22.2
You mailed me a package with a note that said a person’s boots are the most intimate thing someone can own because they take the imprint of the body. On the other side you scribbled “Wherever I seat myself I die in exile”
15
Today I opened my email (well not really today, this was when my usernames still had words like ‘punk’ and ‘babe’ in them) and there was a little blond boy with the same gray eyes and a note that said “He looks nothing like me and everything like you – what a punishment.” The doorbell rang and I expected to find him at the door but this isn’t the movies and when I got back upstairs I realized I didn’t even know his name but my reply bounced back. I guess I never will and you won’t either.
11
You fed me ecstasy and popped my shoulder back in its socket so I wouldn’t have to go to the hospital. While I writhed on the floor you drove J’s truck into a church and punched a cop.
12
I got tired of competing over who could sleep with more of the other’s friends. ******* it even when I started ******* girls and doubled the pool from which I fished you got lazy and started on my ex-boyfriends and all I could think was “When did I start sleeping with gay guys?” But this was before we knew about more options than just gay or straight and I never thought about how maybe it was Freud who said we are all a little bisexual or pansexual or something like that
14
I was mad, both crazy and angry, when I saw the needles and the black and blue an association with T. D. J. W. W. sometimes hyphen R. produced. How pretentious to have that many names. Sometimes the explanation is worse than the action.
13
You broke into my (our) house in the middle of the night and these are the things you took: bedsheets, toilet paper, every flannel item on the second floor, grandma’s jewelry (mine, not yours, and she just died too) all the money in my piggy bank, *****, eggs, milk, cheese, actually all the food in the fridge, the **** you gave me for Christmas, the car keys but not the car, the prickly green welcome mat and one of the goldfish. Why wouldn’t you just take them both? The name Fishn Chips only works when they are both there, it doesn’t make sense with only one.
14.2
I think this was the first time I saw a grown man cry. How clichéd.
21
I don’t have to pretend to like coffee anymore and when I drink I inhale it deep until brown sludge threatens to invade my lungs. People say I look absolutely euphoric and once I said “Yeah it’s the only thing I learned from T” but that’s a lie because you also taught me how to pop security tags off clothes with a rubber band and what to do if you need to take certain things to or from Canada. Whenever I see a California area code I still don’t answer the phone. We haven’t spoken in years which I find remarkable considering how few I have accumulated and how few you have left. I saved the message you left me from the night you found that kid and I feel weird because the panic in your voice reminds me of when we got in trouble for things much less severe and it sort of makes me happy.
17
Oh how orange suits you (har har har). D says he thinks this will really straighten you out. This makes me laugh because I remember how you secretly like to sleep with the same boys as me. Then he leans over to a stranger, points to me, and says “That’s my only kid…a girl.” I don’t think we are coming to visit again.
10
The holler traps gasoline in the air and I imagine when coal trucks dominated these one lane roads it recycled dust the same way. You drank so much moonshine you swore you felt the mountainside breathing. Then you went blind for five days. When your eyes regained focus you drove my four-wheeler off the road and your leg burned pink and slick. A snake bit my left heel but no one noticed because they thought you would need skin graphs and you had such beautiful legs.
22
You sent a Christmas card to everyone and you were all the buzz at dinner even though I’m going to college and bought presents with my own money and J – forever your defender – says I should be comfortable in my achievements and you need a little more give and I made everyone at the table awkward when I told them that was exactly the sort of attitude that got you where you are now.
19
J and I went looking for you when you stopped calling for money. Two pounds for each inch we found your skin stretched tight over bones and while I coaxed the dirt from your hair you explained the proper way to tie an arm so a vein doesn’t burst. I can’t think of a single thing to tell anyone I know about you, so I don’t. I can think about all the speeches I would like to give to you – eloquent deliveries about what a selfish ******* you are. How you promised to pick me up and it was winter and I was so cold and embarrassed no one had come for me so I waited outside and walked to the store fifteen minutes away to use the pay phone and then walked back. Or how I insisted on saving my graduation ticket for you because you said you would come back to the state but then you never showed and called me ****** and still in California claiming it was February. I realized you were just like my dad and I cut all my hair off.
8
I was confused about how someone could live with us but not be related. When a birth certificate was just a piece of paper before you pushed me in front of a car but after you busted my face open – the definition of “taking it on the chin.” I still think you killed my cat.