Plathological

"And Now I Know How Joan of Arc Felt" (the smiths)

Crumbs on the floor, raisins and the belly of the beast. I’ll spend ten dollars to make you happy, another eight to make me miserable. Now you need cold water on your hand. I’m mixing my pronouns, they're grieving like this is the vacuum, this is the coalmine has too many elements of your name, linguistically. Anything can leave the stomach, a smile, or through it, a playing card with this figure. Saturday was late night sushi in a booth. We all sat cross-legged and ordered a Lover’s Boat to share at arms’ length. The service asked us if we could please keep the door open, and I’m sure we could have, but the act left me with less to lean my back against. Later some of us danced at a second choice. I took it fairly seriously and ended the night by sticking a plastic juice bottle in my mouth. I said I was pretending it was a penis. You can dress her up, but you can’t take her out, Bulford said. The bottle was empty, fat twelve year old--and still it was both my legs dangling from the chair. I spent some time expressing myself. Sunday was old timer’s hockey. We were surrounded by families and retards. Retards and families. Afterward we took the bus back into town and knocked on a door. In the doorway, I got a gift and was very touched and inspired, in a way comparable to the feeling I’d get leaning against my locker in junior high, peering into my lunch box, and someone breezing by, using the balls of their feet for direction, like hopping on riverstones to the opposite shore, and swiftly switching their juicebox, crust and jam for whatever it was I had just been peering straight through. Someone random. That’s key, starting with my hair and how it was worn then. Someone random who looks nothing like me. And if I’m totally honest, some of it comes from this summer and stuff I meant to have on my answering machine, outgoing. Project. Project. Project. Don't disturb me it's peeking out from the wings. We then watched a film I love very, very much. I had watched it long enough ago that I was able to relish in forgetting the outcome of some scenes. Cough. You know, this is where my character says to your character, I'm not laughing at you, I'm laughing with you. Yesterday, I wrote an email to someone that ended with: what people do as they wait. Things they fill up, trays. This has become a mission for me again, being related. Or disposing of your body parts gradually from my freezer.