Erasure.

I've been dodging phone calls. Things just got so... much, and I let things slide. I let myself let things slide. The bank's been calling, and at first I didn't know who it was so I didn't answer. Then, I forgot to call back. And now it's been three weeks, or four, and they've given up. I breathe a sigh of relief, because my chest constricts a bit when my phone rings. Not so much as it used to, you know, before I became experienced in the art of evasion. I kind of hope that the mood will strike me to call back, or pick up if they call again. "I'm so sorry," I'll say. "I was out of the country and didn't have a phone." Anyway, I don't think it was important. I hope it wasn't.

This is, though. This is something that I shouldn't have let myself convince myself that it isn't important, because it's the one talent that I haven't given up on honing. It's what I'm good at, it's what I want to do. Supposedly. It's the direction of my life, and I slid away from it. I didn't notice it happening, really. Didn't let myself. What does that mean for me?

I can't choose another path. I don't think I want to. But I give up the things that I want for myself, because in doing so I'm not letting anybody down. Everything else just swells, is so pregnant with should and have to, imminent disappointment, impending failure, it eclipses. Everything. All I can remove from my accountability.

And I disappear.

In which there is an update.

This happened:



Dunno. Shit's been writing itself lately. I've got a longer (and way better) one coming along, so it'll be up in the next week. Not in love with this one, really, but it has sentimental value. Maybe I'll work on it some more at some point.

Saturday nights in neon lights, Sunday in the cell.

I have endeavored, until now, to write and draw beautiful things: effervescent phrases; the darkest of which were eyes closed against the sun. Beautiful things. This is where it gets ugly. This is when the sun goes down, and it comes up again only through the bars of a prison cell. The night starts here.

--

The boot flew across the room. It left a smear as it hit the wall, printing it with mud. I untied the other, yanking the laces out of the holes without thought for once again having to re-thread them, even though knew that I would. Re-thread the laces. Through the holes. Hurriedly. Late for something. Wishing I had left them alone. I would tie my boots after I threaded them and put them on my feet. I would wear them to work, to school, over pants, under a skirt, every day, the soles would wear, and I would replace them.

I threw the second one across the room too. Harder, at a wall made of cement. If it had been made of drywall and cracked with the force of my throw I would have torn the wall apart until my fingers bled. Instead, I punched it. Heard my bones crack. My knuckles came away without skin. I dragged them across the wall, slowly, leaving bloody streaks above the mud from my boots. It was wet, and my blood was wet, and I mixed them together until the mud on the wall until the blood from my hands made a fingerprinted set of swirls, and it was brown, and my blood was camouflaged by the mud in swirls that were brown, with no evidence of human suffering, and my palms were filmed with mud. My knuckles were clean. Except for my blood. It ran to my elbows. It dripped on the floor. It wasn't that bad. I wasn't lightheaded. I could mix it with mud, and the dirt that collected from my shoes, and that would make it invisible.

En Inglés con Español, y entonces en Español con Inglés.

¿Qué es la significa de una araña con siete piernas?

The spider was first on the bathroom ceiling, small enough to tolerate. She stayed overhead until Thursday, when she was on the wall near the mirror. It was there that I realized her strange asymmetry was not due to longer forelegs but to the absence of one; she had only seven. Tenía sólo siete.
A strange condition, for a spider. They do not live particularly perilous lives; predatory, sure, but their prey, unlike most carnivores, cannot bite or kick or maim. I concluded that she must have been born with the defect, because I cannot think of an injury that she could have sustained that would have altered rather than ended her life.
Pero, ¿qué es la significa? It feels meaningful. Something with nature, and accidents, and overcoming obstacles. But the pressing feeling is pregnant with this: she does not know that she is missing. Her gait is altered, but from one that is not hers, and has never been. She does not limp; her back leg has become front and she pulls more than propels. That is all.
Una araña con siete piernas no sabe la significa de siete. Entonces, no hay significa.

What is the meaning of a spider with seven legs?

La araña estuvo primera en el techo del baño, bastante pequeño tolerar. Ella se quedó en lo alto hasta el jueves, cuando ella estuvo en la pared cerca del espejo. Allí realicé su asimetría extraña era no porque de las piernas más largas, pero de la ausencia de una; ella tenía sólo siete. She had only seven.
Una condición extraña, para una araña. Ellas no viven vidas en particular peligrosas; predador, sí, pero su presa, a diferencia de la mayor parte de carnívoros, no puede morder o dar patadas o mutilar. Concluí que ella debe haber nacida con el defecto, porque no puedo pensar en una herida que ella podría sostenido lo que habría cambiado pero no terminado su vida.
But what is the meaning? Siente significativo. Algo con naturaleza, y accidentes, y obstáculos de vencimiento. Pero el siente está embarazado con esto: ella no sabe que ella falla. Su paso es cambiado, pero de uno que no es suyo, y nunca ha sido. Ella no cojea; su pierna trasera se ha hecho delantera y ella tira más que propulsa. Es todo.
A spider with seven legs does not know the meaning of seven. Therefore, it has no meaning.

Nostalgia... Smelly, smelly nostalgia.

The fraternity and sorority houses on the East side of High Street all have hilled front yards. There are small flights of steps from the uneven, laid-brick sidewalk to each porch and the metal railings, hinged together like plumbing pipes, reminded me yesterday of home. My red house in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was where I grew up until I was eight, and when I went back to visit a year later it seemed so much smaller than it ever had when I was living there. The new owners had let my mother's flowerbeds wilt and die. Everything was different.

It had a small stairway with a pipe railing. Or, maybe, it didn't. I remember that railing from somewhere. The way my hand smelled after touching it is what threw me back, even though I didn't touch any of the railings of the frat houses as I walked home. Maybe there was such a railing at Jacobus Park, where my father or sister cast into the pond and snagged my thumb with their fishing hook as I stood behind them. Him. It had to have been him, or my mother, because my sister would have been too young to be casting a fishing rod tipped with a sharp piece of metal. It had a yellow top. I remember that. The piece of plastic where you tied it onto the fishing line was yellow.

I don't remember the important things: what it was like living in Milwaukee, what my house looked like, who was with me that day in the park. I remember smells. After running my hand all the way down the metal railing, my palm would be cold, and smell like an old penny. I often have the compulsion to smell things. It's not something I think about, and I have a way of doing it discreetly. I smell my boyfriend's laundry to see if it's too dirty to wear again. I inhale the drinks I make as a barista, to check whether I put the correct syrup in or to investigate a new flavor combination. And every once and a while, I'll turn a corner and a smell will hit me full in the face, out of nowhere, with no reason or provocation. I have to stay and try to place it, to identify it, but smells are funny that way. You can't always find the name for what it is or who you were with or when you first inhaled. Or why. But there's memory there, always, and I always am transported somewhere to a time I can't name.

¡Una poema del catálogo más!

New catalog poem! I have a lot of words from the latest Anthropologie, so they'll be coming for a couple more posts.



(it's one of my favorites!)

As far as el español en el título goes, I'm trying to practice my Spanish... just bought One Hundred Years of Solitude and The Little Prince in Spanish and The Little Prince on tape. Trying to prepare for my trip to Costa Rica this summer, so open Free Translation, bitches!

A tiny poem, more to come!

More catalog poems! In celebration of the warmer weather; looking forward to both the events of summer and the season itself. Here is one for now, three or four more to come over the next couple of days: