note to self: pick less lame pictures to accompany textIt is tradition. The daughters unplug refrigerators and kiss secret boys goodbye. I’ll see you in a month, they say. They stuff half-hearted presents into bags and hug roommates. It’s only a month, they soothe. They board buses, welcome artificial air, and crumple into lucid sleep. The daughters dream. They imagine the mother and father waiting at the bus stop, their loose cheeks blithe, their arms waving furiously. You’ve come home, the dad murmurs into the eldest daughter’s hair. You’ve come back. When the wheezing wheels pause on the side of Rt. 17, only a string of peg-legged trees welcomes them; the mother is running late. Despite their dreaming, the daughters expected this. They leave the thick heat of the bus and grab their suitcases from the overhead compartments. For now, the bus stop bench is home. The daughters pass the time with storytelling. Person X drank too much Y and ended up A/B/C. Honest laughter makes the frosty air a bit warmer and the daughters remember that they are sisters. They tell and tell and tell until their lips are numb and the mother pulls up in a slick pick-up. The mother rolls down the window and screams an eager Sorry and the daughters say It’s Okay, letting their chapped hands and red ears explain that it’s not. On Everdell Street the mother puts the pick-up to bed in the driveway and the daughters drag their suitcases across the lawn and into their terra cotta home, realizing that one month is a very long time. Alerted by the creaking front door, the dog hops off its couch pillow perch and greets the daughters’ ankles. Lick, lick she remembers the hands that have gifted treats and jangled a leash. Hello, dog, the daughters coo as they pat her matted ears and tufted tummy. Have you been a good girl? The suitcases are deposited in a pile near the door, the contents belonging to girls who cease to exist on Everdell Street. The daughters take in the room. Cigarette ash still rests on the couch’s armrest, unopened bills from Citibank still hide in the mail spread on the table, and the father is still at work. The eldest daughter frowns. Maybe she had been too optimistic; maybe she had wanted change too badly. The mother has retreated to the living room, her duty done. She types on a laptop, her sweat-panted legs tucked underneath her and taps a cigarette into an old can of Pepsi. The youngest daughter draws in a quivery breath. The eldest leaves for her room. Chilled carpet and the lingering scent of a blackened candlewick welcome her when she steps into the room. She winces, pushing up her sleeve and gripping her forearm, noticing that the room has shrunk. Like an old pair of pajamas, what once had been comfortable is now too snug. Not making a move to turn on the fingerprint stained light switch, she lets the dying hallway light cast shadows on the bed, still unmade from August, and the stack of junk the mother has tossed in the corner. Still. Everything preserved. Headlights swing into the bedroom window and the eldest daughter panics. The father is home. She remembers the smash of scar-bottomed pots on the stove, angry to be awakened and used. She remembers the mother’s stiff spine shivering as she walks around the kitchen, trying not to disturb the working father as he waits at the cluttered kitchen table for his dinner. After darting a furtive glance down the hallway, the eldest daughter presses her door shut. It is time to leave. The window slides up fluidly, used to the eldest daughter’s escapes. She slips out of the terra cotta coffin and pats the pick-up, gently awaking its tremendous engine and reverses out of the quicksand driveway. Let’s go she whispers. And just like that she is back in her own skin. The eldest daughter pulls up to the happy ivy shutters of the friend’s house and makes her way to the backyard where bodies in dark coats and rough jeans are cloaked by protective firs. Her boots flatten icy leaves, announcing her arrival. Arms wrap around her neck and I miss you is pressed into her ear. She loosens herself from the embrace to look at the boy and smiles, grabbing the glass he holds in his hand. Whiskey makes her breath hot and fogs the boy’s glasses as she exhales in the tight winter air. Dampening her cracked lips she confesses I don’t want to be back. He shifts his weight. He understands her sincerity and consoles You’re already here. With a warm hand the boy cups the daughter’s elbow and guides her to the wreath of friends at the edge of the woods, to her real home. When the eldest daughter wakes up, knitted tightly in her bed’s comforter, the critiquing cricket of a second on her watch explains that it’s time for Christmas cleaning. It is tradition. She takes in a deep breath and brings a hand to her forehead, hoping to smooth away the blurred edges of a hangover. The memories of the bus ride home, her escape from the dinner-dance, and the taste of the boy’s raw lips pin her to the bed. Accept and progress, she tells herself. Reluctant but not a coward, she drapes a sweater around her shoulders and shuffles to the living room where the father and the youngest daughter are pretending to dust. Casting an eye towards the kitchen, the eldest daughter sees the mother pressing her knees into the hard linoleum. Wiping the cabinets with a chewed sponge, the mother screams at the cramped wooden spoons and dusted flour canisters about how tired she is, about how many nights she spends consuming passion puckered novels that only suck her dry. She spits between nicotine-eroded sandcastles that she does it all. The daughters and the father sit in the living room deaf and unaffected. The smell of burnt hair escaping the vacuum's dying lungs consumes their attention. # # #
Peering through a peep hole the keys cast shadows on the dusty birth marks of their neighboring controls. Puffy cheeks, fat lips, engorged on the sweet taste of poor decisions. This is how it feels to be a fat girl. When I close my eyes I am standing at the quiet slow-motion center of the all points west concert circa 2009. I’m wearing the same outfit (I wonder if I remember it because of how it imprinted on me or because of how often I’ve stared at pictures.) the main difference between the actual event and my dream replacement is that the sun is out, slowly slipping behind the main stage’s hood. I am closing my eyes. When I open them you are there, another stationary soul in the crushing throngs of pbr laced veins. “hey” your eyes warm. And that’s it. A simple, content-less, minimal daydream and yet it’s all I want as I lay in the shared bed of hundreds of men named dave and steve thousands of miles away on the resting back of an island serpent.
wiping the cabinets with a chewed sponge, the mother screamed at the cramped wooden spoons and dusted flour canisters how tired she was, how many nights she spent consuming passion puckered novels that only sucked her dry. she spat between nicotine eroded sandcastles that she did it all. the children and the father sat in the living room deaf and unaffected. they could only focus on the smell of burnt hair escaping the vacuum's dying lungs.
baby cousin, i bought this book for you. it made my fingertips warm with every page i turned. i hope it sets your smile on fire.
lost in a paranoid man's thoughts
This past year I learned that I have more weaknesses than I originally identified. I’m dependent on praise. I let others make decisions for me. I let things go too quickly. I don’t stand up for myself. I do what others want first and foremost. I stopped listening. I see things that need to be changed and look the other way. There was a three month period of time when I felt like everything I deemed a constant was removed. My perspective on the world changed. New Jersey had become brighter and more harsh. The water I drank seemed too strong, the heat more oppressive. Had I always been unable to breathe during the summer? Days were spent locked into Princeton with only thoughts, jogging routes, Netflix, and half-read books to sustain me. It seemed like I was always hungry and alone. Surprisingly, running on emptiness fed a part of me that I had never really wanted to find. I learned that being by myself was okay, even if I didn’t choose it. Epiphany: it is only when we have nothing that we respect the storage of dried optimism rations within. I churned out some of my best poems, I saw what my body could accomplish athletically, and I admired the little things: the feel of a cool pillow case after a particularly long day, a hot cup of cocoa on a July night as I watched the sun melt over DeAngelo’s roof. I left Princeton being used to the sound of my own thoughts, the silence of empty hours, and the agony of knowing that I had miscalculated where I would be. August came and I was back in Maine and all too suddenly I was thrown into the noise of others, the blaring of the whines and complaints was foreign to my deaf ears. There was too much information, too many people and I overloaded, and stuck to doing the bare minimum to preserve what was left of the newfound relationship with myself. September and October were bare and embarrassing. I was a hollow needle pinching the cold vein of an embalmed hare. Nights were spent trying to get a fix on shallow conversation and cheap kisses that felt unnaturally good. Masked and chilly, I was a proud vagrant. It wasn’t until a trip to Maryland for a friend’s twenty-first birthday that I realized how deep into that famous D-word depression I was in. I listened to a fresh copy of Mylo Xyloto on borrowed headphones and listlessly gazed at the Delaware Memorial Bridge, aware that the guy who refused to love me was never going to let me go.
I was chained to a body that refused to decompose.
The following weeks were spent crying empty tears on my roommate’s futon. I threw Patrick Bateman smiles at innocent bystanders and stared at my ceiling while my legs sliced in and out of Pilates motions. I wasn’t doing anything. November was when I turned my pruned mouth out of the shallow puddle I was drowning in and decided to feel what was being asked of me. On my twenty-first birthday, the friend who had been both the bane and sweetness of my existence moved towards something concrete. I couldn’t tell if it was a last-ditch attempt to save something that was almost beyond repair or if it was what his dueling eyes truly wanted. Cue more nights spent on the futon because I was uncertain that I could believe in our matching desires. December brought understanding, trust, and a minor leap into something. The new year was welcomed by a pair of well-known lips meeting mine in what will probably be the only conventional aspect of our relationship. Six months of hell led to a quiet union, a pastoral portrait of the modern heart’s acerbic indecision.
This is a lifelong commitment to progress. I’d like to move beyond the phase of blocking out others, go back to focusing on the meaning of words, stop doubting the sincerity of emotions, and respond. I want to stop looking at other females and being repulsed about the differences between us. I have never been one to dislike myself and yet I’ve doubted my own beauty, my own worth. This self-doubt has caused me to tear down bold women and bury solutions to the self-destruction. I want to re-own the projects, roles, and passions that I have. I want to push myself to read more, to expand my vocabulary, my know-how of language, film, pop culture, and coffee. I want to accept that some of my bangs won’t stay where I’d like them to be. I want to look up the correct spelling of words that make me cringe. I want to help others grow into the people they strive to be. I want to let contentment be an option again.
say something that makes breath burn a little more
sweeten the tea of soaked ambitions & memory stills
with effervescent acceptance of nights that writing calls to me
like the friend who cups my elbow and guides me to sleep.
