(after Jenny Lewis and The Watson Twins)
If this isn’t chaos, it’ll do until chaos gets here.
—Brian Williams, The 11th Hour, October 16, 2019
It’s been almost twenty years since the first time I woke up knowing
the life I’d expected was a myth I’d transcribed on my ribs. Every year
spent wrapped in those telephone cords must have been a trick and
I’ve realized that I might be a relic, a fragile masterpiece to be collected,
to later collect her own dust. But because my heart still beats I’m always
waiting for a heart attack or an aneurysm and because I haven’t died
yet every time I turn on the TV I slip back into suspicion. I look for
the illusion, find another gun, swallow another wildfire. Now I collect
my intentions like seeds and bury them in the neighbors’ potted plants.
I’ll never be a thief but, yes, I might pretend. My best disguise is another
tube of black eyeliner. Another pair of secondhand boots. And every
morning I wake up sweating, wishing I knew how not to love. How to
pack up and leave—as if home is not something I’d have to cut away
with scissors. Today when I slice open another brown box from Amazon
it will be mostly filled with air. Tomorrow when I hold out my hand the men
who take it will give it a twist and as my bones snap they’ll ask for my vote.
One of these days I’ll run screaming from both the sacred and the profane.
Some hills are saintless. Still, I have to believe that this isn’t doomsday.
I look at the map again and realize I’ve walked right off the edge. I’m
a human being, even at arm’s length, even on my doorstep calling my cat
home. I’m all out of ghosts—do you know this sensation, knowing that no
phone call can keep you from locking the door on yourself? I’ve spent a whole
week telling friends to get a flu shot because anything else is too difficult
to say out loud. I’m trying to figure out when time became a trick, but
it turns out I’ve walked right off the calendar, too. Truth and not-truth spin
like the sweater you put in the dryer and, in the end, this is both nothing
and chaos, a crackle in the air. So when my phone rings I let it go to voicemail
and I let the messages pile up for days and days like leaves in a storm drain.
I am the ghost now. It’s the only way to survive a year without a single
slow news day. A year in which we cover all of our mirrors to stay alive.
