—LIGHT’S ON BUT IT’S ALL BLACK AND WHITE
Aimless
Yesterday Russia shot a hypersonic missile at Ukraine while I sang Sam Fender in the shower. Amelia, the little Ukrainian girl, sang, too, Let It Go, to a crowd of family inside the shelter as a flock of birds swirled outside, aimlessly looking for a place to land.
Daddy’s Girl
My dead sister shows up unannounced, looking worn and haggard, like an old whiskbroom, like she’s a hundred years older than when she died at age nine. It’s only two years after that, and I’m eleven, which would make my sister the same age since we are twins and always will be, now that she’s still dead but standing in front of me.
“What’re you doing smoking that cigarette?” I ask, as she takes a long, definitive drag.
“These things’ll kill me, right?” she says, blowing a trio of halo rings up into the universe.
“It’s our birthday,” I say.
“You think I’d forget?”
“I haven’t seen you since—”
“I got you something, but it’ll have to wait.”
“Am I the only one who can see you,” I ask, “or can Mom?”
“Mom’s been sucking down vodka in her bedroom since dawn. The bottle’s half past empty.”
“How do you know that?”
“Come on, Sport, the Dead know things. We’ve got time on our hands.”
As my sister sways ever so slightly, her torso turns diaphanous, nothing but a patch of scratchy sunshine.
“I’m sorry about what happened,” I say.
Two more smoke halos wobble their way to the roof. “Sorry is a slick word, but I know you mean it.”
“They said you were the one with the ice pick, but I didn’t believe it.”
She blows a jagged halo, watches it slow climb like bound razor wire. “Maybe you should have believed, just this once.”
“But why would you kill Dad?”
This time she holds the smoke in her ghost-box lungs and says, “There are some things. Well, some things I should have told you that I didn’t.”
“But you killed yourself, I know that. I was the one—”
“—who found me. Yeah, sorry about that. I know it’s really fucked things up for you. It was supposed to be Mom. I wanted her to know what was what for once.”
“What was what? What’s that mean?”
“Think about it, Sport. What’d he always call me?”
It’s too smoky and there’s too much electricity zapping my cells to think, so I say the only true thing I can think of. I say, “I really miss you, Sis.”
She grins for the first time in years, wide as an island. “Silly Goose,” she says, “I’m right here. I’m always right here.”
“Really?”Å
“Pinkie Swear.”
“Then can you come to our party?”
Sis crushes the spent butt under her shoe, smiles and says, “Only if you let me blow out the candles.”
—I’M A GHOST OF YOU, YOU’RE A GHOST OF ME
Rocket Man
I fly to you through smog and panic, unbearable tightness, threaded ambiguity in the limbed wind, tossing me farther along, tripping over skyscrapers, glaciers and Mars, as I see-saw soar, me a man made up of discombobulated molecules, worries and triggers, bound by nothing more than a yearning stronger than life.
—THE BIZZIES ROUND US UP, DO IT ALL AGAIN NEXT WEEK
Ice Cream Sunday
It’s a blur of fact or fiction, your smeared lipstick, handcuffs in a purse, condoms clotted in a web, and each lick of the savage sun is a cheese grater on skin, while the taxis die like dinosaurs and a little girl on the corner drops her cone by the curb in order to wave.
—I WAS THERE WHEN THE RAIN TAPPED HER WAY DOWN YOUR FACE. YOU WERE A MIRACLE.
True Romance
When My Depression elopes with a hermit crab, I have no qualms whatsoever, but I also have no name for it.
The Hermit and My Depression honeymoon on a choppy Central American coast, but quickly decide to buy a cozy, sea cave condo where the two of them take turns lovingly interrogating each other, letting the salt water douse their doubts and quibbles.
Whenever My Depression starts to fold itself, cowering under an impressive volcanic rock, The Hermit scuttles over to My Depression, eyes piping hot-black and full of anticipation.
The Hermit says, Darling, Sweetheart, Light of my Life, we’ve been through all this before. The best way to shake it is to stand up, move, call someone, turn on a light.
All My Depression hears or sees, though, is The Hermit gnawing on sea bubbles, words coming out as Bloop Bloop Bloop.
The Hermit goes on, legs feeling a little rubbery all of a sudden: For God’s sake, I know we don’t have cellphones down here, or light switches, but the experts know what they know because they’re experts!
Bloop Bloop Bloop-bloop, is what My Depression hears.
The Hermit tosses a nonexistent lock of hair off its shell-skull, continuing, I admit I’m confused, and disappointed, again. Is it all right to share this? After all, we’re betrothed.
The word betrothed makes My Depression see a sheet of black migraine sprockets.
Remember when we first met, how we frolicked in the sticky sand, so connected and in-tune? It made me feel like I’d swallowed the sun. I’d never been so happy.
My Depression yanks on its eyebrows like a bored simpleton, and when nothing gives, My Depression does a vicious jerk to its head of sea hair, pulling out a clump, bloody roots floating away with the tide.
What I’m saying, The Hermit says, is it seems like you’ve changed,
Bloop.
What I’m saying is, I don’t know if we’re working out together anymore. As a thing, I mean. A couple.
Bloop Bloop.
Now The Hermit has a hard time looking My Depression in the eyes, yet still manages to say, It’s probably me, not you, though it sure seems like, in this case, it’s all you. I’ve collected circumstantial evidence to prove it.
My Depression tilts its ear in the direction of its other ear but merely hears, BloopBloopBloopBloopBloop.
The Hermit throws up its faux claws, which are really more like stumpy toenails painted black, and says, You’re not saying Jack. Where are your words, Depression? Talk to me. I need to know how you feel.
Bloop.
Okay, that’s it. I can’t do this anymore, even though it’s only been something, like, 19 hours.
Bloop.
Last chance, Depression. Kiss me like you mean it. Like you really mean it. If you do, well, maybe there’s still hope for us.
The soles of My Depression’s pruned feet start to twitch and shake, sand coiling up from the bottom of the sea cave, as if unleashing a spirit, a sea sprite, or just a regular old-fashioned genie.
Although it’s not My Depression at all, but rather a succession of enormous slaps, each as large as castles, beating down from above.
Tsunami!
The Hermit is blinded by swirling bits of grit and broken shells.
Shit! I can’t see! We’re fucked!
Darkness and ugliness are My Depression’s best friends, two pals he can tell anything to, and he’s unbothered by the ruckus.
My Depression sways through the broiling murk, finds The Hermit choking on nasty sea detritus, and performs a slick Heimlich maneuver. Before The Hermit can say Thanks or Bloop, My Depression takes The Hermit’s hand firmly, and like sleeping otters, the pair float through a seam in the sea cave, drifting past their hometown surf, past the Pacific and Atlantic and Adriatic and Indian oceans, past every sea in the world, and any others yet to be imagined.
—NOTHING LEFT TO FIX, NOTHING LEFT TO SAY
Very Cold People / Sarah Manguso
Of all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these: It might have been.
I pitied the teacher for assuming I was like the other children.
I wanted to challenge the world to break me. I wanted to explain that I was not yet broken.
His kindness was so potent, I could barely breathe.
I hadn’t known that rule. There must have been others I’d been breaking all that time.
I couldn’t admit to the power of my desire, I had to figure it out first in private, before I could uncover it in public, but I never figured it out.
She had to be careful. If anyone found out she loved me, we’d both be in trouble.
She had been parented too well, made into a perfect person.
Some people wore their differences honestly, but my parents were liars.
She wanted me to know I wasn’t fooling anyone. She wanted me to know I was ugly. She was helping me get ready for the world.
It was as if getting the weeds pulled weren’t the point. It was as if our sitting together on the grass were the point. It felt good.
Everyone eats a peck of dirt in their life.
You can learn to eat violence. I dedicated myself to teaching my bully just how much a person can consume.
My mother, she was the protagonist of everything.
My mother taunted me about my death books, but I didn’t stop reading them.
I held my breath. If and left the room, I would be admitting that something was happening, in front of me, but if I stayed and ignored it, there was some small possibility that it wasn’t happening, that it hadn’t happened and never would. So, I stayed.
As I stood there shuddering, my mother looked at me with hateful joy.
I thought that maybe it was wrong to be that loudly happy, and that she was trying to protect me.
I was simply a person who had nothing to share, nothing worth sharing.
I was surprised that she knew me. I’d thought I was invisible.
My anger surprised me. I hated her, and I didn’t know why.
What happened to her was too horrible to say, so she never said it.
She looked like a girl who doesn’t know what she looks like.
In Her Skin
“You’ve stopped talking altogether,” I say.
So, she points.
“It’s okay,” I say. “You can take the mask off now.”
So, she points again. Where the ear straps once were, there are now twisted black barbs permanently stuck in her skin.
“If you love me, you’ll say something.”
She points to the top, bottom then the sides of the mask where those same spider barbs have been sewn deep in her skin.
“So, this is it?” I ask. “We’ll never speak again?”
