MEMORIES

i. I remember love. 

I remember love in the balance. My plump wrist risen in curiosity. Its weight held in the bosom of my body. The silhouette of my own arm against the blur of a ceiling I could not yet comprehend. My other arm clamped between my body and my mother’s body, a small fist whose fingers open and close in expectation. 

I remember moisture in the suction. My mother’s breast hanging on my open lips. A moment of stillness between shifts of bliss. A blanket of orange and pink pastels bleeds my memory. I remember quiet. The hinge of my wrist explored by malleable synapses, danced across a fresh brain. Twenty-eight is old enough to hunger for a child’s love. 

ii. I remember damage. 

I remember recoiling at the ejaculation of semen from my father’s erection. Eyes wide, surprise on the brow of a baby. I remember the exhale of a man and the smell of his spirit. Curiosity on the edge of a wound I could not yet comprehend. “What is that daddy?”

Five years is long enough to maintain fleshy membranes and fresh synapses. Five years is not long enough to callus and mold protection against the violation of a lifetime. Five years is too soon for secrets. “Do not stand in front of the window with the blinds open at night, naked.” Thirty years is old enough to know better. 

iii. I remember banging. 

I remember lying on the covers in the dark. Wondering why they were hammering in the street every night. I remember the beat of every blow in the distance. The men with their hammers in the street so clearly encapsulated in my tiny mind. When I am twenty I will learn it was the sound of my heart. So distant from my body I could not feel my heart’s pulse, powering my mind and breath — the mind that had been fresh and pink and plump and dancing. The mind that was at once callused and in caucus with its private army. Synapses slow and grey. The dance becomes a lightning storm. The storm guards the fleshy membrane. Twenty is too soon for regret. 

WOOD AND CANDY

I wish I could remember the first words ever spoken. Recalling remnants of a language louder than the lists of this lifetime. I want to reach into my liver and procure the first joyful sound that traveled through sludge. Liquor maims and molests my magnitude, sticking sick satisfaction up my ass with every dry heave. I prefer to crouch on the toilet. The way my bowels move is magnificent. The way men and women moved through my wounds with banality paled to the extravagance with which my parents propagated grief. If radical is of the root then I am returning, inhabiting the first words ever spoken by dust. Waste is propaganda spread to frighten you from the casualties of change. 

Keep asking why. The child is bathed in riches that were stolen from most of us. I know you are aware of wealth because of grave thefts in the mishandling of your own value. You were never a burden. They told you that you were bad with their eyes and the movements of their bodies. They lied to you. Nothing bad has ever happened here. Nothing bad has ever happened in your body. You are perfect but so were they. This is the gleam of authenticity that pervades your perception, your orbit reeling around the reality of these words. Every wound was meant to last. And we have held the movement of time, perfectly preserving pain by the fermentation of our flesh. I love you as in I see you, graciously accepting every fortunate fumble. 

Wonder winds me. My curiosity culminates in a collection of crude and inconsequential occasions. Corroding calluses could kill my sexy cynicism. What a waste. Do not underestimate the sanctity of sutures on a fresh wound. It’s hard to feel fresh after a while. We are all ugly sometimes. So many Sundays stomped on my stupid little spirit. I’m losing myself in the cold. These corduroy pants could not protect me from the cold snap slithering up my sleeves. Every time he told me to put on a sweater I wanted to pee on his face. He liked to tell me how bad he had it, that indifference would suit me more than indignation. He liked to put ideas in the air before my face, blowing them in my direction on the smoke of his cigarette. He liked to watch me wonder at potential, eternally enamored with what could be. I would inevitably crumble in time with the wood stove coals as I saw my own hope sweating off the side of his beer bottle. The string that suspended sly suggestions emerged in the foreground of my vision. I left my anticipation in the outhouse for him to shit on. 

Everytime my mother questioned her own strength I wanted to grab her ears with my teeth and blow spit in her mouth, screaming at the back of her throat, hoping my cries would arrive in her large intestine and crack the caked sediment of fear from her fragile femininity. She would radiate when given the opportunity. Never demanding space unless it could be captured from the fragile hands of a child. Smugly she would stumble with her own sexuality, fumbling temptation for anyone with eyes for her. I realized as my body began to bleed and my breasts began to bulge and my groin grew moist, mustering pubescent panic in my frontal lobe — I had been trained for a stage that could not be shared. If I had to be a whore I would not be hers. 

Wood and Candy creep up on my bank balance. Twelve bars and two bundles later I am almost ready to wrap up. I wish I could remember the first sounds uttered by organisms. They must have echoed off the edges of eternity without intention. How beautiful it must have been to never be perceived. Dust dances on each strip of plastic stacked in suspension above my bed. The windows leak wind and I am in myself. I will greet the lightswitch in the morning with grace.