Shrieks into the Void

Four years ago you looked me in the eye and said you were proud I had done it. You were proud of the  shawl I wore and the words that drifted on specks of preschool dust and cremated thirteen year old girls. You were proud of the history and the  tradition and the verse and the characters each one  Memorized from recorded intonations used by a long long line of others in our  little bay and beyond. You said you were Proud of who I was becoming. Yet now your eyes boil with resent.  I can be anything I want but not that. So where do you draw the line  between what you hate and what you worship. Countless others have  already argued so maybe think about why I did it  and why I spoke her name— Tradition that’s how We stay afloat, so do not tell me that you hate It. You are one of us and you cannot hide from the already spilled blood. You love yourself too much for that. Maybe You find no meaning, no memory, no merit  in our petty songs, but You can fly and others cannot, so tell me which p

The blood on her hands gave off an odor of flesh mixed with tin. She sheathed her knife and started off back across the concrete foundation of the airplane hangar. The moonlight broke through the cracks in the grimy windows, but she did not waste time observing the whispers of blue nighttime. No sound came from her victim as she left; he only lay there, dead or so close to death that his dying produced no noise. She did her job well. Each nice, she did it well, and she did not look back. Her old boots had seen so many fall before her that, if she were to stop, they would not recognize her at all. Her boots and her belt and her satchel. Those were all she carried with her. Clothes would change, lovers changed, jobs changed, hair even changed occasionally, but those prized possessions were always with her. At last she came to the edge of the pile of the broken chairs, tables, and televisions where she’d descended to the hangar floor. She made no effort to clean the dusty footprints,

it’s too late for rational thinking. Past 5% and the letter fuse together into yesterday and tomorrow and back again stale thoughts reused once twice three times over it’s too late for rational thinking. Half past nowhere pack a suitcase with books half read. Throw in a hair towel and a toothbrush too but those were both miles ago. Keep telling yourself that and maybe you’ll forget it. Eyelids no closer to  dripping with sleep than they were when the sun was golden and the shadows did not dance like long-forgotten soldiers waiting for their graceful limbs to take flight. Or maybe they looked more like witches after all.

Walk with me please. Lace up your adventuring boots and throw on a too-big coat, and just walk with me. We’ll go farther and wider then we ever have before fingers in celtic knots of hesitant promises. Walk with me through glittering dew drops left from the rain in which we departed home. Of course we waited until it began raining for your eyes sparkle in the droplets and I would not miss it for the world. My sneakers will connect with the newly fallen leaves and we’ll pick some up to tape into leather bound notebooks. And we’ll write the constellations of our memories on the pages and fill in the gaps with watercolor and ink. Just for us to look at later. Tiny rocks will fill our pockets but they’ll never be too heavy to carry. At some point we’ll come across a clearing with tree stumps that fit us perfectly together and we’ll sit and eat the half-squished sandwiches and litter the ground with orange peels and make fun of the squirrels as they pass us by. An

Please do not worry  that my blood runs so cold I can no longer appreciate the views from the scuffed roof and the light-wooded light-footed lunch rooms— caked in growing pains from coming into one’s self, words caught in a throat too tight to say what I really mean. Childhood pajamas—paint for me all of your  messy crayon feelings tell me that I’m special. Please. Ramona Quimby and Georgia O’Keeffe  speak through this insecurity. Teach me your ways oh wise ones let me follow in your much larger footsteps. Blurry lines of worth-everything letters birth poison-filled fangs; a mess of claws and stabbing words tumbling over one another to climb jagged mountains. Four years of dagger sharp chords, plucked strings in  haunting never-ceasing melodies— Close your eyes—all of you—please and listen to the whispers. You can hear their voices if you pay attention. If you pay close enough attention. Follow this daisy chain, a map around the world in 1,620 days point B. From the ocean and the fog

April first two thousand twenty clock hands barely moving; grasping at falling feathers a hair per day one more burned wick  one more pen running out ink. Carpet squares—one to the next—have become well acquainted with the wordless unwashed cheek of my whitening face. Vitamin D usually helps but going outside seems useless. Desk slats of video classes glasses piling up on the used-to- be creative table on the are-my-eyes-getting-better-or-worse bridge of my nose and I know nothing about this is coated in the same varnish of yester- year, yester- day. It does not matter—that sickly sweet  nothing—until I think about it. If I don’t think about it then maybe all of the walls will Disappear — reappear closer this time  interesting how the mind plays tricks on the time tick tick. tick. t i c k.     t i      k c— If I follow the thread around the earth will I fall off the edge or keep looping around, staring up at a pupil-black sky spilled with  stars so close I could run my hand through

      Applications are strange. Resumes are strange. Why must all of my activities over the past three years somehow contribute to an artificial list of skills and practices that make me a marketable seventeen-year-old to companies that are supposed to teach me the very skills I’m applying with. Seventeen is too young for so much experience to have been had, especially when one spent two years being tired and three more waking up and is just now sunflowering to meet the rays of motivation. Seventeen is too young to be expected to fill a full page of things done and things learned and things taken from those things learned. Why must each of my activities be audited by a board of future employees when the word “employee” has not yet reached my vocabulary, and my interests are nothing more than an amorphous blob of tepid interest? An amorphous blob of interest that is being slowly charred by the sugar-coated flames of expectation while being frozen from the inside out by the icy currents