Writing and Art by Laura Dianne

I swallow down my first metoprolol at 2:40 pm

It’s 3:16 and I wouldn’t call myself calm

Government websites and all their probing questions

Tore holes through my composure

Still, I consider my heart

It’s not ironic that it beats too hard, too fast

The rushing, forceful thumps

Thunder through every inch of me

I am electrified by love

It will be funny

When it kills me

I always knew I would die of a broken heart

But

Oh, but

For now

The pulsing in my temples

The pressure behind my eyes

All scream the song

I scream until I realize it hurts

I didn’t want to give the government my phone number

But then they said my numbers were not mine

mine mine mine

Numbers swirling everywhere

11

27

91

Another number I cannot safely utter

All these numbers label me

Ground me

Suffocate me

Twine through my life like a vine

Organic in the way they cling to me

Mirrors, cages

Boxes, lines

I count my breaths

I count my days

I count everything that matters to me

Do I slip away on my own terms

Or do I hand them all my numbers

You walk through the woods like you’re walking through time

Was the path already there when you started or were you the one to cut it?

Did the trees leave the trail in anticipation of you?

Maybe they gently leaned apart to give you

a space, a sanctuary, a home

You retread old ground and go back to

Your beginning, the start of it all

Before the expectations

Before even mankind

You see what I see when I point to a hawk

The dive, the precision, the speed

I point to a vulture and you

Know that freedom is a lazy circle

You spent long minutes watching the silhouette 

Of a rabbit, its very presence enough to 

Captivate you

You don’t know how to look at yourself

You can’t see with my eyes

You measure yourself like a man

But I see the beast in your heart

Not an aberration, but a bird in a cage

When the world falls away, I watch you

Transform, like a wolf under the full moon

The you you are supposed to be

Is the most magnificent animal

I want to see you

Shake off the reins and

Vincent told his brother there was a fire in his soul

I tell my mother the same thing and she looks at me, blankly

What did Theo say to his brother?

Vincent lost his letters, so we’ll never know

But I think all the time about his ear

Not lost, cut away

A body permanently altered in a fit of pique

But…

How good did it feel

With shaking, bloody hands

To hold something so vital, so sacrosanct?

To make a gift of one’s own flesh and blood?

Did she scream when she unwrapped it?

Did she cry for him?

Did she pity or fear him?

Maybe he regretted it

But I doubt he regretted it more

Than I regret the pieces I gave

and gave

and gave

I can’t remember liking anything about him beyond his red hair and his smile, but I went as far as writing a note to my third grade crush. 

(Did the friend who put me up to it know it could only bring me ridicule?) 

“Do you like me?” It read, but unlike the George Straight song, mine said “Yes,” “No,” and “As a friend.” 

(I think I drew weird symbols to represent the options, I was an odd little child.) 

One day in the front hall of my grandparents’ house, I contemplated his name.

(You’re supposed to think about your crush, aren't you?)

Todd. Todd. Todd. Todd. Todd. Todd. Todd. Todd. Todd. Todd. Todd. Todd. Todd. Todd.

(Am I doing this right?)

I turned the single syllable over in my mind, feeling out the edges of the sound.

(Did I whisper to myself? Mouth along silently? Slip up and say it aloud?)

You can only say a word so many times before it loses all meaning.

(It’s not his name, it’s the humming of my own thoughts)

How many hallways have I stood in, turning something real to dust?

(I try to hold it and it slips right through my clenched fingers)

I never picked the wings off of bugs, but I read books about boys who did

(How does it feel to destroy things other than yourself?)

I have to take things apart to understand them

My mother asks my father what he’s chuckling about as he walks through the bedroom door

“Nothing, just, she said it’s seven eleven.”

He trails off…

We both know she doesn’t understand

(And I know what he doesn’t understand, too)

The smile moves inside, but today it doesn’t die

Today it’s 7-11 and there’s two tubs of barbeque chicken thighs labeled in my own hand

Red, like the Alabama Wasp in Mom’s Mexican petunias

The labels dissolve in water, leaving plastic tubs nameless once more

Yesterday at Granny and Papa’s we sat on the porch and my cousin

Tried to explain how wasps make paper

“They chew up wood and spit it out” he says

(I close my eyes and think of how complicated all my college learnin’ would have made that)

I thank god for my Mother’s family

Three little girls shriek through a quiet evening and

I rejoice

Life is simple, when I let it be

It’s hot as sin out there, but I put one foot in front of the other until I’m back home

My uncle’s fruit trees hum with life

My aunt’s chickens are silently dreaming of an oven

(Maybe that’s just me. Don’t you work up an appetite in this heat?)

Days blur into one long hot summer

Sweaty arms have never felt so good to hold

The sun conspired to make me face my talents

And I found myself prolific

It’s hard to track all the movements of the stars but

The birds are so much closer

I’ve been stealing clouds for so long, I stopped to watch a tiny thunderhead fly past

Edges dusted with sunset peach, its impotent threat electrified me

And in the fury,

an Osprey

Tumbling on the wind, made gold with dying light

Every day is Tuesday in the sky

Yeah, today is 7-11 and I’m lucky,