stillness in motion

i wonder how much of my life i’ve spent on trains — london, new york, philadelphia. new jersey, paris, amsterdam, switzerland. coming home from summer camp. if you added it all up, how many weeks or months could you stack up of moving stillness in my thirty years? i think i am most myself on trains. zoned in, zoned out. watching sun rises & sets & rainstorms. & city lights & pastures & factories & rivers. i think i can only be still when i’m moving. elevators. escalators. conveyor belts & wheelie chairs. how much of my life have i spent running from stillness? floating on docks & flipping kayaks & gliding on swing sets? the breathing makes me nauseous when i’m decongested enough to actually take a full breath; dizzy when i’m not. there’s a lake that separates new geneva from the old & i was never clearer than slipping across in yellow boats. the bus ride to blarney. the plane to vegas. the cab ride home from long beach island. i pulled my teeth & planted them like sunflower seeds in the vinyl, polyester, moquette, & leather. dropped a few in the water: geneva, atlantic, hudson, & mead. tossed the remainder onto the tracks, just a little treat for the rats. they tried to pick apart my bones, rebuild me into something sugar, something spice, something shiny & pristine & nice. but despite my orthodontist’s wishes, i never retained & my incisors shifted & two weeks later, you could not recognize me. the denture glue wouldn’t stick & the veneers left me uncanny valley. surrender. to the gums & cheeks & tongue & spit. all mouth. so i could sputter out how i became something starchy & tangy & a little umami. how i crafted myself in honor of the tsunami that ruined the lives on my tenth birthday. it was my fault from birth & my fault for aging & my fault for the thoughts that left me aching. perverse loneliness since days pediatric. isolation a gift, if not pedantic. i have always been me, but only in shallow breaths & week-long snogs. only in fountain sodas before they go flat & chewing gum before it’s lost its flavor & starts to disintegrate into a grainy paste. i’ve cried in the back of more cabs than i could count & on more subways than i could subtract. it is easy to be wounded publicly so long as no one draws attention. if you go to the corner of 39th & madison, you can still hear my screams. & if you go to the corner of hancock & lewis, you can still find the sunflowers. one of these lines is literal & one is a metaphor but i won’t tell you which because i’m working on mystery, on not showing all my cards. on not lying to your face about my present when the past is so easily all the truth i can hold. i told you so. so. so. i told you all i can. all i can find before my lungs are out of air & my nose begins to run again & i must take off after it. back to a series of trains & planes & cars & buses, chasing myself & facial tissues & handkerchiefs. back to a little girl picking her nose on the softball field & writing poems about bugs & balloons & the war in afghanistan. i’d serve you her on  a silver platter if i thought the meal would satiate & not just ravage. maybe that’s the damage. maybe that’s why she grew into a love affair, covert & trembling & cold to the touch. i’d give her to you if i thought you could handle her, instead she plays dress up in mommy’s closet, pretending to be something delicate & lovely. something unaware & unafraid of the dark in her pit. i don’t pity her. she wouldn’t want it. she’d spit at your feet & kick orange dirt over it & puff up her chest & tell you all about jacques cartier & william shakespeare & the diorama she built of roanoke with the actual crosswinds & she’d love you for listening & want to be grown up with you. she’d want to be grown up with you & all the power that entailed. & she’d pluck out her baby teeth as if they were chin hairs & leave a trail behind her as she wandered through the woods & resist arrest & scream about injustice as the bailiff carried her to her cell & she’d grow up to still play dress up & cover herself in blankets & blush & burrow into her tummy all slick with honey & she’d still be perverse & lonely & crying publicly like after her kindergarten field trip because the boys she’d want still wouldn’t accept the pictures she drew or how she’d spell out her love & she’d ride around on trains just to catch her breath, just to find stillness, just to go home.