Understand I need these fragments. To tell it once is not enough.
I have a hundred holy objects, everything looked upon, to break.
Time will pass, time will pass me, attaching mile-marker threats
to every causeway. I know it’s useless. I put on every eyeliner I own.
I draw the shape—a different eye to see this. I map the innocent
spill of color to my ear. Look, I’m already half an emerald. Lit & limited, I’m
cut. Now that I can’t unsmudge the lines for any reason, I am difficult.
He takes the high road; I take the thornhedge.
Katie, I can’t find a way to talk about this
but it always happens: I have no standing with the men in my life.
You are the only one who ever asks me Are you eating?
Come close, too close, get out—it’s a blunt-edged system
& when did I begin to choose this type of man who loves to “protect” me
from himself? Lately, I hold your name in my mouth
like a talisman because we are never afraid of the same things.
Remember the dead dog we found on the bridge road. A coyote, I said.
Raised as I was near a cemetery, I always assume some authority
over the departed. Stray magic. Lies about the natural world
comfort me, I admit. Like if a tree feels something
when another tree is fucking up her life. I believe in patterns. Shapes.
Pinnate, whorled. I remember too the accordion doors of the Blue Line train
& the way it spit me out piss-drunk on the O’Hare platform crying
because I wasn’t sure if I’d hit him or if I’d only wanted to.
I was trying to starve myself out of a feeling. Signals & timelines.
& if the train comes out of the tunnel before I count to ten
then I’m not the most fucked thing. & if not, then when.
My own mouth bleeding is a nice round number.
On your couch I fall asleep with puke in my hair & I dream
that I’m trapped in a water tower. Katie, I wake up saying.