Taste for Rot

This sentence is taken from page 81 of my novel Fish in Exile. "It," obviously, is referring to my life.

I walked up the hill the way a man would, my limbs punishing space. Figs, then ants, then glass beneath my feat. A bodysuit left behind in overgrown grass. I clutched no phone, knifed no key between my fingers. The sun dimmed to night. No need to position myself in front of buildings with cameras. No bounds, no shape defined me. Wind moved leaves against each other. A figure walked toward me and I walked toward the figure, two eyes watching as I turned to climb the steps up to my house—I didn't care. A package at my door I'd forgotten to expect. Inside: a stainless steel wand. I'd seen the object before, but couldn't place why it was for me. I turned it over in my hands. The Face Eraser, I read, yields best results when stored in the freezer, then rolled across trouble areas morning and night. I read the copy until I remembered who I am.

Death is long. It grows. I measure my death's shadow against the doorframe give it a pencil tick for each flash of grim the world writes. My parents tried. They gave me a room with a lock on the outside, a mirror on the wall. I want to say never about a lot of things. I want to say better. I watch an orca beach herself at SeaWorld and feel the violet waters of the sound contracting in me, my death growing. it's not my death's fault that for every cage something is caged. That boys will be bad meat, and girls thrown behind dumpsters. I'm afraid by the time I make a life my death will be the new Midwest, like the forever of Kansas, where there are roadside lookouts you can climb but the only thing to see are other looksouts and all the death between them and the death before that, knowing you must somehow make room for life.

How the decisions are made.

until I break the French press again.

before me, the world hard to think of the world bitter, round can't wait to be dead watch it move from above see if be romantic without me

anywhere you walk men are staged. lifting heavy boxes staring at your body and thinking about porn. not sex. porn. the act of porn. Christine sells tickets down at the porn theater. the tickets only cost $2. there are men in suits having important conversations. i think about their hearts. i spy on them. i spy on porn. i follow it. i need to be stopped. Christine loves to tell porn stories. she's really good at them. she sits all day in a glass booth. she trades a pack of cigarettes for a break. i take a long walk through a maze of boxes. it's a threat to be here. i think Christine should hang out with the women at the bar. they all want pleasure too. i'm waiting to find the time to call this boy back. it's dramatic on the floor. curled around my record player. staring at the phone. i should really call my mom back. Christine is eating food. she's talking about porn with her mouth full. she's talking about johns with her mouth full. bright lights fill the streets. an old john took Christine to a ball game once. he left half way through for a porn emergency. she's obsessed with him. i'm still trying to figure out what i like about sex. on the street i see lots of dead fish. gutted. gutless. no heads. pink inside.

Nonbelievers.