august 8th 2024

there she is, corpsing her king bed, tucked like a doll under powder blue sheets, petulant eyes averting my entrance. i approach her bedside. 

go to her / say you’re sorry / make this okay

the will to bring my circumstances to justice evades me. it stings to settle. this is not who i am.

I’M SORRY. I KNOW BETTER

she brings me into her arms. IT’S OKAY

i smell her heat-damaged hair. i tell her I LOVE YOU but i do not.

my father, crown in his hands at the head of the table, does not recall how to cry. i return to him with the grim languor of a doctor delivering a terminal diagnosis. sometimes the four of us prisoners soak in the silence, the sky-falling weight, elsewhere in individual thought. hers is the name unspoken. 

we refer to our mother as SHE like a watching god. 

SHE’S JUST BITTER TODAY. SHE’S JUST RELEASING IT. 

her father beat grandma renie in the kitchen where i ate orange juice popsicles. she won’t let my dad drink whiskey. suppose there’s always a reason. if she knew it would that make it okay?

GO TO HER YOU CAN MAKE THIS OKAY

it’s not myself i’m saving

when i tell my sister my life is a fraying thread and i’m closing in with scissors she says, i can’t handle this, and leaves my room certain i will not die. what the hell’s the point of reaching for someone? i lack the closeness to parse that responsibility to another, or the shameless woe to beg. really i don’t want her sympathy, and she’s not capable—my father’s best machine girl, she steps out, sighing for me to hear, and she knows me well enough. i’m telling the truth but the weapon’s dull. i’m willing to stay in this half-dead place. she’s willing to look away. this routine is familiar. 

ISN’T THERE ANYONE ELSE? 

[ ] frenzies in an empty room while i iron-grip my knees under an elevated bedframe. she’ll leave if i don’t MAKE IT OKAY. i have adopted my smallest voice. i have given the mile. 

when i’m good she might touch me. i buy the pack so she nudges my arm in the convenient moment when gloria passes who i went out with freshman year. surpassing OKAY, adrenaline like a gift, hooked by the faraway hope of another—this must be the WIN. she brings me into her arms before she goes. 

NOBODY TO CALL, NOBODY TO HOLD YOU. THEY’VE FORGOTTEN YOU BECAUSE YOU ARE NOT CONVINCINGLY ALIVE. THEY CAN’T FEEL YOU. YOU’RE A CHARACTER, WRETCHED, DULL, INSUBSTANTIAL, SINGING THE SAME MINOR KEY MELODY TO AN AUDIENCE PACKING TO LEAVE. THEY ONLY LIKE YOU WHEN YOU’RE SAD. THEY DON’T HEAR YOU WHEN YOU CRY. I DON’T KNOW HOW TO BE A PERSON WHEN YOU CRY. 

if i know does that condemn me? if i know it does that make me okay?

i don’t believe in anything