Crossroad Door Monster

Recently, I thought I might check myself into a clinic.  Last week. Today.  The clinic I imagined is rather dull, not particularly colorful, nor is it brimming with life.  Or the clinic is inside of an enormous tree.  Or the clinic is in a cave.

I feel fire.

I’m not depressed, or suicidal; nor am I a danger to you.  But I imagine that in the clinic, I could let go of all of this, the bills and the dishes, the work and the needing to hold it all together.  The needing to be a mother above all—hold it together, be there.  I could have the time to reside in this new pain, this breaking open, this lonely.  I’ve a lid on it—it’s there at the surface but I cannot be in it.  This is why I’m that little bit crazy.  I’m in traffic and want to cross the road onto the sidewalk, I want the gas to the floor, I want the car in the air. I’m in traffic and want to scream, I can barely stay in my skin.  My being itches.

he’s got hay in his heart

Or the sun blinds me and then someone asks me how everything is going, how has the summer been, and I almost start to cry, I taste tears, but I don’t because they aren’t really asking and anyway, all of the crying will be about something that happened forty or thirty or three years ago, in another place with other people.

Todo se hace polvo

Have you tasted blood, have you smelled blood, what is that iron, that iron ring in your left shoulder.  What is that iron ring and how might we hook you up, contain you and keep you here.

A good deal of one’s baggage would appear to be not even one’s own

Once upon a time there was a girl.  The girl was at the crossroads where you can meet the devil if you are in the mood.  The world was there and the moon was blue.  A monster who was not a werewolf tapped her on the shoulder and she turned to him.  What he wanted were those same clouds they’d had once.  She turned away from him, turned back to the crossroads but it had vanished and there was the door.

That unbearable smell

That fucking chasm.

There are many ways to be held prisoner

Once upon there was a girl in a yellow dress with blood in her mouth.  She crossed through a heavy wooden door and when she reached to close it its teeth took her arm.  Just one arm.  She had another one left.

she is/my desolation

Remember loneliness, remember that city?  Ciudad.  I’m not there because it’s ashes.  I’ve eaten the ashes.

Kiss me

The girl had one arm and she spit red, blood was in her mouth and her other arm was tied.  That’s how it goes and no one will come because this is what it is.  The cold tiles on your feet or on your cheek because now you are lying on a bathroom floor.  You are vomiting and sometimes the blood from your stomach makes it into the toilet.  More often it does not but you don’t care because it is comforting to lie in one’s own blood sometimes.

you are searching the park for your name

Try it.

I was a study in ash

It is comforting and warm the tiles are cold and the girl is asleep.  The monster who is not a werewolf is in the sink and he reaches toward her hair, brushing strands away from her face, away from the bandages and the blood.  She sleeps more soundly now that he is watching.

How do you breathe now?

I’ve consumed the ashes and I’m at the end of things and you are at the beginning but it is OK because I’ve found my own monster.  My monster is here to hold me when I’m afraid, and to wipe the blood from my mouth.  You may be on the other side of a chasm but I don’t need you.  You are in another place in time.  You are at the beginning.  You are there and will be there.  A sort of torment.  But my monster is all I need.

 —

Quotes are by Paul Hoover, Anne Carson, Julie Carr, Janice Lee, Marina Tsvetaeva, Paige Ackerson-Kiely, Pistolera