hairspray queen

Brooklyn’s too cold tonight & all my friends are three years away. My mother said I could be anything I wanted—but I chose to live.

When I fed the pigs and two of them got to scrapping over an old soft onion, I thought: that’s love. Love is eating. Love is a snarling pig snout and long tusks. Love is the colour of blood. Love is what grown folk do to each other because the law frowns on killing.

but everyone had this patina of slightly bruised longing, this shimmer of I think I knew you when we were children, this look of I’ve loved you ever since you were born and probably longer than that

What happened, happened once. So now it’s best in memory—an orange he sliced: the skin unbroken, then the knife, the chilled wedge lifted to my mouth, his mouth, the thin membrane between us, the exquisite orange, tongue, orange, my nakedness and his, the way he pushed me up against the fridge— Now I get to feel his hands again, the kiss that didn’t last, but sent some neural twin flashing wildly through the cortex. Love’s merciless, the way it travels in and keeps emitting light. Beside the stove we ate an orange. And there were purple flowers on the table. And we still had hours.

It will happen, an honest mistake in a hot August classroom. Someone will blink at the name and swear this “Michael Brown” can’t be that “Michael Brown.” Or someone will be too busy with her head down finishing syllabi to look up and see the flash grenades and tear gas. Someone will be running late, his mind on the cops that will probably ticket him for not having a permit. Someone won’t see why a name is such a big deal. Someone will read his name like the next item on a list of groceries and move to the next student before the first groan rumbles through the stale Missouri air. Someone will start to speak his name and then cover his mouth like a Roman priest closing Janus’s door and praying all the violence of the world will stop short of his porch. Someone will ask, “Michael Brown? Is Michael Brown here?” and we will all have to answer.

Travel and tell no one. Live a true love story and tell no one. Live happily and tell no one. People ruin beautiful things.

I am that clumsy human, always loving, loving, loving. And loving. And never leaving.

So I turn to a dead language again:ineo, I go into, enter, begin. Doleo, I am in pain, I grieve, And everyone thinks I am being brave.

Countless biographies by women reveal that girl children witnessing a mother’s suffering at the hands of male tyrants – fathers, brothers, and/or husbands – are deeply, traumatically affected. Not only do we want to rescue our mothers but also we want to change our destiny so we will never suffer the way they did or do.

Certain kinds of knowledge rob people of their sleep.