time, often mopping the floor after closing. Mitsuko never visited me there, despite my reminders. One song that played on the system had a bumpin’ swing beat and the synths sounded purple. It stopped in the middle so I could take a deep breath and hear nothing but the wet mop dragging across the floor. Googling the lyrics and Shazam proved useless in finding this song. Theory: it was made by a guy who wanted to get his song out in the world and he knew someone who worked for Pier 1. And that’s the only place it was ever played. “A part of me I never knew/until the day that I met you.” Sue me. Someone sue me so I can find out what song that is. Deborah, another sales associate, said that I couldn’t put my own CDs into the Pier 1 sound system. She had tried one morning before opening with a Linda Ronstadt. Didn’t play. One quarter when a new Pier 1 CD arrived, she tried to put last quarter’s disc in her car player. It didn’t work. Pier 1 Imports has its own exclusive CD-stereo family, just like North Korea has its own internet. “Pier 1!” you said when I told you I worked there. “My mom always used to take me there. They had these beautiful handmade wooden toys.” You loved toys. You said all your old photography projects featured toys. And that sometimes you sold the toys for money, biking to weird places in San Diego with a garbage bag full of dinosaur action figures. The person who brought me to Paint It! in the first place was someone named Julian. I prayed you wouldn’t remember him. You told me you were 29, and only getting older. Haruko’s favorite place to shoplift was the H&M jewelry section. The easiest place to steal from, she said, was Abercrombie and Fitch. She could run out of the store and the buzzer would sound, but the dance music would be so loud that the buzzer couldn’t drown it. I imagined a book called “A Smart Girl’s Guide to Shoplifting,” designed with all the pink-bordered fervor of an American Girl book. It would ride on the simple excuse that “this economy doesn’t always let you get what you want these days. Take the frugal route! You go gal!” I figured it could be sold in Urban Outfitters. I had it bad for someone named Kourosh ever since my senior year of high school. He never talked but always hung around my group in ROP Animation, saying something wildly funny in his monotone every 30-70 minutes. I became a little fascinated when I found his Tumblr dedicated to stupid bumper stickers. I grabbed his iPod once and he had bands I had never heard of that he said were a genre of music called “C86.” I forget what ROP stands for. For about six months, the only things I consistently looked forward to were sleeping and seeing Kourosh every day. I went to two weddings in other states, and I yelled his name off several different balconies. A few days after graduating, I was in the shower when I realized I could just message him on Facebook and try to be friends. There was nothing stopping me. NOTHING. So I messaged him and he was receptive. So we typed long messages for a year and never hung out. We were those kinds of friends. After Julian and I broke up, I asked him to hang out for real since I was in a post-breakup life change phase. I took photos of him because that’s the ultimate social lubricant. And when I sent them his way, the colorful shots where he laid on a bed of pine needles with a red zip-up jacket, he thanked me. He loved them and he thanked me warmly. And he asked me to spend time with him. So I was working the typical social air hockey game: I asked him. Then he asked me. Then I was planning to ask him again. And then he surprised me, threw off my whole course of action. He wanted to kick it, and with Mitsuko too. (He knew Mitsuko not because of me, but because Mikey had sold cocaine to him. You know, the usual.) Maybe the three of us could be special friends, I thought. Maybe this was “the good summer.” We went to Mira Mesa because they wanted to loiter. Mira Mesa is this inland neighborhood where San Diego stops pretending to be California Dreamin’. We hung out at this big shopping center with everything you could ever want and the mountains. Barnes and Noble, IMAX, Petco, Target. A place where you could hide in the big safe wonders of commercialism. We ate at Panda Express. Or was it Pick Up Stix? Both are amazing. Salty, gooey orange chicken and noodles. That word still makes me fall over. Noodles. Ditto with “orange sauce.” Then we traversed the oceanic parking lot to Barnes and Noble, the most comforting place I can think of. I know everyone likes tiny “charming” used bookstores, but there’s nothing like a two story Barnes and Noble, escalators and all. Mitsuko: The Nook is just everywhere here. Me: They NEED you to have a Nook. Mitsuko: What if a robot arm like, secretly snuck a Nook into your shopping pile before you were about to check out? Me: Shopping carts would have a secret Nook hidden in them that would release itself into the pile once other books were put on top of it. Mitsuko: But how good is that, really? Look, we don’t even have any carts. We’ll never get Nooks now. Me: Yeah, how are we supposed to have Nooks? This is something the marketing team needs to consider. Kourosh: That guy from the cardboard cutout would probably “approach” you in the bathroom. Me: Then you’d say no. You’d go out to your car and fumble for your keys and you couldn’t find them. Kourosh: The guy would pop up from behind the other side of your car dangling your keys. He would be like, “Looking for these?” We stood in my bathroom and poured vodka into empty plastic water bottles. It was my first real drink and I sucked it straight to impress them. They were impressed. We went in my living room and put on Kiki’s Delivery Service which was just a prop so we could drink more. We all huddled together on my couch in front of the big plasma TV and in our three-way body tangle, Kourosh’s head found his way to mine and his lips sought mine. I pushed him off, whispering we could kiss when we were alone. But I felt as if I were in an ethereal heaven. It was finally happening. I wasn’t thinking about the future in that moment. There was no future. Just a dream where I would feel the love of Kourosh, it would fulfill me in every corner of my being, and then I would die. Mitsuko disappeared down the hall to the bathroom, Kourosh finally pounced on me in the dark and we kissed, his mouth tasted like vodka. We heard her coming back, Kourosh and I peeled ourselves apart, and we all watched Kiki as if nothing had happened. My dream was coming true, I could deal with pretending everything was normal for a little bit. I went upstairs to get my laptop so we could all look at /r/cringepics (I don’t read that anymore, I promise). I came down to find his mouth on hers. Plain as day, like a big joke. It made too much sense for me to be angry. I picked up the remote and shut off the TV. “Get out,” I said. “GET OUT.” I sat on the guest bed in the dark and wrote an email draft with the subject line “I’m drunk.” I blamed myself for feeling bad, it was my fault for expecting him to kiss only me. What a dumb expectation, huh? I sent the email to nobody. The next morning I was hung over. My first hangover. I always thought they would make my head hurt, but this one just made me feel feverish. I threw up in the shower. It’s a known rule of society, maybe the universe: bookstores are supposed to be safe. Books are established symbols of comfort and solitude, and when thousands of them are around you, there’s no way you’re not in a sacred place. Kourosh could have kissed Mitsuko any other day. He could have even just waited until after midnight. You don’t two-time someone just after being in a bookstore. YOU JUST DON’T. For a while I wanted to steal Kourosh back, or at least get a few more kisses. This was until Mitsuko and I sat in the iron chairs in her small, weedy backyard. Nearby was an unused grill covered by a cobwebby blue tarp. I realized that she wanted him too, and I didn’t want to put up a fight. So I suggested we both avoid him, that kisses would only cause drama. Mitsuko’s lips froze up, and then she dated him anyway. She whined about his clinginess and how he consistently took an hour to jizz. I still ached for these things. I thought I would love and care for Kourosh just the way he was. But as the summer dragged on, I slowly realized that I didn’t love the way he was. Anyone I loved who could love Mitsuko was not who I thought they were. I couldn’t help but returning to a couch. A couch in a corner of the Taos Room, floors black and linoleum with scuff marks everywhere. Julian and I stumbled around and then I noticed its holy grail as other disenchanted people with nonconformist hairstyles rolled off. The couch was three cushions across and suede and purple, the color and texture matted out by grease and spotted by dark stains that could have been gum, cigarette burns, spilled drinks. But the purpleness of the couch was unfettered in the end, shining through all the wear. Purple has a way of staying purple in its essence. The couch was floppy from thousands of people sprawling their weight on it. We sat down and pet each other’s chests and he guided me down until we were lying. I felt the excitement of a totally new body that tremored in different ways and emitted different temperatures than all the other ones I had touched. We kissed and these new feelings made me shake. They mixed like bleeding colors, potent as the music blared through the fuzzy big speakers, lacking all the precision of headphones. Someone threw a rolled up ball of paper at us, maybe a McDonald’s wrapper. Felt judged but focused on his face to get them away. Same when someone said “get a room.” Soon the onlookers meant nothing to me, the affection and the criticism surrounding it were just two facets of this mecca of counterculture that concerts welcome. I kissed his face in this loud darkness, and the liquor in my blood that he bought me (I wore my fingerless gloves so nobody saw my Xs) gave me a warm and stupid feeling. He and I used to play games where we pretended to be a cute old couple. He lost his marbles one day and I ran down the stairs of his apartment complex crying, leaving all our playtimes choking to death in the sunlight. A carefully built fantasy world vaporized in less than the time it would take you to say “Fuck my stupid fucking life.” What was that year-long relationship for anyway? I wanted to give it a shot. I thought it would be a logical growth, from tonguing around to a deep adult connection. It ended up being for nothing. I might have learned some lessons about what kind of people to avoid, but afterward I spent all my free time feeling shitty. Sometimes I made myself leave my house so I could feel like I’d done something. Anything. Sometimes I went and did a tile at Paint It! just to chat you up, and sometimes I ended up people watching for hours, in the bars I wandered with my fake ID. I wanted to run up to those masculine beer-stenched idiots with pool cues and scream, “Don’t you know that all your woman-searching is all for making embryos? That you are all FROM embryos, and soon you will be worm food?” Here is a list of other things I did that summer: - Joined MeetUp under a fake name, then never did anything on it. - Spent hours choosing specials to record on the DVR. Topics like gazelles, the history of bread, Alcatraz. Didn’t get more than ten minutes into any of them. My hobbies include planning to watch TV, I should put on my OKCupid profile. - Tried to get the contact info of a barista at a Peet’s at Heritage Mall. I was stalking him because once he wrote some names of classical musicians for me on a napkin. Now that Julian was out of the picture, I rushed back, buying a lot of iced tea and taking notes on what days of the week he worked. Paulo. He gave me his name on a coffee cup and told me to add him on Facebook. I tried to show him to Mitsuko on her laptop and he didn’t come up. I became fearful that he had dead-ended me, and she gave me a worried look, agreeing with her eyes. After watching Waking Life with her for the five thousandth time while secretly thinking of Paulo, I ripped off the metaphorical band-aid and walked home. My stomach was in knots the whole way. I helped a guy climb over the Jehovah’s Witness church parking lot fence and he told me about how he loved God. I found an olive green beanie on the ground that I later washed and wore repeatedly. At home, as the sun set, I searched so hard and desperately online that I began to feel like an idiot. No dice. So I formulated detailed plans to go to the cafe at irregular intervals. I started to learn the appearances and work times of other people who worked in the café and I gave them nicknames. Gondola. Hammer. Uranium. They weren’t supposed to make sense. One day after giving up, I went to the coffee shop after buying a new septum ring at Claire’s (I know that store is gross, but I didn’t want to give Hot Topic my money). I really, genuinely needed an iced tea that evening. Paulo was there, alone, with food machines quietly whirring behind him. I told him I couldn’t find him on Facebook and he gave me his email. I sent him a friendly hello, knowing nothing would come of it. So I deleted the email from my sent box, and then from my email trash. Can you guess what happened next? You’re right. Nothing. If he had just given me a clearer answer the first time, I wouldn’t have had to go back in the first place. Thanks a lot, Paulo. - Found a hike on Yelp that was 35 miles away. I hiked it and talked to some rock climbers. It was okay. I drove back. - Followed Mitsuko and Kourosh on their regular trips to Letourneau Street. Mitsuko had no working air conditioner in her car because Mikey crashed it once. I could never see the stars on that street, Letourneau. I could see the street lamps but I kept my gaze on the neon and the smoke. There were so many restaurants—three sushi bars, Indian, Thai, Peruvian. Multiple places that definitely had Taco Tuesday, along with heat lamp decks and liter margaritas. One night Mitsuko, Haruko, and their boyfriends went for Chipotle despite the world of cuisine in front of them and I obliged, again. Mitsuko and Haruko were passionate about Chipotle. They drew from their go-to combinations while ordering. Haruko had hers memorized, and Mitsuko had hers written down in her phone. After all the rice and beans we resumed the walk along Letourneau again. The most sacred rite of our teen and young adult years, second to burning through bowls in rooms filled with candles. Mikey went in a tattoo shop titled “Tattoo” in easily recognizable “tattoo” font. The lobby had red vinyl booths and pine floors. He looked at the sample book (which revealed the shop had a name longer than “Tattoo”), considered a Hindu symbol design, said thank you, and left. We wandered in a sex shop and how in the world could a sex shop be so dull, I wondered. There was lights-out spa with tubes in the windows filled with water, flowers floating inside like babies in a womb. There was a shuttered-up florist stand on the corner, closed for the night. We went in a bong shop. “These are gorgeous bongs,” I mumbled to myself. The bearded clerk in a black collared shirt said, “No, they’re called WATER PIPES.” I took a photo of them and the clerk told me to delete it. I flipped my camera over and showed him that blackness, the absence of a screen. I remembered when my uncle first gave me that film camera and I marveled at the nothingness on the back. That mere wrist flip, that showing the clerk the back of my camera was as good as spitting in his face. - Occupied my mom’s room with my fat ass and watched Breaking Bad on her huge TV, lying on the bed and eating bags of “healthy” unbuttered popcorn. When I finished the series, I just watched it again. The episode “Fly” is so wonderfully better the second time. - Told Mitsuko and Kourosh to drive to me while they were on LSD. I was hoping they would crash. I’m an attempted murderer. I confess. They threw a party called Ushibafest. That was their last name, Ushiba. The dad was white, the mom Japanese, and the dad had taken off before his last name could be etched on the birth certificates. The mom was working the ER that night. She was a nurse. I went to the party early because I had nothing else to do. Mikey had a bar set up at the counter with a whiteboard hanging overhead, detailing all the liquor stashed under the sink. Kind of appropriate because I always thought liquor tasted like drain cleaner. The whiteboard read: Vodka! Pinnacle (cotton candy). Skyy (dragonfruit). Smirnoff (green apple). Smirnoff (raspberry). Smirnoff (marshmallow). UV (blue!!!). Rum! Malibu. Malibu (mango). King’s Bay. Caliche. Other! Jagermeister. Baileys. MD (20/20). Wine! Gabbiano. Beer… Great White. Julian (Hard cider). Other drinks ---> Coffee. Water. Lemonade. Juice. Gabbiano is one of the most annoying words/names I have ever heard. Plus I think their bottles are about $6, anyway. Smirnoff was the kind of vodka we drank when Kourosh two-timed me. Now Mikey poured it for the early evening crowd and worked them like nobody’s business. He even poured the liquor into solo cups balancing on his head. Mitsuko, Kourosh, Haruko and Mikey sat on the floor in a diamond formation and did helium balloons. They inhaled and talked like chipmunks for one breath. This was real, I learned for the first time that day. I always thought it was some kind of cartoon thing. I retreated to Mitsuko’s room to check my email, and then Mitsuko came in and sat on the starry pink bedsheets with me. “I think you should leave.” “Why?” I said. Here it was. I was doomed. I’ve always been doomed to hinge onto shit people instead of blocking their phone numbers and fizzling into the darkness. Now the consequences were descending upon me. “Kourosh took Molly. It’s his first time and he doesn’t want you here ruining it for him.” “But why would I ruin it for him? Doesn’t ecstasy just make you in love with everything?” “You’ve been giving him bad vibes.” “Since when?” “Since we got together.” She was having a hard time saying this. Her presence was thin. But it was her party, she could turn around and shove it on me any second. “What? Are you kidding me?” I was trying not to cry now. “Look, I think it’s best if you just leave.” I told her I was mortified, and that I couldn’t get out of bed. I kept saying I wouldn’t. I sounded like I was a cinderblock. Human cinderblock. She went out and came back in. “Please leave,” she said. The hatred formed a lump in my throat, and I said this through clenched teeth: “I’ve never wanted to punch someone so much in my entire life.” She left. Sometimes I wonder about what your last name is. It could be literally anything European. Long and Russian, French and hard to pronounce, maybe even some Spanish name with heritage diluted through a few generations of whitewashing. Maybe your parents are Chinese, you’re adopted, and your last name is Yang. It could even be Smith. Statistically, it’s most likely “Smith.” You are a corrupted file in my mind. A glaring and bright memory, but I don’t know your middle and last name, birthday, contact info, what city you live in. Nothing. I forget your eye color, too. These things don’t keep me up at night anymore, but here I am, wondering them on paper, maybe for the last time. After I threatened to punch Mitsuko, which I admit was a total dick thing to do that I never actually would have done, random other girls came in her room for some reason. They asked me why I was curling on the bed and tearing up. “It’s nothing,” I said. “Didn’t you tell Mitsuko you wanted to give her a black eye or something?” said one. I thought that this would be such a wonderful chance to stop time. I’ve had a fantasy since I was a kid that I could stop time for two collective hours per month. If this were real, I would have used it then. I would have run out the door past all the unmoving people. But there I stayed and I fantasized about running out the door in Ms. Ushiba’s bedroom. I knew that door wouldn’t work since it had been stuck on its track going on three years. The only way out of the house was through the front door, through the storm of people. “Come on,” said Selina. She was fat with long pink hair and bangs. She had perfectly applied cat eyeliner and matte wine lips. “They told me to get you out of here.” She didn’t mean like a guardian angel. Her hands were on her hips, after all. “Leave me alone,” I said. I wanted to disappear and avoid the pain of logistics. I imagined hiding behind the bed and sleeping until I could sneak out, everyone too drunk to notice me. I imagined crawling through ceiling vents. I glanced at the window but there was a screen on it. “What’s going on?” said someone else in the room. “She’s threatening to beat Mitsuko up,” said Selina. Someone else, who was blonde and the younger sister of a heroin addict in my high school graduating class looked at me and said, “Leave the party, you fucking bitch. It’s not your party. Stop acting like it’s your party.” “Come on,” said Selina, on the opposite side of the doorframe now. “Shut the fuck up, Paul Blart,” I said. The blonde heroin relative girl spoke to me from behind as she sat on the bed. “Don’t criticize someone for being overweight when you’re overweight yourself.” I couldn’t say anything back. She could tell I was hurt. But I still held onto a tiny stone in the back of my mind that kept me feeling justified. Mitsuko and Kourosh had been awful to me. People had wronged me enough so that I had some transcendent righteous status. I could never have been wrong. Maybe some other time, in a different situation, but definitely not now. I followed Selina out the door, and then she waited for me to pass her so she could walk behind me and act more like a guard than a tour guide. And then it came. I walked out of the hallway into the living room. I saw people in my peripheral vision, but I walked right ahead with a strange newfound confidence that rode off of discomfort. I bet they could tell I didn’t belong, that I was being kicked out with Selina pushing me forward. I tried not to look at them. Realistically, there was no opportunity to be graceful here. I went for a glimpse of Kourosh, wanting to see him in the rapture of ecstasy. Didn’t see him. Selina slammed the door behind me and I heard a lock barrel into place as fast as it could go. I was on the patio in front of the house by the dusty potted plant and it was all over. I crossed the street to my car, hoping I wouldn’t see anyone I knew. I was so out in the open, anyone could have seen my stiff walk, me trying to hold it together. I got in my car, I pulled the door shut, I was safe now. Now to drive off to where nobody could see me. I drove a few blocks away to a place close but good as secluded: the Jehovah’s Witness church parking lot nestled into a hill. I parked, and only then did I burst into tears. I scrolled through my contacts, needing someone to sink my teeth into. I considered my therapist. But I knew it would just be the same old, same old, she would numb me and tell me to keep my head up, but she wouldn’t revitalize me. My friends were gone, all of them, and right now I could feel the hatred tear through my body at full force. Nobody could ever care if I was kicked out of a party, or if some older guy preyed on me at a concert and funneled me into a long terrible relationship. At some point it occurred to me that Paint It! was there. I liked to go there and ask you nosy questions. Now I really needed it. I drove for 45 minutes, but I knew you were there. Did you know I always drove 45 minutes to chat you up? I always tried to conceal my location. But once when I said I was a short trip to Legoland, I knew I had given myself away. You know what they say about Letourneau. Five points for every street toward the ocean you park, starting from Sweetwater, that is. Parking in the beach lot is a bonus ten, plus immortality. I scored fifteen that night. I walked past the neon shops that sold tie-dyed shirts, bongs, and hemp necklaces with knitted trees on the end. A crowd of homeless people next to Addie’s Diner blew smoke on me, guys with shopping carts and grey beards. The hostel with a big mosaic peace sign on the roof towered over me, and the boarded up stores gave me a melancholy in the pit of my stomach. The air was sweet like candy with the taste of a vape pen, the ocean on my tongue. The nightlife. I walked past it all, breezing along, headed for you. Then it came—the vertical wooden sign leaning up next to the door—Paint It!. The studio was narrow and long; iron chairs and a few women with wine glasses painting big plates in the corner. I conducted that motion I knew so well, walking under the doorframe painted with little flowers and looking to my right to see if you were there. You always were, because I had memorized your schedule. You came into my vision each time I went in there, becoming a mantra, your face becoming synonymous with everything behind you. You said my name tiredly, like you were waking up from a coma, but sweetly. “Hannah.” That’s my name. Always hated it, but you made me want to own it. “I have your latest masterpiece ready,” you said. You ran to the back, behind the curtain, and came walking out with a wrapped tile. I took the time undoing the paper with a smile on my face and there it was, another little piece of art. One of billions upon billions of art attempts on this planet, forever doomed to be unrecognized. With this one I had tried to paint a forest landscape, inspired by photos I had seen of Washington. Now it was all glazed with a reflective pool of darkness. I said nothing about Ushibafest. I walked away from you and picked another tile from the unfired ceramics display. My box at home was filled with dozens of fired tiles. Mitsuko always painted mugs and little dog sculptures, and they were slowly crowding her room. I got my colors and sponges and waited patiently at the table, because I knew what was coming. I heard an iron chair pull out next to me along the concrete floor, I looked to my left, and there you were. The music on the speakers was not the usual faux indie pop radio, because for the past few months you had been plugging your laptop into the AUX instead. Only while we were there alone. Highly illegal according to the Paint It! manager. It made me feel special, like you were creating a little audio shield for us. We had been talking a lot about ‘70s German electronic. A couple of people have given me weird looks like, why are you listening to something from so far away, from so long ago? But they just don’t get it. It’s a love of hide and seek. You search and search through countless forgotten things, until you find something so potent that it depresses you that people have forgotten this. And it’s all yours. I remember that night B. Aldrian by Harald Grosskopf came on. We talked about how that song is some kind of special club for people who can feel emotions deeper than anyone else. Then I painted, and you sat in silence until the song was over. You and I talked for a couple of hours as I painted the little tile with sponge dabs and careful swirls. I was feeling abstract that night, inspired by coral reefs. Occasionally you handed me a detail of your life. You only photographed with film. You used to skate as a teenager. You frequented a cheesy Hawaii-themed restaurant called Bali Hai. But you never gave me the whole picture. I knew a lot about you, but I didn’t know you. I gave you the finished product and we said goodbye with big quivering smiles. I walked to my car as you closed up. Hot and tropical air coated my skin. Gum dotted all along the sidewalk, graffiti was my backdrop, couples walked by me with tattoos coating their arms. I could smell the ocean so well, salt going up my nose. And I felt calmness simmering in every part of my consciousness. I don’t know your last name and I probably never will, but I think you saved my life on August 29th, 2013. It’s been five years (well, four and a half) and I think about you too often. There are at least six other letters like this one. The first one’s in a journal, one I burned in a frying pan, another I threw away in a public bathroom. I think there are some others in desks and drawers, maybe sock drawers of people that I’ve roomed with. I know you didn’t really save my life. I probably could have gone home and screamed into my pillow instead of going to Paint It!, and I’d be just as alive as I am today. But I adored you. I adored you so much that I wanted to assign sainthood to you. And for what it’s worth, you must have changed something, anything. You might have prevented me from smashing a bottle against a stranger’s car window or maybe actually giving someone a black eye. And that’s enough that you’re the only person who gets my parting thought. I’m not dying. I’m moving to Virginia. I’m not some idiot who’s going to get on a bus and see where it goes, I have a job and an apartment set up and the whole nine yards. And I want the clean feeling of saying goodbye to no one. Not my family, not Mitsuko, and not my succession of friends that fill her shoes and do it no better. You’re the only one who I’m telling, and you won’t even get to know.
GOOD GIRLi want to be a good girl™ but online is cursed and people tell me that i’m not doing it ~correctly~ i have to walk with my feet closer together so as to take up l e s s s p a c e i have to make my voice two (2) octaves higher i have to wear high heels i have to want to have sex (especially with cis straight men) i have to move differently (be more feminine) I have to tape my dick between my legs the fucked up thing is: people online ARE REAL PEOPLE they are the same fucking people as the people who exist offline HORNY JESUS-LOVING DYKE1. my type of boy is a catholic jesus… daddy issues… like hanging up there all golden and frail… and crucified……………………………… my type of girl is… also… catholic my type of non-binary/ gender non-conforming queero is… all cummers welcum! 2. please don’t stare at me in public! (unless you have cash) missed connection: theodore, the trans guy who works at the bunnings in brunswick: we were in a hurry and I didn’t have time to flirt with you more but you are hot as… hello! i’ve been feeling a lot of powerful energies ever since my cat threw up in the shape of a perfect number 6, the devil’s number… 3. when avril said, “uh huh, life’s like this, uh huh, uh huh, that’s the way it is…” etc. it’s friday and the bin smells strongly of various cums :) often it feels like even when they can’t see me that some people’s driving is straight up transphobic… 4. a lot of things in this world don’t make sense like how milk is gross but cheese is good only tweeting trans dyke content from now on and if you don’t like it you can leave :) 5. if anyone made me transgender it was trinity in the matrix trilogy, jessica alba in dark angel, and pam anderson for vivienne westwood honestly, the worst* part about being a trans woman is all the fucking paperwork *aside from all the terfs and trans misogynists 666. straight cis white boy: “it’s funny that you’re trans now because you’re not very feminine” me: “suck my dick” SMOKING KILLS YOUi started smoking because it looks ~cool~ and it is a good excuse to leave a party and go outside for a little while also… it kills you i’ve got second puberty blues i’m 25 going on 16 some days i still want to die like when you glare at me and/or point at me and/or laugh at me and/or make vomiting sounds or when you yell at me from your car to tell me to kill myself most days i want to be alive just to spite you… to blow smoke in your faces… to die on my own terms… disclaimer: say no to drugs unless you need them to stay alive
moon, tyrant of the sea, may the tides be her bedding the witch-tongue her means to speak & the umber-furl of pine’s spectral mist her hair to tangle unfathomable nightbirds shed their tears of the Estranged where voids ache in the empty air come to me, the lilies spill from the mouth of mourning infinitely into every distance I am changed buried in the dark movements of beloved the unwritten laws of water shadow-bringing master, I took, and was taken, I had to touch, and hold, all that was not mine a hunger that did not belong to me Selene, I see your pale restlessness in a sky of thieves you are like me, gone, unsung, forgotten made to wander over the sea where the fine-boned wind breathes hold me to my name, the kingdom of wheat and the shore I belong to press the old-woods to your lips and draw meals, bleeding silver sideways into marshland, the dark human waters of mother already, I am part of you
They stare at me through windows crystalized Over years and years From gardens I will never see Lost to highways, houses Their jewelry and little bones Removed, poured in concrete For a new franchise gym I breathe on the frames of ancient doors To create maps of our faces with water-swollen fingertips Blood left on the lentil Cut from my own lamb palms Reading tiny notes with phrases I can’t decipher But the meaning doesn’t matter only the translation Their letters reframe me, reminding, echoing Shoving me back to my beginning A name connected to lines That pulse through each initial Whispering they once lived In my cells I won’t continue but I will give them memory.
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