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kerry
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he might have been a busted-hat child selling matchsticks appearing on every corner with his scornful lips and quaky toes.
Lying on my bed trembling in the skid row industrial prose, then looking up at every wall, the pictures shuddered embarrassedly. The pictures that are forever being scanned then examined or glossed-over, wondering, “Which of us is noticed first?” and “Which makes her pause and cry or die or grin sleepily, then fall into the dog hair and nail clippings of the loose-grass rag rugs of this hovel she insists on remaining in?”
And his face pushed through liquid plaster of the wall, I’m forever sensing it, my mind’s activity that afternoon a testimony to him and for once I didn’t even mind. From now on, I said to myself, I won’t censor my smiles.
asking, “Where are you and will you be and have you been?” and “With you” is what he should want to say, but can’t because we both sit drumming on our kneecaps drowning in lyrical stupors, and I think I could finally not care about my klutzy legs and skin too dry and now-nearly-boyish hair. I’m just the girl who’s hiding her fingers and raw cuticles, and running her feet under scalding water, who doesn’t bother to put the vacuum away, and picks up dust rabbits one by one and kisses them good-bye sympathetically. Could he like me for that?
in Arizona we were cracking teeth of hematite wondering how long until we’d hit the bottom of the canyon. In washed-out drab dreamscapes of Georgia we were holding onto the backs of our knees trying to stay in one piece, chasing our ghouls through the summer screens with our tears slicing on the metal.
Write an instrumental for the soundtrack of my life and I’ll listen to it always while I tie my shoes.
“So, if you’re ever just sitting around your room and your brain is itching, or you see a haloed payphone and the sidewalk is ripply, or you hear a high-pitched squealing always in your head, just know you can call me.”
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