Girl Fight
I’ve been stalking her on the Internet.
She is an obstruction.
I spread vaseline across my cheeks’ crests to reduce the amount of friction occurring from her fists. In my restless sleep at night I confuse jealousy for lust and dream of her vagina like a freshly flowered cactus bush blooming in the moon.
If I had my way we’d bring fistfulls of eachothers hair to work on Monday, present them to reception as sceptres in the tragedy of our historically perpetuated mutual defeat. The thought of her burns anger here, right here. Watch it.
I would egg her if I could, watch the yolk bleed down her jacquard suit set and humiliate her status. I would spill a coke on her and tell Devin she has herpes.
She is sucking up my opportunities for liberation, nod after nod, a root hook to my wildest freedoms. You must understand the scarcity of resource I’m confronting, my only recourse is to pin her to the ground and pull her tank top up, make her naked in the eyes of our common enemies.
I’d like to stick my fingers up the ass of my own envy. Stimulate it to the point of no return.
Teen Witch
I desire you for many things, and so I hide the furniture, begging you to sit on my duvet. I approximate the setting sun with silk chiffon on all the lampshades. Now you must place your hand upon my apple cheek, falsely aged with definition, and sink into the spell that I am casting. Please Brad be here with me. I have met a Gypsy with a shrunken voice, she tells me not to worry down my lonely road, but just to take it gracefully. I only want to be a woman and I have a special power for it, waiting for me meekly should I call.
I pull you in by spinning on my carpet in my stocking feet, a dense fog creeping towards the hallway from my bedroom door. My unattended birthday party falls into the past and as the morning comes my hair becomes a thing to think about, my breasts a canvas.
Telekinetically, I bore a hole into the surface of my desk with my pencil, a handless trick I practice casually. My powers pulse against the locks on all the lockers, myself a wind. I am noticed by the others. We take the bus somewhere.
In the cemetery the monarchs swarm around us, sweet cherished omen of our love. My mother died in childbirth to me and as I listen to the pitter of a rainstorm she moves beyond her photograph undead. Now I, 16, dig into my deviations, I become and occupy the western corner of our world. Here I am a scary bitch who makes the microwave explode and kills the men who seem to want me wrongly. I make things happen.
Scientist
I have spent my life’s work thinking about why nothing ever feels as good as we believe it should. I lay awake at night wondering if in fact there’s enough air in the world for people to breathe, and I find my pillow over my face in the morning. I don’t even use the pillow to block out the light that comes in through the windows. I use it to close in the world, to make my investigations more manageable. I’m sorry to bring you into this drama. Maybe you don’t see anything that needs improving. [As if responding to off-camera question] No, I haven’t reported my findings to anyone. Here is the gist of them: vestigial bolts shorn off in the sidewalk, boot scrapers outside mansions in Baltimore, near-permanent things that no longer serve a purpose, how we discuss the instincts of house cats, our hardwiring, behaviors that have reached a frequency of zero, forgetting that we are stepping in the trails of history, the waltz we seem to know but can’t find the rhythm for, or steps we remember from how the future will be, our bodies just waiting for the music to catch up, Willow and Jaden Smith are good examples of this. I could go on. As if to shave off the top layer of doubt and find the most fearful substance there, and then lay a blanket over it for picnicking. Matriarchies do not oppress men the same way that patriarchies oppress women which is why no one believes they exist. That might be another project I’m referring to but I think it’s relevant. Advancing does not necessarily mean improving. I’d like to know what it is we hold ourselves up to for comparison, and why. Each person buries themselves in wondering when their next fresh breeze will come through, so they get a dog, they trust their instincts, they volunteer, they take salsa classes. For what it’s worth I am the biggest live-er there is. I live out loud. Every day. I live my best life. I exist in the moment. But my work has been to undo something. To untie the bow wrapped around what I sometimes look at as a wriggling infant, born premature.
Almanac of Wetness
I’ve found that I can’t talk about running water without first consulting my Almanac of Wetness, which, all told, I’ve lost the index to, so to use it I have to thumb through wet pages haphazardly, and it’s organized chronologically, from the first drop of water onward and there are blank pages in the back to record instances that feel like water but don’t have the empirical presence that [air quotes] “water” proper has, that thing that gives life and is movement and that you can plunge into and feel less total in but which would rather not be named. So, as you can imagine, to find the words to describe the sound of a near frozen stream trickling some ways down a hill, or the upstairs neighbor flushing the toilet at almost midnight, or the water you drank sloshing in your belly as you dance, or the ocean, [pause] to describe the sound of the ocean, it’s a fool’s errand. Thumbing through my book like a dog digs at a smell in the dirt, looking for something more than just how to describe, looking for some way to improve her experience of the scent, to eat it, to have the bone, finally in her mouth. And what then? To report? To know the color of the sound and to paint it, to then hang it where?
There have been many times when I’ve almost tossed my Almanac of Wetness straight into the garbage. It would simplify things and I sometimes wonder if it’s maybe meant to be simpler. But then why do have these ways that make it complicated. I got a pet rabbit because of it, trying to ask her if anything was simple for her, and her response was quite alarming! She came to me in a dream one night, scooped me up out of the flowerbed where I had been planted by the girl that works in the coffee shop I go to, and my rabbit, I call her rabbit, she took me to the desert and had me watch as she was torn to shreds and devoured by a rather small red fox. As she perished she whispered something I’ll never forget: “epiphanies are false, but necessary for survival.” I have always found that to be true.