Toast

You can’t find the lighter you say,

You need a lighter for your cigarette. 

So you grab the toaster, take it into the bathroom,

And I sit in the rocking chair and watch TV, a story

About the mundane horrors of polygamy.

Somewhere in my head, I know what’s happening,

That you took your shirt off, that you needed a

Fucking toaster in the bathroom

And a spoon

And a needle. 

Forty-five minutes, still an amateur. 

You come out and I grab your arm,

Keep my face in check, keep my jaw from dropping

At the giant, mean welt on your arm,

Ridged dents where you tied a belt to make your vein pop.

Your eyes rolling, your skin wan and sad.

I can’t look at you. 

And I never want to again. 

Be that broken winged bird that can walk away

Nemesis

I'm tired of her too.
All smiles.
Always offering golden anecdotes,
Take one of these and I'll call in the morning,
Wink, wink.
But she never calls, does she?
The phone as silent and estranged
As her heart.
Comfortably encased in a durable, metal cover
So that if you happen to drop it,
never a crack will you see,
no new calamity,
only the mask that is she
Never the frigid, lost me.  

I simply do not have a poem to sum up the last week or so.  I have been trying to write exclusively through poetry...to remember things, but there is too much.  My car was wrecked AGAIN.  I kid ran a red light, hit my brand new car, and of course, of all the driver's on the road to hit my car, this kid had no insurance.  So, the great news is that I now have to come up with another fucking $1000!  That's my deductible...and I just scrambled and borrowed $2868 for this car in the last three months..  I have had no money for gas or food, but have had this goddamn car that just got smashed into useless strips of metal and plastic all over the road on Sunday night.  The good news for everyone else is that I am fairly certain that I am the convergence center for much of  human population's bad luck.  I am saving others from a lot of heartache and ruin by taking it on for them.  A quick run down of the last three years:

• Mercury Sable over heats; no one can fix it; am stranded on the freeway at least a dozen times, usually during a snowstorm
• Got rid of Sable.  Nice friend gives me 94 Honda.   
• Honda overheats as well.  No one seems to know how to fix it.  Am stranded on the freeway multiple times, usually during surging summer heat waves.  
• 94 Honda is stolen, along with a blank check that will shortly be rejected by my bank written for $1500.  Subject: housecleaning.  
• Adam loans me various cars, the he sells overnight while I am sleeping so that I wake up and have no way to get to work.  
• Decide to purchase vehicle that will never leave me stranded on the freeway.  Paid much money.  One month later, a giant rock hits my windshield.  
• Two months after that, Adam borrows car, gets high, totals car.  
• Buy new car, but insurance won't cover all of the old car-because of "excessive soiling on carpets" where Adam spilled his fucking food during his heroin excursion.  Still fighting the claim.  
• Dealership asks for additional $1600
• Finally get license plates after three months of waiting because of insurance problems!  
• Three days later, eighteen year old kid with no insurance hits my car.  Car rendered UNDRIVABLE.  

And all this, this is just the car part of my life.  Lest I mention the deaths of my brother and nephew, the homelessness, the face punch, the various names and police calls by out-of--his-mind-Shane (ex husband).  The heroin addiction crisis (not mine), the re-involvement with Adam, who despite everything single horrid thing he does, will forever be the love of my life.  All the other things...just too much.  This year, 2014, though utterly fucking heinous, still spotted with some headway.  Some of the moments have been some of the happiest of my life.  Those moments with Adam and Max and the kids....a piece of comfort and amenity.  

Yeah.  Fuck that.    

Wolf

You eat me from the inside

Chew into my flesh

Until I am a listless heartbeat

Beating for you; bleeding for you;

Weeping for you;

In a vast, black void

Waiting for you to

Enter me, cum in me,

Fill me 

Make me alive again

For a smoldering moment

Send me back into the void,

Cadaverous deadlands,

A lone black wolf

Hungry, starved

Poised to devour whatever

Comes my way.   

Painter

There is nothing wrong

With lifting your face

Towards the scorching sun

And screaming

Until your pain streaks the sky

Because

The price you put on me

Couldn’t purchase a loaf of bread

In the best of times

In the worst of times

It couldn’t purchase a slice. 

Because

I turn lovers away at the door

While you grimace over my shoulder

Patting my back. 

Aren’t we happy? 

Because

You are.  EXCEPTIONAL. 

And I am

Exceptionally aware.  

How many times have I pulled out of your driveway

Unable to stop my chest from aching?

This dull ache….

I don’t know why it never ceases. 

We don’t look at each other. 

Just hand off our forlorn son,

Much like a wilted head of cabbage. 

Our son, with clear, confused eyes,

Our sad, somber trophy.

And if ever I could traverse the space of time

I would readily reclaim

That first delicate kiss

you so tenderly bequeathed.  

Cockroach

I survive

And sometimes that means following

The musky scent of rats

And congregating with roaches

But I stay alive

And am not entirely uncertain

I wouldn’t eat you if I had to.

Tracks

You’re there again

Choking on your disease

Black tar tracks and raw red mounds

Pickling your arms

And you’re grinning at everyone

On a tenacious rerun:

“I am doing great.  Things are going so good.”

High on your own ego

High with your pernicious demon

That kills you a little more each time.

And I ache for you. 

I’ll die with you.

Be left standing alone

Hating every single memory you left behind.  

All you desperate poets

Diligently searching for the perfect words

To describe your solitude, melancholy, the knives, the cuts,

Hopelessness, hatred, despondency, disease,

Famine of the Soul. 

But to me, depression is about

Hitting snooze twenty times on your alarm clock

Because getting out of bed is just….

Too.  Fucking.  Hard.  

Blunt Trauma

It’s that tone you take with me.

As if I am a telemarketer or

Your bloated cousin. 

I can stop talking if you want. 

Let the quietness drown out the pretention

And in the transparent lull

I can fully perceive

How empty your heart is..  

Color BLIND

I am white. 

If that made you cringe,

Then you won’t hear my voice

That is as inflamed, violent, as subdued and

Melancholy as yours. 

Just like you,

I traveled over flammable mounds of garbage,

In impenetrable alleyways.  I have heard the howls of

hopelessness and felt the impregnable void of loneliness. 

I too moved in a world constructed only for somebody else

and learned to navigate the darkness. 

Except,

I’m not really white.

Are you still listening? 

I am African. I am Latina.  I am Eskimo, Polynesian, Chinese, Mulatto,

I AM.

All of you.  

I’m a mistake cloaked in compassion,

I linger in your hallways, inhale your musky scent;

Cigarettes and oil;

I swallow your leftovers and amble in your stilted shadows;

Your anointed nymph, forever waiting

For your recovery.

But she waits too, with needles and tar.

A spineless debutante, caressing you with necrosis  

Replete with corpulent tranquilizers,

Unconditional numbness and love.

She’s a lumbering beast

With a fistful of pills and rancor.

And I understand

Why you choose her.       

In my homelessness, I have made another bad, but desperate, choice.  I ended up staying with Adam for a few days.  He went to jail (again) and when he got out, he needed help, so I said I would help him.  I paid for the registration for his car and got insurance on it.  Then, somehow, I ended up staying there for about 5 days.  And some of it was nice and the rest was absolute pain.  That type of pain that aches like an ulcer in your chest and makes you cry.  He doesn't come around me, ignores me, sometimes acts like I am just a nuisance actually, makes me feel very very bad about myself.  And last night I was there and I was helping him with a job interview for the next day and while we were on the computer a message pops up from the LADY IN THE SKY Alexis.  What does he do?  He shuts off the computer so i can't read anything and no we are not together and no it shouldn't even bother me but it did.  Very much.  So much I couldn't sleep.  I started thinking about how much he never even speaks to me unless he has to and is not attracted to me anymore and that ulcer pain just comes and overwhelms me.  I just thought over and over "you have to get out of here.  You just have to leave."  But if felt stupid really because I had nowhere to go.  Around 2:30 in the morning, I just picked up my stuff and left.  And he saw me leave through the window and I haven't heard a word from him which is just what I expected and in so many ways I just feel better.  I slept in my car in a couple of different parking lots and cried a lot and thought about that bridge by the Gateway center that lets you stand on the rails and how easy that would be, just to fall straight into the ground and not feel this terrible emptiness anymore.  At one point, I did fall asleep and when I woke up a half hour later, I thought "I feel so much better now.  So much better."  And then for some reason the pain hit me even harder all at once and I cried until my cheeks hurt and that chest ache surges with cries like that.  So I just stayed there and then when it was 7:45 I went to work thinking that it's not that I really want to be dead, I just don't wan to be alive.
And that is what Adam does to me.  Every.  Single.  Time.  

Here I go again, in the hopes that no one I know is actually reading any of this.  I just need a place to go to spill out all of this bad stuff.  This weekend was horrible.  I had no money and had Max with me and on Friday I had bought Max food but by Friday night my brother had eaten it all.  So this weekend, and in truth, I can barely remember the weekend, only that it was full of a lot of sleeping and hunger.  And poor Max, poor Max.  I did make sure he had something, but in thinking back I am not even 100% sure of anything I did at all.  We went camping with Andellyn and her boyfriend.  I remember that.  Just a fire pit and marshmallows and Max did like that because he wanted to go again.  But other than that, I just did nothing.  Yesterday I didn't have enough gas to get to work and so was going to take the train...but I missed the train by about one minute and I brilliantly just decided not to go to work at all.  And I slept in my car all day.  I mean all day.  At one point I used what was left in my checking account; $1.76 and bought a bean burrito and coke.  And then I slept some more.  My whole body hurts today from head to toe.  But I went home and my brother and sister in law had managed to come up with food somehow and they fed Max but I was mad because I had bought him food that should have lasted.  It doesn't matter.  I went home last night and took a sleeping pill and couldn't sleep.  Was awake all night and aching and was on that couch with Max and what would I do without Max...but I think I am depressed, know that I am because I just don't care much about anything at all.  Everything is getting to me, every little mistake and I am afraid every time I leave, even just to the bathroom, because my boss gets upset when I leave and I hate this job actually.  And I find very little enjoyment in it, but then that applies to almost everything right now.  My stomach hurts again but if I leave, if I leave, my boss will know.  The last time I did I came back and she was standing over my desk.  Just while I went to the bathroom because my stomach is a mess.  My head is a mess.  I thought I had already hit rock bottom, I did hit rock bottom, and this is just another bottom not quite as close as the other bottom.  But worse than at other times, is that I have no real friends.  Kurt was my friend and he is the very one who put me in this place this time.

I know I should try to write on this blog when things are maybe not so horribly bad but the only time I feel like writing, like really writing about my life, is when things are horribly bad.  Today I am feeling low.  Desperate low.  I am homeless right now.  Kurt and I got into a big fight and he said that he wanted me out of "his" house (can I capitalize, italicize, cap and bold the word "HIS" because that's what he did during our argument).  He said his son was coming into town and he didn't want him sleeping on the floor, you know, the floor where Holden has been sleeping for the last nine months.  And that his son said that HIS house was too crowded and a bunch of other stuff.  Ultimately in the argument Kurt called my mother a dumbass alcoholic, my father a drug using loser and my sister a total whacko.  And even if all those things are true, he should not have said them.  I did not at any time insult him personally or talk about his family. I did, however, throw my diet coke in his face (I still gush when I think about that.  That was lovely).

Last Thursday I moved my stuff out then drove my Mia and Holden to Arizona to stay with my family.  Eric is with his dad and then there is the nightmare of Adam which is too much to go into right now (but Alexis basically kidnapped Max on his birthday and Adam was high on oxy.  Great day!)  So, when I got back from Arizona I had no where to go.  I had Michael with me and my dad hates Michael so he wouldn't' take him.  So we drove around to about 5 parks, Michael, Max and me, and it was a very difficult day.  Michael ended up going with his dad and I went to my brothers.  It's been hard.  I cant' really take a shower and I can't shave my legs and I am taking pills so that I can sleep.  Then this morning on the way to work a giant rock hit my windshield and my windshield is shattered.  And i am broke. And scared.  And homeless and sad and then my boss said that i was dressed inappropriately today.  Michael keeps sending me texts about how he is crying himself to sleep every single night.

I keep hoping things will get better and for a moment they do.  And then it comes crashing back down. Today I have those bad feelings, the ones that seem to bury me deep.  The worst thing about it is that there is so little, so absolute little, I can do.  I know things have been worse, but not much worse.  Maybe not worse.
Most importantly, I HATE KURT.  I will never, not ever, speak to him again.  And if it happens that I have to, certainly I will never fake the pretense that I am with him, care about him or respect him.  He has been telling me for the last five months that he doesn't have enough money for toilet paper.  For nothing.  But when I stopped by there on my way back from Arizona, his cupboards were full of food.  He had everything.  He is a liar. And to think that he still wanted us to be together, to date, saying he loved me and I was family.  To be fair, I never loved him and I have always known that.  

I was working in the library, checking in a book about Lou Gehrig, thinking about how I would never read a book about Lou Gehrig, when a man leaned over, nearly touching my ear with his lips. 

“Did you know that a pig's orgasm lasts for 30 minutes?”  I jerked up quickly, almost hitting my head on the man’s chin.  He was about 40 years old, dark green eyes and stood looking at me with a half-cocked grin. 

“Oh yeah?  And how long does a horse’s last?”  I asked the man.  He laughs.  I know I should be offended, I should leave or call somebody but he is funny and peculiarly brave and I can’t walk away from that.   

“I’m Joe.  You’re new here?” 

“Yes, I’m new.”  He studies me for a second and then just walks away.  I stand there, watching him walk away, not sure what all that was about and why it ended so quickly.  He is tall, but not too tall, with the soft slouch of a bookish man.  He reminds me of a brooding tree, really.  I would have forgotten him except later that day I receive an email from him.  “Meet me upstairs, row three, by the Middle English poetry.”  I quickly get up, smooth my skirt down and head up the stairs.  He is there, pretending to look at books.  He picks up a volume of poetry and begins reading.  He has seen me, I can tell, and a grin spreads over his face.  Unsure of what do, I decide to walk over to him and as I get closer he puts the book down and faces me directly. 

“I know where there’s an unoccupied room.  Are you interested?” 

“Of course I am.”  We head to a small room in the back, the repository room.  He has keys and unbolts the door.  I see a ring on his hand, but I had already known he was married.  People like us, always searching for lovers that we never want to commit to, can spot each other easily.  As easily as we can spot the people that would wantonly burn adulterers at the stake.  He grabs my hand and leads me to the back, down the long bookshelves where old alumni newspapers and photos of people wearing graduation gowns and caps were collecting dust.  We stop at the end of the row and Joe puts his hand up my skirt. 

I saw him regularly after that, about three times a week.  It was often the same routine, but in various rooms and buildings.  The book binding room is small concrete room with a hard, egg white table.  We were in there one night, both of us with our clothes off and we hear the doorknob jiggle and then keys being pulled out.  We both scrambled to put out clothes back on and by the time the woman figured out the lock and opened the door, we were sitting at the table with a couple of books in our laps.  “What are you two doing in here?” She asks and Joe looks at her as though she were stupid.  “We are binding books is what we’re doing.”  She briskly turned around and left and we both laughed until tears ran down our face. 

I wondered if I loved Joe, but really, I knew I didn’t.  He was good to pass the time with and good for ebbing my furious, daily, anxiety, but most of my feelings were confined to the rooms we spent our time in.  I knew people were looking at us and that the old women in the break room had lengthy discussions regarding our nefarious looks at each other.  Everyone knew but nobody knew for sure until the Christmas dinner.  It was a company potluck and Joe and I sat together with a few higher ups right across from us.  I had a big spoonful of pasta salad on my spoon and Joe took his fork and knocked the pasta off my spoon.  He laughed at this, but I was stunned and irritated.  Our boss looks over at us and while Joe continues laughing and spoons pudding into his mouth.   She watches me carefully and her lip twitches. 

Joe quickly ate his dinner and just before leaving pinches my thigh under the table. I know this means that he wants me to come to his office in a few minutes.  After he leaves, I eat dainty spoonfuls of company contrived vanilla pudding and tried to make small talk with the other co-workers around me but no one, at this point, was much interested in making conversation with me.  I am used to this, actually.  Always the office tramp, the spurned outcast.  Forever the lover, never the loved. 

I leave as soon as I figure no one is thinking about us anymore.  I go to Joe’s office, knock on his door, and he opens it wearing no pants.  I walk in and quickly shut the door.  “Joe what are you doing?  There are people everywhere?”  But he takes me in his arms and it isn’t long before we are laying on his grainy, threadbare and abrasive office couch that I despise. 

We are naked again and much less alert that usual.  We weren’t ready for any interruptions when it happened.  We hear someone jiggle the doorknob and then hear them go for their keys.  We scramble to get our clothes on but whoever it is, is too fast.  I am shirtless and dart under Joe’s desk.  Joe stands up, his pants were on, but not his shirt, and faces the two old ladies standing open-mouthed at his door.  “What do you two think you’re doing charging into my office like that?” The two old ladies mumble something about a scheduled delivery and they are very sorry and they both back out, one pulling the door closed behind her.   

“Come on out.”  He says to me.  I come out from under the desk, knowing that one of the old ladies at the door was the boss’s executive secretary.  We are done for.    

“She will know it’s me!”  I say.  I am exceeding anxious.   

“No, she’ll think it’s my wife.  She has dark hair like you.”  I later learned that his wife was more than 100 lbs heavier than me with short hair, but I let myself believe him.  I had no other choice. 

Surprisingly, the most that came out of being discovered were office rumors copious contemptuous glares and deliberate whispers.  I stopped seeing Joe for a couple of weeks and we avoided each other in the hallways.  He would walk past me and all I would get from him were looks from the corner of his eyes.  I also started seeing a new girl come around.  She wore tight red dresses, heels and loose buns.  She would go to Joe’s office, shut the door and bumble around about some important budget issues they needed to discuss to anyone passing by.   She often tried to make eye contact with me, but I made sure I was always sifting through papers when I passed her. 

Finn is the computer technician for the library and mostly works in the basement of the building but comes up a few times a day to check for problems and update software.  He is tall, auburn hair and handsome.  The girls at the desk all gawk at him.  I overhear one say “He’s dreamy.”  Yes, dreamy. 

He is much younger than I am and lacks the charm of the older, practiced man.  When we talk it is awkward and abbreviated.  He searches for clever things to say and always falls short.   I watch him a lot, watch him carry computer monitors up to the third floor and boxes of books to the cataloging room.  His untucked shirt billows when he walks and as a nervous habit, he tucks his hair behind his ears when he thinks someone is looking at him.  Usually he never looks around, keeps his eyes straight ahead.  I imagine it’s because people are always looking at him and to do anything but look ahead might risk uncomfortable eye contact.  We talk very little but suddenly I find myself searching for his scent when we are in the same room together or he passes me in the hallway.   

My brother's baby died yesterday.  Kim was supposed to have him on the 20th but she went in yesterday and they couldn't find a heartbeat.  Today she is going to give birth to him, his name was Owen Christian Loy, and they will have to have a funeral because he was full term.  And yes, they were naming him after my brother Chris who died exactly six months ago today.  So much loss lately.  As though life is inconsequential.  I think what breaks me down the most is just that my brother loved Chris so much as was devastated by his loss and now this...he loses his son.  My brother Chris lost Jason at five months!  My brothers!    

I am boring him.  I can see that from his expression.  He’s sitting by me in the car nearly asleep.  I feel queasy.  “I’m boring you, aren’t I?” 

     “What?  Oh no, of course not.”  He says and puts his hand over his mouth to stifle a yawn.  It kills me.  I know if I wasn’t pregnant he would leave.   He’s always watching other women, longing for anything other than the melancholy tears of his wife and my mourning, overwhelmed stare. 

We are in the car heading towards the store parking lot where his truck is parked.  My husband is at home watching my two other children.  There is fog on the road and I have to squint to the see the lines. 

“Are you doing anything this weekend?  Other than dreaming about being with me?”  I laugh.  He doesn’t think it’s funny but looks over at me and offers a tight smile. 

“Honestly, I am going to the canyons this weekend with Richard to bike.  I need to get away for a while.”  I feel a surge of jealousy rise from the pit of my gut.  He just got away with me but then, maybe it’s me he wants away from.

“I will be thinking of you the whole time.  And this little guy...”  He says and reaches over to pat my belly. 

“Oh and what if he’s a girl?” 

“He won’t be.” 

“I don’t know.  I kinda feel as though I am cooking up a girl.”  I laugh but he looks more somber than ever. 

“Don’t even joke around like that.”

“Well, I am not doing much this weekend myself.  I am going to finish reading that novel I was telling you about, the one with the lady who hid a man under her four skirts, remember that?  And then just spend time with the kids and the husband.  I don’t get to go on big hiking trips like you.”  I look over at him and his eyes are half closed again.  He didn’t hear me.  I push on the gas pedal a little harder and grip the steering wheel until my knuckles blanch.  He’s waiting for us to talk about her, always his wife, and how it would hurt him to lose his kids and that this relationship is the best thing that’s ever happened to him but he would never forgive himself…never, never forgive himself.  He checks his watch to kill the conversation. 

“Geez, look at the time!”  He says brightening up.  It’s only four but I know what he will say next.  “I have to get home early tonight because it’s my turn to cook dinner.”

“That’s alright.  I have to cook dinner too and besides, I am sure the house needs a few hours of recovery work.”  The parking lot is straight ahead and I am relieved this ride is almost over.  “Well, today was fun though, wasn’t it?”

“Oh yeah!  It was great.  Really.” 

“Have fun making dinner.  Try not to burn your house down.”  He chuckles and I give him a small smile.  “What are you going to make?

“Chicken and rice.  The boys never get tired of my chicken.” 

I pull into the parking lot next to his bright red truck that stands out like neon in a world of grey.  There are people all around getting into their cars, pulling out strollers, buckling babies into car seats, unloading groceries.  I do a quick scan to make sure I don’t know anyone.  I am afraid they will recognize me or even him.  We both feel this.  We always have.  He leans over and kisses me.  I feel his arms wrap around my waist and I cringe because I know I have flesh pouring out over the top of my jeans because of the baby.  He will feel the imperfections, the loose skin.  I push his arms away and laugh. 

“No more.  I have had enough for one day.”  I cannot squelch the bitterness gripping me.  He wouldn’t like me if I were fat.  He would leave for someone better. 

“Bah.  You’re just hormonal.”  He says and smiles his lady killer smile. 

“Yeah.  Hormones.  Whatever.”  I roll my eyes.  He gets out of the car and walks over to my window.  I roll it down and wait for him to lean in.  He kisses me. 

“Bye sweety.  I love you.”

“I love you too.”  I watch him climb into his truck.  He rolls down his window and looks over at me.  The wave, the smile, the wink.  He starts his car and drives off, leaving his arm dangling out the window.  In a moment he will turn up the radio and take his shirt off.   

I get home and the kids rush at me.  They’re hungry.  My husband sits on the couch watching his endless episodes of the Dukes of Hazard.  He does this every day, three hours of television, dinner and sleep. Always the same mind numbing routine.  The kids have jelly smeared all over their faces and I can tell they’ve broken into the refrigerator and eaten straight from the jelly jar.  “Hey!  Did you feed the kids anything?  They’re starving.” 

“Nah.  They found food.”  He chuckles and this makes me angry.  I go into the kitchen and go through the cupboards.  There’s no food.  Nothing but crackers and boxes of macaroni and cheese.  I pull out the macaroni and cheese and start to boil the water.  I can’t help but wonder why I am here.  No part of me wants to be this woman with this man in this house and yet, I cannot leave my children.  As I think this the baby lurches in my womb and I remember that I am more trapped in this than I ever have been.  My husband doesn’t know that this child might not be his.  The water boils and I add the milk and butter to the macaroni and feel a wave of nausea.

 These children, my children, to feed and take care of and I can’t.  Not alone.  I am sick.  I dish them out the food and go lay on my bed.  Think of Jon. 

I think of his arms.  And his brown, hard chest.  I never figured we would know each other more than just as hallway friends.  But he started coming around a lot, come to my desk and lean in, flash me his perfect white teeth and perfect tanned biceps.  We went to lunch one day and then to a low lit garage in his car after that.  We saw each other every afternoon and maybe I felt like I was falling in love with him.  Then one night I was at his house because his wife was on a business trip.  There was a huge family photo in the front room, just over the fireplace, and his wife sits in the front with her arm draped over Jon’s knee.  She has smooth, dark hair, is plump and cheeky.  Their children stand stoically behind them.  Happy family.  His wife has Native American art pinned to the walls and a grey and white blanket with the head of a wolf draped over the couch.  I pretend like I am studying it, pretend like I respect this kind of art and the person who would buy it.  I pick up a small, blue and white jar and find little butterscotch candies in it.  I fondle the Native American porcelain.  I can’t help but wonder why she is so attracted to this kind of hokey, trifling junk. 

Jon grabs me and pulls me down on the outdated, shag carpet beneath the family picture and I keep looking up, thinking about his family and how I will never be more to him than this moment on his carpet.  She can take a photo and hang it over the fireplace. I am nothing more than the wet stain I will leave when we’re done.   

And then she walks in, drops her bags on the floor before she sees us.  Her eyes grow wide with horror when she sees me, I quickly get up and put my shirt on.  Jon rushes to her, tries to lead her out but it’s too late.  She tries to grab my arm but she’s slow and I laugh because I don’t know what else to do but I cannot believe I am laughing.  Jon yells at me to go out the other way, through the kitchen door and I dash out but even then, I can feel her presence following me and I wonder if she has a gun in the house.  With anger like that.  When I get home I make sure I lock all the doors, the windows, turn off all the lights and my husband only sits there watching the television.  He doesn’t say a word and I feel like it’s because he already knows everything.  She’s called or Jon called and told him everything.  I tiptoe around him.  I make him a cheese sandwich and sit on his lap.  I run my fingers through his hair and I have never loved him more than at that moment.  His eyes don’t move from the screen and I laugh with him as Boss Hog once again concocts a scheme to catch Luke and Bo.  For hours.  It seems like hours. 

It’s been a week since then.  She still hasn’t called to tell my husband, not yet.  The moments I have shared with Jon, we don’t discuss it.  We act like it never happened but I wait for the moment.  Her moment.  I put my hand to feel the baby’s foot, pushing out like a perfect embryonic sculpture in my stomach.  These quiet moments are all I have.  I start to doze off until I hear the phone ring.  I jump up, thinking that it could be her, and that if I can only get to the phone before my husband, my secret is safe.  I have been doing this for a week now, unable to ever really rest.  But I am not quick enough and my husband answers.  I try to listen to what he says, but the door is shut and all I can do is strain forward, hearing only small words and mumbles.  I go over what my mother told me to say if ever my husband confronts me.  She told me that if he ever finds out, tell him that it was a one night stand.  Tell him that I never saw the other man more than one time.  Tell him that I have never loved any other man and everything will be okay.  My heart, though, races and a feel myself breathing too quickly. 

My husband opens the door and looks at me.  His eyes are wild and unfocused.  He sits down beside me and holds his hands in his lap.  I ask him, “Is everything okay?”  and for an agonizing few seconds he doesn’t answer.  And then he cries.  Softly, sweetly. 

“My mother is sick.  They said cancer of the stomach.”  He says this through sobs.  I can’t answer him, can’t say anything but I grab his hand and hold it tightly.  “She has six weeks, she said.  That’s all.”  I start to cry with him and we sit there for a while.  Only I’m not crying about his mother and all I can think about is that I am saved.  If only for another day, I am saved.  

The very worst thing about living in Utah other than just having to live here is the assumption that I am Mormon or was Mormon and yeah, I was Mormon and this makes it even worse.  

I could drown in eyes like that

So much so I have to look away or be lost 

You’re forbidden.

Sucking in the stale air of another

The stale breath of fidelity , another,

Day of loose thinking, uncontrolled thinking,

Who cares about thinking, for the birds,

Is what you would say.

Trembling in the gore of your inflamed lungs

Pink, black, fresh and pretty lungs that you think

Too much about.  

“Do you think he was afraid in those last few moments?”  Her eyes were big and desperate, looking straight into mine. 

“No.  He was disorientated.  He was foggy.  There is no way he knew what was happening.  I was there.” She seems satisfied with this.  We sit back and watch everyone, like ants, walking in pairs, lines, some of them approaching the grave and others staying far back by the trees, talking to each other in groups of three or four.  My mother sits alone under the canopy holding her face in her hands.  Everyone has left her but they all watch her from the corners of their eyes.  They don’t know how to handle her grief.  My sister and I don’t either and so we sit back a few rows and feel that all we understand is each other.  My father never showed up, mumbling something about how the spirit has left and this is only a body and he’s not here anymore and why should he come to the funeral that means nothing and would mean nothing to my brother.  Everyone is angry with him but then, everyone is always angry with my father. 

My sister and I get up because my younger brother is waving us over.  My cousin from Las Vegas is here.  He’s huge, muscular, bald, littered in tattoos.  He busts gangs for a living.  We walk up to him and he doesn’t know what to say.  His face isn’t streaked with anguish like ours.  He barely knew my brother and all his memories of him would have been from Christmas at our grandmother’s house back before he could even use a fork by himself.  We talk for a moment about his job, his baby, and I turn to look at his wife who isn’t saying a word.  She’s tall, thin and very blonde.  Her face seems perpetually locked in a grimace. 

My sister nudges me, giving me that look that she wants to leave, she is about to break down again.  So we walk back over to the chairs and sit down.  My mother has stopped crying.  She sits, slumped over, staring at the ground.  Someone is standing in front of her with their hand on her shoulder.  He is trying to get through, almost shaking her, bending down to make eye contact but she doesn't look up and he puts his hands in his pockets for a minute before walking away.  

“Are you sure he didn't suffer at the last minute?”  My sister pleads at me with her eyes. 

“No.  He didn't.  I promise.” 

But in those last few minutes he did wake up.  I was at home, folding laundry, and my brother’s wife calls.  She tells me to rush over to the house as soon as I can but it takes me 20 minutes even with the gas pedal pushed nearly to the ground the entire way.  I came into the room and he seemed asleep, mostly, and then suddenly he wasn't.  He starting kicking his legs and my mother reached out to him, put her hand on his shoulder and she’s terrified because he’s trying to wake up.  His wife screams “Wake up!  Just wake up!” and he tries.  His eyes open, just for a moment.  He looks right at my mother and his eyes are suffused and bright with terror.  For a moment.  Just before. 

I don’t tell my sister this.  I just sit with my hands in my lap, try not to see the people milling around, acting in their bereavement, as if they understand everything that happened.  

I’m a contrived beauty.

If I were grim faced Hester Prynn

Framed in a solemn, white hat and loose, billowy drapes

Of religious chastity

I would fade into a sea of pale, droning faces

Yearning, like all of them, for the slightest indication

I was something singular. 

But that’s not me. 

I find the means from bottles

And jars, pallets, sprays, boots,

Liquid fantasy

And all the singularity I receive ordinarily  

Is wholly contrived.  

You’re such a mess.

Look at your feelings spilling all over the floor

Your heart clutched in your fist.    

It’s immature, all this blood and pain. 

And then the tears, loathsome.  It’s not death.  Not this. 

Have you tried the egg salad croissant?  That’s worse than death.

But death isn’t worse.  

Death blows smoke into your brain, languidly soaks every dark corner
Until you hide a serrated knife under the seat of your car.

For safety.  For comfort.  Just in case you decide to let go of the heart in your fist. 

You reach under the seat to make sure the knife is still there

Gleaming with the charm of a vampire, panting, scratching ….

There are lines carved into your arm, the battered map to oblivion: 

Tender supplication.    

I’ve tried the egg salad croissant. 

The flaky, sodden bread spongy and sad at the bottom

A mess

Worse than death. 

Max's father has disappeared again and I have no idea where he is.  His family won't talk to me, but I know he isn't in jail because I checked all of that....he's just gone.  Max tells me he hasn't seen his dad in days and the thing is, even Max is secretive about it.  It's all covered up, protecting him while Max is tossed around from family member to family member while nobody thinks to call me.  

The poem I wrote was about Adam getting out of jail and then asking me for money.  When I saw him, his pants were belted down just above his knees and he covered max with kisses and words and said he would pick him up that night but never showed.  And the next day he never called and didn't think to see Max though it had been over a week since he had seen him.  The guy is really cracking up, it seems.  And I wish I could figure out where the fuck he is.  

With Alexis maybe.  In the woods.  With heroine and a tent.  Just a possibility.  

Anyway, so much to write about.  This horrible boredom.  But later.  

My visit with Adam.  He went to jail again.  For heroin.

I wait in the front seat, with my knees tucked under my legs.

Watch you kiss his plump cheeks, make him giggle,

He glows, flushes, fondles every word, every breath,

Your hallowed love. 

I am trying to remember…

Did you look at me? 

I know you didn’t think to. 

I tugged on your pants, too low, so childish,

Here’s your foolish money

And I shoved it into your pocket. 

I have a secret.  Tucked under my knees. 

A holy longing, residual virtuousness,

Haunted by woebegone ghosts. 

Infinitely, reverently untouched.  

I just got a job at the University of Utah.  But  more importantly, I was rereading this bullshit blog.  I really feel differently about things and going back, am alarmed at the way I was so wrapped up in myself.  I suppose it's  a good learning experience....

I have a job in the education department for the University and am very excited about it.  And scared.  But mostly excited.  I have calmed down quite a bit and am surprised that I came out of all that with nothing more than a subdued ego.  Even more, I was starting that sick cycle back up with Adam again but abandoned it.  A part of me will always want him, but the bigger part is through with the dysfunction. 

Nothing more to write for now.  That seems very boring.