HOW SMALL THEY ARE, HOW FAR AWAY

dread sunday’s swarm already. m’s welcome home party. her highschool friends all noise, boys rolling joints while their girls chant fuck! omg! so drunk! & little lizzy? loud & lonely, clumsy on a couch spilling beer on my striped sweater. ill set my stage & spin. will piss on all conversations, hike my skirt up only to shake it loose in a series of quick hip twists. i arrive only to leave. i leave only to come home to a cat with fleas, my sister smoking on the front stoop.

school slays. all this sleeplessness, stomach cramps. am already taking naps in the library, curled between stacks on nazi germany or the cold war. my classes are an intolerable bore. mainly, i slip in/out of consciousness. dream with eyes stretched wide. dream too many things. this semester’s already rendered me a smoke & mope. ive got ash in my belly. when i move, i make sifting sounds.

shoved in a backseat. head on a stranger’s knees. slit moon shining in troughs of empty light. i fight with the night. there are no stars to ask forgiveness from. no lone shade trees to curl beneath. am trapped between body & seat. the car weaves, heeds no stoplight/sign. i pray for saftey, from what, i am unsure. the car or the clumsy breaths of a stranger watching shadows in a room somewhere.

boring the bark from the trees. pet my cat till her fur shrieks. smoke a cigarette. drink rolling rock till hills, oh hills rolling within.

carey at work. steph tucked. i wait. keep house casually.

bored. drink a rolling rock. charm the moon closer to my stoop. squint from the shine. call strangers hoping they’ll answer.

pet the cat. scratch the top of my sock. complex is dead. cant even watch neighbor’s take showers, move soundlessly room to room. try reading poems; they’re swollen. lines fat with adjectives. how many ways to say lover lost, alone in a park?

the story of stillness has returned. quit my job, finished my finals which means spending days staring at the handless clock of my wall, nights sitting motionless on a stranger’s couch, gasping in a bar. at the bar, everyone’s mouth’s impossibly round, skin dirty, ashen really. when i touch them, bits of skin flake off. come midnight, i leave covered with flesh i can’t place.

sheets reek of self. tried washing them. again & again. the stench of my body remains. even when he sleeps over, days at a time. the sheets refuse to absorb any of his sweat, shampoo residue. when he falls asleep, i smoke a cigarette, sniff the edges of my mattress.

tonight: another party. every room full of the sort of darkness that stuns you into silence. the stillness of sitting on a carpeted surface, someone blahing about brian wilson. left early. drove home. the road lit, air before me thick. had to squint to see further than two feet, pull over repeatedly to just to breathe.

show up slurry. liver whip a few bitches then incest talk like baby its the best. gasp, gasp. some lesbian telling me im the best she's ever had not quiet yet. the boy in the sweater. the boy in the sweater. hashish. wine spilt on cashmere.

p.s. more on the "vodka spit" party later.

bored like insides lined with linoleum. like spit & watch the molecules split. carey says wine! but they dont have the right kind at the store so back to the apartment.

on the porch, the moon too close to bitch about a single thing,

party last night. show up as a darling dontcha wanna? am late, impossibly so. beer’s gone, bong already passed hand to mouth & hand to mouth. am forced to sip coke, listen to english majors wax brian wilson or the beatles? you must choose. ive got terrible posture, slump against any/all flat surfaces. stare out the open window, a string of steetlamps stretches, & i spend the remainder of the night trying to talk color back into the light.

breathless in a bar with my sister & her ex. light the wrong end of a cigarette. lonely like a hole is invariably a hole in something & something went missing. look for it. sniff corners, ask strangers. their voices peel at the edges.

new apartment. stretches of white interrupted only by bare windows, my sister’s polaroids of people i don’t know. the neighborhood’s full of silence, the sort where every sound’s heard separately. i spend nights shelving & reshelving my books, gathering scraps of paper, stacking them into tiny piles around my bed.

summer school started last week. full swing. teachers who run marathons, have cats, gulp tap water from blue or green nalgene bottles. assignments like read chapter three, then write a paper, etc. my skull fills with facts. body reeks of rush, & god, just let me romp in the sun! my concentration’s never been so shot. i skip class to take a nap in the yard, top off.

s: when i get a boyfriend im going to call him pussita
e: im calling mine the wild impossibility

am frustrated with the anti-climax of their sleep & wake & drink till drunk, stare up at the sun. i have to pray to make it out one door & into another. not a "party" but a "get together." ten thousand potted plants, a stranger's wine warm hands. leave to pray in my parked car, windows rolled up, shade trees flushing.