the only story i know

they married in the winter, between valentines day, and her 21st birthday.
this is how it was.
she was the basketball star. blonde hair to her waist, one of three beautiful sisters,
narrowing the halls of the mennonite high school with her brightly colored flannel mini skirts. she was a dream.

he was one of six, a twin. the hair started to thin at the age of 16. in the front, and soon whole handfuls from the top of his head disappeared.
he was quiet, she said, handsome but not noticeable. he followed at a close distance, watching but never extending his hand. he pulled on his unlettered jacket in the afternoons, rode in the passenger's seat of his sisters car. when they were seven, after another dinner of blueberry soup, he and his twin sister jan, packed a feed sack of apples and dinner rolls and ran away.
a search party of 2 neighboring amish families, numbering in the 20s, scoured the summer corn with utility flashlights and and an approaching fire siren.
the pair spent the evening, howling their regret from the dairy barn.

when she was 19 she lived in upstate new york. an orphanage. rooms of children on single beds under green blankets. they wanted mothers. they wanted fathers.

in 1981, she gave birth to her second perfect child. a blonde halo of hair, blue eyes like her father, a sharp chin like her mother. her whole hand around her brother's little finger.
she, was the plan.

in the don't touch anything room of our house, the brother and sister's picture hung in a gold frame on the south wall. "where are you in this picture?" i asked the blonde brother, slouching in a striped sweater at the kitchen table.
"i was in heaven" he replied. "i was in heaven with sister. you've never been?"

i put myself to bed early. gathered my knees and hands close, for prayer.
they only let children with halos in to a place llke heaven.
and i , had been born
under a dark, black, cloud.

telling

there's something i have
palm readers on post street call it an aura
purple, green
maybe
the angle i tilt my chin.
my hair smells of mint listerine.
my mouth tastes like unwrapped butter waffles.

i met her on the standing side of a dinner out
she was with her husband.

instantly
trusting her, i put down my tray
spread out her map
finger pointed
them to their new life.

her eyes
shining with something
i see in my sleep.

i've always been like this,
open.
how, i am completely unsure.
i separate my issues into small piles
hang them up with clear plastic pushpins before bed.

on the far side of a glass pitcher of ice and orange slices
we watched the sun find us.
we ate vegan sandwiches and seasoned potatoes.
she told me about dying.

the telling was so natural
laughter and the breaking of her neck at intervals.
i gathered it in, her story
asleep for months in a hospital bed
pictured it
awake in an upstairs of white light
like she was reminding me
golden bodies and the absence of night.

i packed her light into a blue backpack
climbed on a plane,
floated it across the ocean with me
to this place.

i walk around without fear.
breaking my neck at intervals
move forward, back, forth
into formations of girl, into sitting in a corner or floating next to a chair.
the front compartment of myself
open and light.

dear m--

it is time to let this go.
slow and steady.


she was ten. she was ten. she was ten. i was eight.
i shudder at the sound of pants unzipping, instead i pull mine off from the shrinking of hips
metal button scraping soft stomach.

here is how i describe you.

the family i lived with --- no--- the people
they were not mine.
paper hands in an old square house. a yardstick.
both sides of a scream in the same room.

you taught me to stand still, to simon says
nothing. you'd say, you are nothing.


damage. i dare not dwell.
every night, i undo you
walk around my room
fingers pruned with
the percentage of you
that makes me up
a truth i can't finetooth comb away.


i tell the story so well.
white out from my lips that paints you clean
cold edges of someone i forget to tell.
i am careful with your picture.
in it, you are a woman with a husband and son.
in it, you are a victim, and i am a child with simple needs.

on your lap every morning,
on the floor every afternoon,
hands over my head
i held the hardest parts of me

the softest strips of body open
i let you straighten me out
knees and arms drawn in.

love, you always said
is not a feeling. it is a decision.

i can't feel anything. i decide to dress up like a woman
and then i undress, a stranger's hands around my wrists
and waist and neck.

but everything i feel
has been pressed in through my skin
and seeps away just as quickly.


you sliced me so thin
horizontal lines around my eyes and ears.
a field guide of scars around my shoulder blades.

at night
dogs and cats in wire pens roam around a painted gray floor
forget to eat, get lost on their way to the front door.
i carry them around with me, come home to them, like they are mine.

2.8

it is early and she's up before noon for once. the second alarm gets her full attention.
open eyes, bending upwards at the waist and then the knees.
she has started sleeping on a blue trifold cushion, the length of her body.
the low parts of back ache again today, she fumbles for her glasses,
heavy in her hand, then on the low valley of her nose.
seated on the toilet, she contemplates sleeping on the bare floor,
like most koreans, or on the sofa bed like a normal person with furniture.
but the back she can ignore.
the pain is worth the sleep she's been soaking in.
she fights the daily desire to stay there, dipped
in the "vivid blue" nylon zip cover of sleep that draws around her like
this dark winter.

her sister has sent a message and they will look in on each other through computers
for awhile before she needs
to bundle up for the short crunching steps to the corner, to a taxi, to the fifth floor school hallway and u formations of desks.

she clicks the right burner on under the water, considers washing the teetering brown pool of dishes and water under the spigot.
decides against it. brushes her teeth for less than a minute, spitting out red streaks of bubbles.
the blood these days, it's always there. she pushes down the stress that always comes
with the burden of self care. she wets her hair with two handfuls of water, readies her body in an underwire bra,
thick tights and a new dress.

she laughs at herself in the mirror, vain.
a year ago in san francisco, she boarded a plane with two suitcases. one filled with drawings, colored pencils and books.
the other, zipped full of multi seasonal thrift store finds. she was dressed in "the uniform": a breastbone baring men's vneck, a lace rubber band excuse for a bra and
, a tattered black sweatshirt.

a runaway, a san franciscan, a taurus. she had been too careless to worry about something as trivial as fashion or femininity.
yet here she is, one year and two underwire bras later, dressed up like a korean female :
short hemline, collar bones buried.

subject to change:

in a shallow bowl with a spoon
i drip out, thick over rice.

everyone i press against leaves
a red inked stain on my forehead

an itching that cannot be toothcombed from skin.

begin

dressed up
like a monday

i unpeel chin from chest

two birds
my very own paper hands
float out across the body.

speaking only in past tense
i hate everything
about expectation i tell him

my socks and then my sweater
a lumpy wool tower by the door.


mottled in flesh bitten plastic bags
we extend
sounds from pink corners of mouths.

no one is waiting at home.
just too warm bottoms of feet
that can't sit still for long.

your wings unfold

with the hollowed bird bones of an all grown up victim
you tie red ribbon around
sandpaper wrists

done, you tell her
to react.
a self declared brush
press the warm
tricolored promise over her mouth.

to dust out intention.