reminders

i just pulled a frosted memory to the forefront of my brain but still can’t grasp ahold of its frigid, jagged edges. it all feels wispy, ethereal & ephemeral. most of my memories are sharp & clear, full figured, sensational. but when these loose, icy ones arise, i parse through them trying to make sense of the blank spots, the sporadic pulsing of emotion laced up in the spaces left unoccupied. i’m trying to remember every guy i’ve fucked but the blurs intensify as i peruse the soiled sheets, the hickies, the torn lingerie. distract myself by eye-fucking the man standing above me on the train, i know he’s looking down my shirt & in another life i would have done something about it. but i’m thirty now & slipping my number to strange men on trains is no longer a personality trait i can keep tucked in my pocket. the recklessness really does bleed out with age. the loneliness magnifies. & i have to remind myself again that you don’t like me. not really, anyway. & how minuscule & adolescent am i to care so much about it? & the best i ever had is married now but still won’t let me go, wants me to fly out to chicago, & isn’t that just it? that i am better as fantasy than reality. as affair than wife. that i am the one they keep tucked under sweaty testicles while they vow themselves to vegetarian yoga mats. i’ll never be her. she’ll never be me. & somehow we are both losing. i’m an all american reject & a dirty little secret & i’m kept where i belong, stuffed into closets & under beds & i swear i actually don’t feel sorry for myself. i don’t pity me. i’m just a bitch who has never made a correct decision despite the hyperfixation on failure & perfection. he called me baby. they all called me baby, they still call me baby like they see something innocent & tender in me when they really just see the ability to deconstruct if they touch my soft spot. infantile & incapable & insignificant. but unpitiable, unforgiven, undone & unbecome. wretched little heart full of misplaced patience & irrationality, definitionally reparable but pretending the fix is impossible & infinitely expanding in the pit of my stomach. for fucks sake girl, you’ve been writing this same poem since you were nineteen & you still haven’t learned about treasure chests or digging holes or staying in a calorie deficit unless you’re on your knees on bathroom tile eating out the toilet bowl like it’s chappell roan in the passenger seat. it’s anything but casual. it’s all cause & effect & special effects & special education & the department of education being flushed down the same toilet i just gave cunnilingus. consequently, my esophagus wages war against a consciousness that finds thinness more important than its existence. existentially bound to my bed & handcuffed to the head board waiting for my prince to come. zip tied, zippered shut, flippant lies, get fucked. i’m weeping & bleeding & for no real reason. he was right about it all being in my head. banging against the wall again. mosh pit, english lit, binge thinking & critical drinking. everything’s an exercise in trying to be loved so we bench press to the chest, deep in the wounds that are wound throughout, all just crisping in the sunlight because everyone forgot the spf & no one remembers your dad has skin cancer because no one even knows because you never even told because the things that really scare you sit heavy on your sternum like the downswing of the barbell. you cannot push it all up on your own. my mommy is fading & there’s nothing i can do but carry her mirror out to the living room so she can do her makeup & feel like herself. & the asphalt is raining down like astroturf astral projecting. nostradamus tastes like chicken, under seasoned & bland. blatantly who i am but still misunderstood. i could scream but i shouldn’t so i stand in the surf & remember what it was like to be held.