leporidae

This past week’s excessive rain brings about hoards of fruit flies to crawl across opened containers of yogurt and lonely banana peels. At the restaurant, I swat them away from my ears and a co-worker attempts to catch them stealthily with his bare hands. In November, I became so easily perturbed by insect swarms, glass cases of ugly, fat flies, prompting me to shut my eyes, like a child under bed sheets, suddenly afraid of the dark. It’s nearing the end of summer and my arms are covered in little freckles. I see bodies as browning fruit; watch them eat their dinners, watch them kiss their babies and their spouses with dry mouths. The band-aid across the back of my left foot feels like childhood and I’m thinking about last night’s house made of yarn as if it were structurally sound. A reverberating chord, a single stretch of sand in a shallow pool of lake water. Inside my head there’s this tall, gray mountain and a strange mirror lamp in an unfamiliar basement, reflecting light between two very distinct worlds. Spilling across a now water-stained hardwood floor. I don’t really think about you anymore, but lately I’ve taken to light-hearted humming reminiscent of French film music, thinking about the alarm clock that fell to the floor too many times to count on two hands and two feet.

I tell a customer picking up their take-out order that it's been one of those days, but Look! at that! magical rain! And she nods in agreement before grabbing her brown paper bag of carefully packaged food to head through a periodic sun shower to her car. In a dream I had I stumbled upon a sleeping bear on a white beach and the sun looked just like This and I looked just like That, right there, all strange and bright, at the front door of the restaurant, sensing storm and estrangement while the man at table 22 shakes a little too much salt across his pasta. On Sunday I share with a friend I feel as if I've outgrown where I am, but it's difficult to explain because one moment I am Excited to be There and then, all of a sudden, I feel differently. As if, inside a discarded sneaker, I emerge a little green thing without visible roots, the kind of image that is plastered across teacher posters and on computer screens. In some respects, it's funny feeling so closed in when there's a stretch of beach & FAMILIAR THINGS all across the dining rooms and in the kitchen, where customers visit with their babies to compliment the chef. I feel a bit like a teenager again, like I'm fourteen and I don't quite fit the clothes I'm wearing, too large, too round, not enough give. I want to stretch & stretch and feel my arms extend across an ocean of table salt to some submerged napkin and where a warm plate of food waits after rain. And there, I outgrow my too much-too little elbows & knees, unzip, unzip, & new again.

When I still ate my fingernails, you called me open-minded and mimicked a buried giant’s hand, slowly opening and closing around the body of some child’s kite. I am slowly learning the ways in which I can stretch and expand & how I can gently repair a weak stomach and itchy skin. There’s a part of me that wants to build a mover’s box belly from soft linen and hot sand, but it’s late & there’s a mug of cold coffee on the kitchen counter with a pronounced mouth-stain across the rim. I hold onto everything so tightly, I’ve somehow lost sight of space where I can put it down again.

Today I'm thinking of what it's like to be twelve again & trying to understand what love is. At this point, we're too far from childhood and too close to something else. Twelve is brash, but wary. It's tongue through teeth & warm water in a plastic bottle & that little arm touch, you know, the kind that's just like feather and fall; it's so pointed finger, gently poking, hi, happy birthday, you. You know, the little love that bubbles up when it is late and there's a fire roasting mosquito bites across our shins and someone still sports a metal mouth. They somehow catch sunlight when they throw their head back to laugh. And twelve, unlike other ages, explains eleven and ten, when we fail to understand shoulder touch and pull: I care about you. Can barely grasp our playful tap-tap-tap, all that hot air beneath a cup. It's summer and I'm having coffee on the porch thinking about what it's like to sport a metal mouth at age twelve and eat a handful of sand by accident. You know, this little feeling? Do you remember it too? To be twelve and not understand? But the desire to...it's like a newspaper print across putty and a small sketchbook filled with haphazard drawings, designs of future plans with a person who maybe looks at you like you're a street corner under lamplight or a bus stop in softly falling rain. Someone who looks at you, all baker's dough and marble, all vulnerable & excited & afraid.

I've grown away from being so quiet, small, tiny thing; little button-minded and corn silk growing, straight from an open palm. I'm a little bit louder and more upfront, a little more open with heavier things and crazier things, sporting a shock of messy hair and a smiling mouth. I think about touching shoulders all the time and I think about dancing a little more than I should. It's like I've become water running down skin and wet eyelashes. I feel a bit more comfortable in my own body and I feel a little more connected to my fingers and toes, like there are threads stretching and contracting with each movement I make. And today we pulled into the McDonald's parking lot at the same time as my aunt while driving through rural New York, and I said over cold coffee on pavement, isn't it so funny we just happened to meet up at this place at this time? And I think interconnectedness when I'm out running or while I'm at a bar with a friend and I think it so strange that now I sense my little button-self, but I feel more established, sinking into a tin of warm, bright, and dry sand.

We understand what it's like, holding our hair back from our faces, reaching farther into nothing, staring at the wall. I am young, and yet my back has become so twisted. I feel so heavy and bloated, as if I am a glassful of salt. I experience days where I am this and then I am that and I forget that it's okay to share what I can and map out safe spaces for myself... spill a little water across this land, coax a few weeds from sleep, shake a little sunlight here, a palm of dice, chattering calmly, one against the other. The other day, while shelving the philosophy section at Barnes and Noble, I happened to find a book on Sisyphus. And in an episode of Bones, they mention insanity and its constant repetition while holding out hope for a different result. And I'm left to wonder if it's a coincidence or if it's something else, you know? If it's a little torn napkin and hoarded mound of plastic grocery bags? Continue to roll a boulder up a hill, out of fear of being crushed, and upon finally reaching the top, we find we were wrong about our safety. But we continue to believe. We want to believe. Confident in our expectations and possibility. But it's a knife through butter and a chance to get cut. And doesn't that make us mad? Yelling in the car, crying with a friend. Shake a little sunlight across this land. Spill a glass of water to dissolve all the salt, only to watch it slowly resurface again.

It’s raining right now and I’m rather enjoying the sound. As if it was brook and babble, you know? A baby in a high chair with a small mouth? Tonight at work I shared I sometimes have a difficult time connecting with people. Using it as an excuse. And last night I said to a table that I often struggle to explain myself. Sometimes sentences become run-ons, too many pebble jumps across a shallow pond. I am tired of handing out excuses as if they’re prayer beads for nervous hands. All of these apologies are becoming too heavy. And every excuse I make for myself feels like another marble in my mouth. We need to expand, as women, you know? Stretch our arms and legs, lengthen our backs. Explain ourselves in what we are, instead of hurried paragraphs. I’m feeling this need to grow something soft along my back and cultivate a fine city. But I’m just so tired of expecting myself to have an answer. And thinking that everyone wants to pull so much from me. And I wish I could be a bit more unabashed when I say something, so I’ve recently taken to stating obvious and oozing facts. There’s this salt across my skin I can’t shake just yet and I’m quite sure it has to do with the fact that I keep apologizing for space that's just beginning to exist.

Tonight I kissed this stranger and it felt right for the first time in awhile. And right now I can't shake this feeling I have about strange and strong, bowing a little at the middle, like a concave hula hoop or some paper plate. It's funny feeling something out of nothing; you know, like salt crystals submerged in water. Or a long strand of silk, pulled through someone's throat. Usually I'm so nervous when it comes to sticky bodies and crowded spaces, but I love dancing and shaking my shoulders a bit and when Mary asked if I was okay, I said, Yes.

There are whole pieces here. Like little plastic, magnetic letters. I find I am so reluctant. As if I fully understand brevity. And yet we press our pages against refrigerators, hoping they will stick.

I'm so cardboard box in rain, you know? Sometimes I'm so pink razor & pulpy paper straw in lemonade, you know, you know? I cried at work for the fifth time this summer & I'm currently unsure of whether or not that's a good thing, but I'm almost positive it is healthy to embrace emotions &, besides, I was so red heart that no one could even tell what I was actually crying about; I cried on the drive home. Listening to this little song about a king and I'm just confused as to why certain things come about the way they do. Like, how I just seem to feel more about a particular object or person at a certain time in my life. I'm thinking about how many times I've cried in a vehicle in the past year. I'm so hysterical and some invisible someone may as well be constantly ripping bandaids from my skin, tugging arm hair, lifting freckles and pen marks with its pull. But, regardless, it's okay to cry in the bathroom & a car & with a friend on the sidewalk or upstairs in some building. It's one of those Thursdays I suppose, and I'm okay with that. But so many things are so strange!!! And why am I made to feel this way for feeling so much! So barren face and ghostly eyes, you are! I see you and your hollow hands! Like little Halloween gourds, shaken to satisfy children's ears. And yet here I am in my car on my way home from some mediocre job, believing in the beauty of signs and crying when I get too close to an open fire. What is it that makes your soul so tough to chew and what is it that rips across your stomach, like a paper package, taped shut & wrapped with baker's twine. What is it that you're hiding & spitting out, like dirty snow, into some kitchen drain. And why doesn't a mountain chain grow along your spine & you cut off their water supply & how come you always flinch at the smallest mention of salt.

I am missing you. As if you are missing from some part of me--a freak disappearance and jacket button, loose thread. Over the phone, I ask a friend how she likes Ohio, after saying, "I miss you." She says Lonely in new apartment on her own and I am sad we didn't get much of a chance to catch up while she was here in town. We throw about "I love you", but "I miss you" is entirely different. It's vulnerable and soft, a brown bruise across the skin of a summer peach. It's admitting missing pieces and hope for discovery in the train station, secretly looking for a familiar face I haven't seen in a couple months. We admit we're wrong and we're so stubborn when it's easier to say "I love you" than "I miss you" because we appear less lonely and more together than we've ever been before. Like, my mother sitting in the car repair service waiting room, casually talking with a man who reminded her of her father. On the phone, she says, "I miss him so much" and I want to understand this vulnerability, being reminded of someone only after speaking with familiarity. I think about the moment on the porch at the restaurant two summers ago when something reminded me of something else and I was left thinking, "I miss you" although I had no idea why I was missing it. A blogger I like spends a few paragraphs speaking to mourning her seventeen-year-old self and I'm left wondering if I miss my previous ages. Like, I miss when I was X and Y and Z and how I can't remember other letters of the alphabet because they were much too early and then I miss what it was like losing people in between the seats of someone's car I'm still nervous of. Like, missing can be so loosely used and we realize that our loose change has suddenly disappeared when we need it to feed a parking meter and we barter with metal: can't you accept my fingernails and my clothes and my reminder notes? Right now, I'm losing touch with previous selves and realizing growth in small spaces, feeling too small and too large here and there and here. And I love saying, "I miss talking to you" or "I miss your sense of humor" because here we are, saying I miss pieces of you, even though they're a piece themselves. Everything shatters and why is it all in pieces? How can we put it all together again? And are we constantly expecting ourselves to? I can admit defeat in the cold on a Monday in November, but I can keep everything to myself, hoarding what I miss and what I want and what I've lost inside my mouth, along my throat, so that it's left to corrode in my stomach, ceasing to exist. An illusory disappearing act.