30.10.12

I. Me. I.

One day passes, nothing happens. Day two slip while I'm still asleep. Three days come around and i'm finally awakening. Singing. On the fourth day I eat with no remorse. My body is happy, and I am sleeping on a blanket I stole back from 1999. On the fifth day I remember my grandmothers closet. I put on her favorite shirt and I feel her jewels. The marks from my grandfathers 'love' stuck on her chest. That's where I used to lay. I am not full woman yet to carry her crown.

Tea is glossing my mouth. 6 cups of it on the sixth day. Fragrance of mango black keeps me warm. Never enough so I continue to detoxify my body on the seventh. My mother reminds me I am death in human form. What does this mean? It sounds like poetica so I scoff. But on the eighth day I wallow in destruction. Eight years old and she's running through the snow. Something in me is crawling. Ghosts I've welcomed, maybe? Calmness has never been a friend.

9 piercings punch through my skin. Where do these little holes reside? I am a map. My body is mine, my mind is yours to use. On the tenth day the city drenches me. My complexion is dull. I have not seen the sun in eleven days. I read his love letter. I read his print. Study the curve of his L the same way I studied the curve of him on me. Twelve poems to write - I have this marked on my calendar. Twelve. One for each day I shed myself. Thirteen is the worst number. I hope and pray it lands on a Friday. I'm thinking I was really supposed to be in feline form.

Fourteen footsteps to my new life. Fourteen footsteps from the outside. On the fourteenth day I walk, count. And when the key turns someplace will be home. Fifteen days and panic begins. An american with foreign bones? Where am I? Am i still her child? On my sixteenth birthday my father calls. A ghost in my veins, he lives to haunt me every sixteen days. On the seventeenth I tell him to go to hell. Though I think he found it effortlessly years before.

Books are scattered in every corner. My loves and I fly through pages and on the eighteenth day I finally try. I put on my finest cocktail dress and go for a walk. I see a woman and I am sure we will marry. Our shoulders brush. There goes my interest, lost as always. I remember I have to clean on the nineteenth. Met a life that gave my love something to aspire to. He held my hand and I broke his. I throw the remaining bones in the trash. Now the room smells of lilacs.

Twenty days steal my hunger. I am no longer. Who was it that took me from me?...Cut my finger vigorously. Once, not too long ago I used to run from blood. But the pain now sings me songs. Twenty one days and i'm learning to wipe it off. Twenty two passes and I am still alive. Not sure if this is good news, but someone out there must be relieved. Twenty three is loud! And i'm on the floor writing. A little girl cries out for attention. My windows are close to breaking. My childhood is reminding me this is not it.

Twenty four days go by and I fall back in love. They have no names, and I do not know if they exist, but they are everywhere. And they are everyone. I cling to attention that leaves me empty. What else is there? Not one superficial smile can cure me yet. Not one interaction has left its fire. I am trying once again when twenty five comes around.