HAIL TO WHATEVER YOU FOUND IN THE SUNLIGHT THAT SURROUNDS YOU (march 2024)
we swapped spit on my ratty twin size mattress surrounded by rollie ash - i couldn’t care enough to sweep. i couldn’t care enough to do jack shit. adam had just texted me the night before, he was shooting up in “some shitty dive bar” and i hadn’t slept and this mattress was his, way back when. i said you could break my arm if you wanted but you hadn’t been hitting the gym — just no time, between the punk shit and the day job, and anyways, you wanted to be soft. i was sitting in j’s car when abby reached into the front seat and spilled straight vodka all over my jeans (“just wash them” — with what fucking quarters? “i’ll buy you a new pair, you can be my bitch”) and wrapped her whole hand around the top of my bicep and said “you have little fucking cigarette arms” and i said “fuck you” and she cracked up and j said “jesus, get back into the back seat, goddamn.” you wanted to be soft, you said, like all 94 pounds of me. we were in the clinic waiting to hear if your brother was dead when you pressed masa in the spaces between my fingers. i said dont come over if all you wanna do is fuck. i said the thoughtful gestures weren’t an apology, you said you didn’t know how else to do it, i said fine and the nurse said he’s dead and i licked up the masa in between my fingers because you needed someone to do something and i didn’t know how to do it. then we went to 412 and got wasted and a girl crawled on top of me and said “i miss you, i missed you.” you scrunched up your face — nose, eyes - brows. stella dived a pizza you didn’t touch. char took a photo of us laying on top of each other back at the =dfsg=sdfg- the place i was staying. money in cash for my time, effort, work, vomitting, violation. j pinned you down one night, just screaming. “get the fuck off of them” i yelled. “get the fuck off, you’re gonna fucking kill them, stop.” you looked fragile like the trips of ribbon inside the old tv remote. i didn’t want that. i can see the eight of us sprawled on the floor, laughing about some stupid shit i can’t remember now. every moment is tinged by your absence but the ones where you’re laughing feel like a knife twisting in my stomach. i said don’t die, you fucking asshole. i said don’t die, my dearest friend, i didn’t know you could make less than nothing. it’s the exit wound that fucks me.
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its hard to hate you
i thought id get over it by the time i was eighteen; sweat-soaked, broken armed, forgetful, hungry eighteen. grocery store working, bus riding, community college learning; trying, trying, trying. uphill battle for downhill coasting -- after all, suffering is always rewarded. the world is just in this way. that is what i believed then.
but i couldn't hate you, despite everything, so i stumbled through weird houses and dreams that felt real. approximations meant everything to me, because they were all i could afford; cheap knockoffs of every beautiful moment. where i could not have what i wanted, i greedily took everything that was close enough.
chris turned to me once, by the river. the sun was scattering confetti on the surface. he said he saw god in the bending of your knee, but what i saw there terrified me.
naturally, you were oblivious; knee or otherwise, a joint is just a joint. you could've hidden secrets behind your shoulderblade, and it wouldnt have made any difference. i dug my thumb, bent, into the muscle there. this was a lesson about anatomy, which i was failing in class and obsessed with after; tendons and ligaments. i craved your approval so bad it hurt.
i watched you draw into a needle. a needle is a needle. you skin popped out of boxes from seedy internet forums. i followed your post activity there like a hawk -- i wanted good reputation. i saw you do this all the time, but once you grabbed me, one hand behind my neck and the other tight around my upper arm, physically threw me out of the room.
"get out," you'd said, like id violated your privacy, like ten minutes before we weren't laughing over some stupid joke, our faces inches from the box fan in your window. i felt guilty -- gross, disgusting, slimey, sick. i let it pass.
kate was always wearing nude lipsticks and trying to teach me how okay it was to want to see my own blood as long as i understood consent. id never heard of that word outside of agreeing to [xxxxxxxxxxxx.xxx]'s terms and conditions, which were only there to make sure you didnt sue them if you, say, injected trash.
during a stint in which you did not leave the house, kate asked me to hit her as hard as i wanted to be hit, and i couldnt. my hand shook and then my whole body shook. i couldn't do it. she was so nice to me, and pretty, and smart, and i didnt want to hurt her. she said she couldnt hit someone like me. she said that we needed to talk, at some point, about how to stay safe. she tried to hold me then but my skin had this horrible crawling feeling, like there were ants all over me.
so i took a shower at her place -- my water was still turned off -- and we talked at her kitchen table about things like policy and the way they were gentrifying the east side. big city living was teaching me new ways to talk -- dividing cities into cardinal directions, local politicians, developers... protests, activism.. words like boundaries and communication and abuse and coercion. here i was fighting a system that was dead set on crushing me, and back home i was simply reaping what id sown. here, my life circumstances were based on odds, rolled dice, with occasional outliers. there, it was a just system; if you failed, it was nobodys fault but your own. pride via grit. i didnt tell kate that i believed that everything was my fault still, because i didnt want her to tell me to unlearn things.
kate said, "if all the art kids move there, the landlords are gonna increase the rent, right? because they can afford it."
i snorted and said "well what about people like us? we’re just supposed to go fuck off"
kate got a gleam in her eye and nodded slowly, a smile spreading across her face. even someone like me could learn, and that made her very, very happy.
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when you crawled out of your NEET nest, it was because you'd found a new supplier, which was fine by me because it meant you weren't on suicide watch any longer. you cooked eggs and bacon and toast with thick layers of butter. you ate. i was grateful.
your traps were tight from laying down so long. terrible. i pressed into the space right under your skull, on either side of your spine, trying to be careful. I knew it felt good because i could feel it. relief.
"what do you think about the new apartments?"
"expensive. waste of money." all of the air left your lungs. one of the trigger points released. thank god. "ugly," you added, an afterthought.
"yeah," i said.
"what do you think of them?"
"same thing," i said. “obviously,” i added, like i would’ve had anything to say on the matter a week ago.
“obviously,” you echoed. no bite.
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1.
we're picking up rusted nails and tossing them into an empty tide container labeled SHARPS with sharpie.
"wanna get tetanus shots together after this?"
she sort of half-laughs.
2.
im washing blood off my ankle in your bathroom.
3.
im sitting at the edge of your futon mattress on the floor. i am following the way the light is hitting your cheekbone
4.
i see a baby and start crying
5.
these kinds of jokes are only funny if you understand where im coming from. i tell you too much all at once like its no big deal. then i say it so casual we both start laughing.
isnt it nicer this way?
6.
i cant watch you throw up anymore
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its snows hard for three days and then nothing at all for weeks. i set the faucets to drip because im scared anyways.
"i really think youre my person," she says, once we're both naked, and my stomach churns. i imagine his face briefly because i suck, i suck, i suck. im gonna be sick.
"oh, dont say that," i breathe.
"no, i really think that. i think i finally found my person."
i dont want to be here.
when the radiator kicks on, i’m looking hard for shards of glass on the floor, but there aren’t any. i start to think maybe there never was any at all.
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