Morning

Wake up.
The fish are dead, swirling, trailing white rot, circling, floating in the water, eyes dark and loose in their sockets.

Coffee.
My mouth is warm, lips hard, jaw set. I need to floss, shower, my armpits and crotch wet with night sweat and dreams…

murder, prison, warm red oozing from slashes and gashes, sinewy yellow inside, and again rot, cold hard cinder, grey dusty blocks stacked high around, all encompassing, enclosed, blue iron, solid smooth toothpick legs block my entrance, exit, glimpses of orgasm, pleasure in brown and purple, I am cavernous, empty and full of white creamy waste, chins and fingers searching, thrusting, and I explode…

Look out.
The fan arches in perfect semi-circles, blowing and sucking, vibrating on its pedestal neck, nothing but mouth and lungs and air. Outside sirens in the drizzly cool wail and scream for the Handmaid. They are coming for her red robe. They will leave her naked, without heart and she will lie heavy and thin, waiting. She has always waited, but she has no patience. She sees all the minutes of my life rolled into a rubber band ball bouncing on dirty hardwood floors, polished by feet and paws and tears. There is no backwards, only forward, and together we wait without patience, without expectation, without hope for what comes in the afternoon. There is no comfort in routine, only restlessness, and the night brings no rescue.

I am beautiful.
A blank sheet of recycled paper, wrinkled, balled up and thrown away, perfectly wasted, unnoticed in the basket.

I quake.
Spin and land with my finger on a country whose name I can’t pronounce. I want to go there, see the people, help them, die for them, watch them yellow and fade, crispy before my eyes. The Earth ages, grows wise, and sees all. She knows what is wrong, what eats us, what kills the fish and leaves them to swell in the water. She sees us running and pushing, yelling with our eyes squeezed shut, hands pressed over ears. I wish I had two more to hold my nose and cover my mouth. Two more to press and shove and close the holes between my legs. Too many holes. Eight arms, eight hands, suffocating, keeping it all inside. Too much goes out, too much goes in. Faster and wetter because I can’t decide if it should stop or keep going. All I know is nothing. I am not helpful. I want to hurt you, especially. The wash cycle is quick and it leaves me dirty. The world is dirty and refuses to stop, keep spinning until you vomit, and then throw it away and do it all over again.


Don’t eat.
Don’t sleep, get the fish out, watch them spiral and circle to the right, the rot washes off.

Fuck you.
I hate this. I can’t learn and you never will. Not I, you, me, nobody. Like personalities all staring at themselves in a mirror, turn away and I am one again, just me, there is no I or you. Just me, to sit here and wait for something I doubt will ever happen. You tell me that I don’t care, but you do care and so does me. There’s nothing we can do but wait. And so we wait. In the morning wet and new, we wait for the afternoon to drive up and drop off night, home from college. We wait for this world, these people to grow up and find meaning, something, anything real, anything worth dying for.

No. Know.
No this. Know this. Know that I would shove it down your throat if I could, and watch it strangle you from the inside. I would sit and watch your eyes begging, your hands pleading. I sit and watch. I sit on my metal folding chair in the middle of the stadium and watch you fall to your knees, face purple, eyes bulging, neck cording and gasping and spasming. I sit and watch you die because you sat. You taught me to sit. I don’t know how to save you and I don’t want to learn.

Enough.
The fish scream, tiny wet screams through soggy wet lips. The fish scream and then all is silent. The world stops turning and all that is left is the fish tank, full of dead cold fish, neon coral, and the drunk skeleton man stuffed under gravel and held in place by the weight of the water.

I am clean.
I floss and pieces of food fleck out onto the mirror. I leave them there to watch what happens. Little guardians, sentinels, pieces of pizza crust, chicken nuggets clinging to the mirror. They’ve been ousted, flung, flossed, tossed recklessly from their homes into a strange sterile place. They will stay there, stuck to the mirror until cleaning day. Disinfectant, bleach, Windex and I wipe them away, flushed along with the fish, bubbling and burping until I’m finished.

A growl and I am finished.

10/11/05 eg