abbie hart

i always sit after my shower in my damp towel on my bed until it feels like hours and my hair is mostly dry.

     (file under: things that make sense)

i have a bookshelf on top of which i put only books that i think look aesthetically pleasing. don’t worry, i’ve read them all. i just don’t organize them alphabetically like the rest of their kin.

     (file under: things that mostly make sense)

i bite my nails but only on certain fingers and i don’t know why as having uneven fingernails causes more anxiety than the thing that caused me to bite my nails in the first place.

     (file under: things that don’t really make sense)

i once jammed four fingers side by side in my mouth to prove to my ex-boyfriend that my mouth was bigger than his best friend’s for no apparent reason other than my superiority complex and my need to continue to fill a niche in his life which i guess included having a larger mouth size than his best friend.

     (file under: things that frankly don’t make sense at all)

i will wear pearls around the house.

i am tiptoeing, i do not want to disturb myself, even if i am so far away. 

it is not clear outside, but the windows are open anyways.

i want to keep my options open for escape.

the pearls are older than i am. remnants of a history between two people, one of whom is dead, and one of whom is not me. 

the pearls will not go scattering. not for long at least.

i continue my silent dance on uncarpeted floor as they brush past each other. the pearls.

they hit the floor, slide between the boards, only to reassemble themselves.

it has always been like this.

LIKE A DOG

YOU SENSED I WAS EATING SOMETHING

BUT DECIDED THAT YOU DID NOT LIKE IT

the bitter taste in my mouth below you. you are its origin, its dr frankenstein, that which i will never see again.

the sour tomatoes will fray between my teeth like rope. flossing is not enough. i will not miss you.

the city might miss me when i am gone.

there is strength in ambiguity, and despite most likely not missing the city myself,

i still do have a validation complex.

the fingers will not stretch and wave, though.

there will not be a hole in the existence of the city.

there will just be an absence.

a stillness of air,

the occasional remembrance that i used to exist here. and now i am simply doing it somewhere else.

i used to think a lot about how i was like a house with electrical problems.

waiting to catch fire.

feeling the doorknobs heat up.

i am not sure about the greater implications of that. for 

everyone around me.

recently i think i’ve felt the house rewiring itself

and while i used to be somewhat attached

to the faulty sockets

i think i am learning more

about houses that fancy themselves electricians

and how that comes about.

i think that is okay.

i think that is how change has to work

at first, at least.

shooing lily-minds gauzed, embroiled, skimps.

practiced procedure and roped-up

sorrow-girl (fourteen years old)’s date

excavate the accurate eventually

but skip it for four years.

warfare follows, thought it would relieve but it didn’t.

i wander to work drop-jawed and cold

and come back drop-jawed and colder

it is difficult to trust old men when you

bartend as they tend to shit themselves

which is never particularly fun

especially when you are going to bed

in a state that is 1820 miles from home

and you’ve just witnessed bare ass

human feces

on the fucking floor.

text my mom even though i probably shouldn’t

makes me think too much

and she sends me videos of a possum eating

as if i am not right here.

her very own possum

as if i have not been playing dead the whole time

waiting for the exact moment

to appear in the center of the road

and finally get my wish.

the borrows come along, and this time it is a candle, but last time it was an air freshener. a cacophony of things that smell disappearing from the pink tiled bathroom of a vietnamese restaurant in a college town. come may i am one of them.

for those of you who missed the summary of my book:

head is a home is a catalogue of all of the times Abbie Hart did not cry in the last two years. It is her debut chapbook, and clocks in at 24 strange poems that you could learn to love. To put it gently, it is about a house, and how to become one on your own terms. It is about how to treat yourself like a house. It is about how to like the house that you have become. It is about how to be soup. It is about how to be bread. It is about how to put both on the table and eat until you sob. 

you took me out into a field to see

what stars really look like when i 

came to new jersey. i am afraid i do

not have much to offer you that i 

have not already given. interlink

hands and look at the sewer. at the smog.

at the concrete structure rising in unison

along the edge of the sky. at my hands.

i will never see it,

never know that it is there.

but i will contemplate

phoning the fire

department.

i will imagine all of the things i will say to them

but when they answer

i will tell them only

to not let the new house burn

down

i will not always be alone here,