we climb to the top of the parking deck. seven flights, an intense wind. when an emergency helicopter lands at the hospital across the street, someone says i wish i were in an accident. something, anything.

later i can’t feel my teeth or feet & get confused as to whether im moving or standing still. i forget to care, think of my phone bill instead. five hundred dollars worth of calls to alaska. a mistake in the billing system where i have to spend three hours explaining to verizon that ive never used 786 minutes talking to anyone, though, alaska would be nice. voice like closed eyelids. but then again, i realize, its like movement—how there’s no difference between phoning alaska or the person sitting next to you on the couch, saying i miss you but.

the difference between light & dark becomes indistinguishable in a house where drinks pass hand to mouth. faces shaded, voice like bees wearing coats. a girl wants to know you read emma goldman? say i don’t read. was born blind & only gradually gained sight.

dear friends, sorry i left. took a walk, the moon dim. sorry i sat on a strangers stoop, 2 hrs thinking the leaves are sweating! its spring almost, but trees don’t sweat; i can’t wish them into being.

when i return, someone asks what was it like being blind? having already forgotten my lie, i think they’re referring to tonight.

the state confirms, patterns. to avoid as much as possible: deviants prey on routine. how the body doesn’t notice the unknown’s manic breathing inside their apartment due to the anticipated clink of keys against a tabletop. i figure i can walk alone at night so long as i vary the times. ten to midnight to four am.

lately i ride the school elevator. ride no matter the class' location. its the isolated occasion where people allow themselves to be touched, all at once, by four or five complete strangers.

Fucking Right
A.R. Ammons

Nobody fucks anybody
who fucks anybody,
and anybody's a

nobody who fucks
anybody, still anybody
who fucks nobody's

a nobody, worse
than a nobody
who'd just as

soon fuck a
nobody as anybody:
on occasion, somebody

will fuck anybody,
nobody or not,
because when you

fuck anybody you
could be fucking
somebody as well

as nobody, though
there are fewer
somebodies out there,

I guess, than
nobodies: to be
somebody, you have

to be a
nobody and fuck
anybody till you

find a somebody:
when somebody fucks
somebody, it's right,

but if, having
tried hard, you
find neither nobody

nor somebody, fuck
off, you may
be bothering people

woke disappointed this morning, mistook the wind as rain. for two weeks straight a man asking about emily has left twelve voicemails. sorry about michigan. i save the messages & listen to them while walking alone at night. i have memorized the area code.

the story has no point but stillness itself

on the front porch a roach sleeps supine. one could conclude dead, but i saw its left antenna move one afternoon & then the next. everyday i’m careful not to crush, to watch instead that lone antenna, even though i know the twitch might just be a trick the wind playing on movement.

sometimes i think my body believes in manifest destiny. that once unrest was just a tiny speck that grew cause it fancied itself the possessor of a god-given right to conquer. i see dissatisfaction as a disgruntled despot in my intestines who sprawls behind a desk of wadded gum i swallowed in fourth grade. he is napping, head resting on a map of my innards. he dreams of a destruction so disgusting no one will want to notice, so no one will. the dream’s vivid, so genuine in fact that, when he wakes, he cannot comprehend the stillness of his surroundings.

big wheels keep on turning/proud mary keep on burning

walking home last night, out past the tracks, i was amazed to see the train still running as if the night was holy. walked out & bought a forty from a station i know sells underage. sat in the grass & watched the fireworks that somewhere must be startling children into delight.

school finished itself off with a gpa not entirely depleted but going mad from lusting an up. & winter break? xmas proved boring at my parents house, on the couch, five hour’s watching mtv’s next with my sister & her boyfriend. mom dad in the back bedroom wrapping/unwrapping gifts for the relatives.

(also: avoidance at friday's party. a girl name shannon tugging my hair come sit. i attempt to escape via alan; i grab his shoulder: im really not prepared. but still. on the sofa: shannon as a mouth, a girl it started at age four. & there liz sits, wondering why, please god, couldn't it have started at eighteen: the crux of her emotional distress. her emotional unrest resulting in overdose, AA meetings twice a week. i think: where the hell is her girlfriend? outside smoking, safe from shannon’s im so socially awkward. if this were highschool. i just have so many feelings.i am already gone. i climb the seven flights to the top of the parking deck where stephanie & shannon's girlfriend are sprawled out giggling on the concrete.

a boy from oklahoma writes me confessions of acts he’s never committed. he requests no responses unless its to fess up to my own actions. i stopped writing after the first few. such redundancy on my part. my body, existing.

on fridays tanya calls me while i sleep so when i answer the phone i sound like milk. tanya says her sheets are full of snow, that the boy in her bed smells like cedar & fur.

every night i walk through the lit streets of my neighborhood, watching the porch lights snuff one by one, the shadows of bodies shifting, imagining conversations that almost always end in frustration.

stillness cloys. rub my feet across the floor for friction; apartment taut with want. at night, the neighborhood's bugs slink between my floorboards, their hiss fills the rooms full. when morning comes, the apartment's silent & a dead moth's stuck to my chest..

slow fold inward. body can only crumple so small, into a ball, limbs roll tighter & knees bend. rip the phone from the wall; the receiver fills with sulk & the dresser clock blinks at you, it’s obscene tick. if you could stand still, stare into the sun for hours on end. if you could move. yr mind’s a knot of exhaust; the morning tried to untangle but botched & as result, you contradict. stillness or movement? both. cause crawling cross america’s wilted flesh means nothing more than standing motionless, your hands in your pockets, biting your bottom lip. the fact all yr suitcases swell with silk slips & nectarines differs none from leaning at the kitchen sink scrubbing clean yr wine stained sweater.

lying to reduce my words to nothingness, to create streams of syllables so muddled with falsehoods, even the sound of my voice is a contradiction. my body as well. the mere shift of skin on the couch, bend of knees, click-click twist of my wrist as i open a kitchen cabinet cuts a lie through the air so thick it swells, splits, exposing all the oxygen till it browns. wherever i sit or stand, any moment along time’s sticky filament, i'm utterly meaningless. a mouth emitting incomprehensible vibrations, movements disrupting nothing.

last night i dreamt America became so paranoid of conspiracy that fat legislatures with filthy fingernails stamped a law mandating lucency. citizens were required to exist without whisper, exposed wholly by living in glass houses with clear couches, drive see-through cars through see-through neighborhoods & swallow transparency pills every night while tucked in bed in order to drain all pigment from their skin. as if the citizens held within their bellies a thousand spies, between the notches of their spines, a hundred blasphemous betrayals. or as if the body was a secret in & of itself.