n.a. ferrum

i did not know before i moved here

that they call this the city of bridges

but now that i know it it makes sense to me

i have been thinking about bridges again

jumping off them and burning them and building them

there is something in my brain that you know very well because you put it there

which is that i do not know the meaning of moderation

i cannot conceive of just a little bit of anything

i understand yes and no, not the idea of a little

a little bit at a time

the fools say that they did not know the dam was eroding and i will be standing with them

i skip my daily prayers

to lay in bed thinking about plenary indulgences

i do not think i will be able to bear this on the strength of you having asked it of me

and i do not think i can bear to have you ask it of me

every time i get a phone call, i think about you on the other end of the line

three hours away

wondering if i am dead or alive.

i do not pick up the phone

but i am fascinated in the way entomologists are

i don't call my mother as often as i should.

it's easy to forget.

it's easy to be angry that i never relied on anyone

easier still to pretend that that was due to a lack of anyone to rely on

i was a stubborn little girl. i still am, some days

and i cannot seem to stop breaking everything that falls into my hands

i do not know how to look at the darkness without running towards it

i do not know how to carry pain in a way that does not spill itself all over me

i want to be good enough to be miserable well.

and it is so easy to do this, these days

the only person who remembered my birthday and reminds me to eat

lives three hours away and neither of us can drive.

but the sky is still the same as it ever was

and under the vast soft blue of a summer evening on the prairies

when the first stars hum dimly to life

i know i am still under my Mother's mantle.

that the things i love follow me.

he's a gentleman.

he's good to you.

he sets boundaries with physical affection and he pays for dates and he calls you on the phone and all you have to do is show up and yap for one night a week

and this is all you've ever wanted. it's all you want. you don't know why you can't live with it.

this is, you presume, a similar sentiment to that expressed by unsuccessful organ donation recipients.

aspartame causes liver cancer

they won't give you a transplant for cancers-

no use putting a good organ where everything around it will kill it anyway.

you do not tell your father this.

you figure the cigarettes are worse for it, one way or another.

your boyfriend lights a cigarette in the car because you told him you didn't mind and you think of your father standing there watching you graduate like a man who was dead already.

you wonder what it means that you still do not stop him.

and you like him a lot, of course

you would rip out your heart for him to give you one good kiss

but he doesn't even hold your hand

and he has his reasons

and they're the right ones (they always are)

he catches feelings through physical touch easily. he said it on the first date. he's protecting his heart.

and you love that about him

but what you worry sometimes you love more is the idea of him

you want olestra, you don't care if it's real as long as you can gorge yourself on it

you are sick to your stomach with wanting.

like a burning fever you are freezing and there is nothing that can make you warm again

except there is and you cannot have it

and the thing is you promised yourself this time would be different.

and the thing is that it is and it has been and you have been given the bread of life and all the sweetness within it

and you are not satisfied.

fuck sugar, you want aspartame and sucralose and saccharin

you want excess and you do not care if it kills you in the end

one gluttony is as good as another

you are your father's daughter until the slow and preventable end

a late-July rainstorm (you sit by the window and remember st therese's snowfall, soft and white across the french countryside, a love note from her beloved in every perfect flake. you have always loved the rain. you sit by the window with a 99-cent mug of hot cider watching it come down)

weeds in the ditch (they used to grow out by the grain elevator where you grew up- clover flowers in white and yellow and violet, so thick you could have hidden in them from the whole world. you leave the things you love and they follow. you breathe their sweet scent on the breeze and you feel something in your lungs unfurl)

a grey sedan (you always look for it when you're in a crowd - it is a very strange thing to have your heart skip a beat over the right number of rust spots. you are a woman of strange and specific and devoted tastes. he is not the oddest thing you have ever set your heart on, but he is the firmest. that counts for something.)

broken glass (you collect it wherever you see it - riverside or roadside. there is something you find fascinating about it - the way the light shines through something meant to be somethin else. you have always liked finding beauty where other people cannot.)

i want to play saints with you

which is the kind of thing you're only supposed to say

if you're either much better at being catholic than me or much worse

which is why i've never said it before

but come on, let's try -

being louis and zelie

like little therese playing hermit

making the sign of the cross over lunch and forgetting we're out on a date at a restaurant with the world's smallest tables and best sandwiches

i want your hand at my waist

but not as much as i want it pulling me, laughing, heavenwards

i like saying things that make no sense

and you like listening to them

which is probably the nicest thing anyone has done for me

and you remind me of that poem "having a coke with you"

except i don't think that poet understood st sebastian one bit

and i think you do

and i want to be the kind of person who does

i'm not irene of rome, but i pray that you don't screw up your back at work when i say the rosary every morning.

which is not quite as good as nursing you back from near-martyrdom

but good lives make bad stories, and i want a good life with you.

i want to see you in heaven and i want to see you tomorrow

and i don't know how to approach you.

so i sit in trees and i wait and i imagine what things could be like

but when you come up to me, talking to you feels like something i've done a million times before. like i could do a million times more.

it reminds me of coming back to church for the first time in 6 years halfway through my first year of college.

you do not know what you are doing.

you are alone in a strange new place

and you do not know what you need to do or who you need to be or where you need to put your hands

but you are home.

but you want to be here.

i want to be here.

i don't know what that's supposed to mean

but i think i'll figure it out.

but i think practice makes perfect -

i've been thinking a lot about the astronaut's prayer lately

dear god, please don't let me fuck this up.

because i feel like i am

all the time, but especially here -

in the quiet stillness of an empty room

with things i do not understand for company -

i feel like i'm walking through a world i was never meant to understand sometimes.

like there were instructions and i've missed them.

like i'm operating on a protocol with a missing step.

and the thing is that i don't know how to right these wrongs

but i trust in a power greater than i am.

the funny thing with science that nobody ever tells you

is that the more you learn

the more you realize how little we know.

the funny thing with religion that nobody ever tells you

is that the more you learn

the more you realize how little we could ever understand.

you entrust your graphs and charts and papers to the process - you believe that even after you are gone, there will be work to be done. you believe that people will do it.

and into your hands, Lord, i entrust these mysteries of the faith

i put my faith in something that i have no way of knowing for sure and i live and die by it

that's my hypothesis. and i'm sticking to it until it's proven wrong

the thing with an astronaut is that, short of dying, you can't do a whole lot wrong.

you may not be a genius, but you will have glory

out there amongst the stars, proving something to everyone.

i am not an astronomer.

i am a biologist.

but i find my own little way to glory in the slow work of fixing little broken things.

of making something better than i found.

i sit in a containment lab running a test for what feels like the fifteenth time.

i don't know if it'll work.

i don't know what i'm doing.

i don't know if i ever will.

but i sit there.

and i hope for the work i do to bear fruit that does a little good

and while i wait for the chemicals and machines and tests to run their course

i talk to God.

you want to like loud noises.  

you keep on waiting for one to happen.  

you want an explosion, God damn it, you want a story to tell. 

you want to be worse enough to be better. 

that’s not news. 

but something is. 

you want a moment that changes your life 

but you wake up in the morning feeling like you can breathe again 

but you smile at strangers and babies and dogs and flowers and yourself, wide-eyed and apple-cheeked in the mirror 

but you wake up every day and you choose to keep listening  

for someone on the other end of the line. 

you say take-it-off-my-hands-Lord-i-entrust-myself-to-your-will 

and you mean it to the best of your ability. 

your encounter can come quietly. 

it is not the end of the world.  

you kneel at the foot of the cross 

and once a week you sit in a church with your head down 

and half the time you’re trying to pray like you’ve heard it done before 

and the other half you talk to Jesus like he wants to hear everything you’ve been up to 

and every time you say a rosary 

you feel something come unknotted in the bottom of your chest where your ribs stop meeting 

and it feels like your mom picking through a tangle in your hair 

something put right so gently you can barely feel it. 

you sit in cars laughing with people who want to be there 

and you play with babies  

and you make a real good cup of coffee 

you don't know everything, 

which is maybe a character flaw.  

it's up in the air. 

most things are.  

you are - hurtling though the whirlwind like Alice if she had been too scared to try the edibles 

and had settled for sitting quietly  

until the ground fell out from under her feet. 

you feel like you are going crazy, as a rough estimate, most of the time. 

your friends inform you that this is probably because you are. 

you look out at the river and you do not feel the cold on your skin  

and all you can see is 

a lamb, wounded. 

a bleeding heart on a dry hill under the desert sun. 

a promise that you've made a million times- 

one that you've decided 

(based on no evidence at all) 

that you’re keeping this time. 

one that you make to the sky  

and the altar 

and the blue pulse of the blood in your veins. 

He is. 

you are.  

the word pomegranate comes from the medieval latin for seeded and apple.

it takes between 83 and 500 apple seeds, crushed, to induce acute cyanide poisoning.

apples, of course, are just fine. it's the dose that makes the poison.

did you know that both apples and pomegranates came from the middle east?

did you know that my father majored in arabic in college but hasn't spoken it in 25 years?

did you know that i looked at you across the room in every single lecture? at the silhouette of your glasses on your nose, at your chin rested on your hand?

i hope not. i don't want you to know, but i keep telling you anyways.

you don't mind me yet - at least, i don't think so

(i'm bad at things like that)

but it always teeters on a fine line - i never know how much will be too much. i never know if you'll get sick of me.

the dose makes the poison. i'm a lot in large amounts.

i'm not good at being quiet

(as i am sure you have noticed)

but this one i'm keeping secret, for sure. this one i'm not stupid enough to let go.

because you see me enough. because it's more than you want already, i'm certain. because patience only stretches so far.

you don't need to know that sometimes, i think about you watching me peel pomegranates in the afternoon into a glass tupperware, the light flashing off of the seeds.

that i want, more than anything, for you to see me in the most ordinary light in the world and think that i'm beautiful.

that for once, i want a sweetness that doesn't stain my hands like blood. to not feel like a monster, great and terrible and wretched and begging.

some things you know won't happen.

i try not to think about you too much.

i stick to carrot sticks and celery.

i let pomegranate season pass me by.

after all, it's the dose that makes the poison.

i throw spaghetti at the wall. it refuses to stick.

i wonder sometimes if it's some kind of disorder in and of itself - that i cannot manage to stop eating.

that years of my mother's face next to mine in the mirror and the love of my friends and growing in divine grace have put up a safety i can't unlatch.

i resent it.

that doesn't mean it's a bad thing.

i don't see food as a god. but i do see it as holy.

i don't feel at home without warm lights in the kitchen and a little bit of clutter on the stove.

my mother cooks with love and so did her mother before her and so do i.

so does everyone else. a thousand traditions and love stories and cold nights wrapped up in index cards and recipe books.

i download a fasting app ten times and delete it after every attempt. it won't let me create an account. i check the newest reviews and they say it's gone completely defunct.

i don't know if i believe in god. but i do believe things work out if you trust them to.

as long as i can remember i have wanted to be worse

i have needed to be hurt enough for someone to see me

(i dreamt of someone noticing the thin scabs along my arms for all of seventh grade. it was never the right someone to finish the story.)

i have needed to be brave enough to be told i do not have to be

(i still dream of someone holding me while i cry. but i do not cry. i have no reason to.)

somehow i still fall short.

somehow, here i still stand alone. happy enough, healthy enough, functioning just fine.

good enough to keep around.

not good enough to want there.

i scurry along behind you like a lapdog and i wait for you to stop and turn around like a persistence predator.

i break my own heart and i blink up at you in the moonlight while i lick my wounds and none of it makes you see me as anything other than another contender in the room with you.

a yearning creates nothing of value.

i get jealous of the long drop down and the reports of layers visible in skin and the dwindling calories in blog posts

but i never try to reach it.

like misery and anguish are a teenage crush draped over another girl at a party.

like a teenage crush at your high school reunion twenty years on holding his wife's hand.

i think idly of a blade then the feeling wanes. i am too sensible to want to die anymore.

i don't know if it makes me a bad person. it seems like something a bad person would do. i say i care about this far more than i do.

you shoot me with a pellet gun and it hits me in the eyelid.

i wipe away my tears and i tell you I'm okay while you apologize

i smile. tears spill from my eye and the glow of the streetlight spreads out like a supernova in the fog of my vision.

i hope you will care enough to not believe me

i know you are too sensible to play along.

this is a game i play inside my head. you have no clue it exists.

you walk away reassured

like a wolf playing wounded, i get back on my feet.

i think of eyesocket injuries and blood bruises and permanent ocular damage.

i will blood to come to my eye and none comes.

i cannot seem to fall off my own feet.

i watch your silhouette like a bird drifting through the shadows in the red moonlight.

you do not look back.

i keep playing what-if and i follow you like i follow misery - at a careful distance.

the time keeps passing. the moon wanes.

nothing means as much when you do it.

i always have to feel like I'm doing something.

this is, technically, productivity.

this is, realistically, some kind of illness.

or at least the root of one.

hell, at least the root of a thousand.

i sit on your bed and smile at you and read your chemistry textbook instead of mine, your legs long under your stockings under your skirt.

you look like someone i could want with all i have.

you look past my head to the window behind me.

i can't be still in a crowded room, so i run my fingers through your hair. you're drunk enough to like me, or at least i convince myself you are.

you lay your head on my chest while we sit in the corner and i remember the whole time that I'm the only sober one at the party.

it feels like a sin to want you.

it feels like a crime to do things about it.

one should be worse and i can't tell which one, but i do it anyways.

i reread the same page a thousand times.

bad things happen to the people i don't quite love yet.

you spend ten hours a day learning about the slow formation of the earth.

i spend ten hours a day thinking thoughts I'll take to my grave about my hand tipping up your chin and your head resting on my thigh.

i spend another ten hours a day trying to do my penance in flashcards and math modules and lab guides.

i don't eat because you're there and i don't sleep because you're not. i don't know if i like you but i know that there is something wrong with me.

i send you long apologies you aren't sober enough to understand at midnight.

i avoid you at dinner and sit alone in my room with my chemistry homework.

i rip napkins to shreds while i chatter with your friends and don't look you in the eye.

i make two hundred biology flashcards the size of matchsticks and never use them.

i imagine your arms around me.

i get two weeks ahead in math.

i think about cutting for the first time since my fifteenth birthday.

i finish my homework early.

i don't know what I'm doing anymore, but it feels like something.

it has to count for something.

you don't look at an ex's social media in the afternoons

you look at it at night when despair settles over your small room like wildfire smoke

you don't talk to old friends

but you cry when you're just with the photographs.

so you'll forgive me, having been raised like this

for looking so terrified when you looked me in the eye and reached out and said you still needed me.

i did not realize i had become a ghost

always wanting more.

the inability to be satisfied when i could have more than what is.

and the thing with that is that sometimes it feels as though gluttony raises all want to need and raises all need with it

and in the absence of true priority the ranking forms from ease

i cannot satisfy my craving for success so i will satisfy my craving for love and i cannot satisfy my craving for love so i will satisfy my craving for attention and i cannot satisfy my craving for attention so i will satisfy my craving for hedonistic disgusts, food and empty afternoons and hollow noises twisting twisting themselves into false companionship.

i overfill one cup praying that it will trickle down into the rest and instead my body and mind become the drip tray.

i crave visibility- in its absence, i crave invisibility.

and of course, the overflow has its consequence.

the shame of what i become makes me afraid of being seen, and makes people regret seeing me.

with all this gone, who would ever trust themselves enough to reach higher?

i spend a lot of time waiting.

i have spent a lot of time waiting before.

i have never quite been sure for what-

love. the future. the past.

i sit on my bed in the dark

and i long

and i yearn

and i imagine

and outside the world is singing

it might be passing me by.

sometimes i thought that where i am now would be like that

that there was some kind of deep unbridgable gap between me then and what i would become

almost like imagining it would mean it could never come true.

it is not what i pictured

but it is.

i am here. i am changed. not as much as i would have thought.

i don't believe in miracles. but i believe that good things will happen when they need to. i believe that it turns out okay in the end.

i don't have a choice.

i spend a lot of time waiting.

and i know that whatever is coming won't be what i think it is.

i think there is something in my heart that is always going to be looking for you.

it's not that i still love you.

that would be far too easy-

and you should know by now i don't do easy. not when it comes to feelings. not when it comes to love.

i am the one dragging the fight with my mother that should have lasted 30 minutes out over a week.

so i shouldn't have been surprised

but neither should you.

i spend a lot of time looking at your reflection, i think.

sometimes you. just to check in.

but more often at my idea of you.

searching for what could have been. what could have been better.

there's nobody i can blame but me for my lack of closure, really.

i don't love you anymore, but there is something in my heart that needs you to love me back anyways.