Uptown Manhattan March 9, 2009

With the warmth comes the drunk neighbors outside of the bar, saying to me “Don’t smoke that cigarette, it’s bad for you. Smoke me instead.” The small, flashing neon sign advertises “Chicas Exoticas,” and the pool hall is alit. Men wearing khaki pants and wristwatches and flannel shirts take shots at cue balls and wipe the sweat from their glasses onto their thin sleeves. The music and the conversation escape through the windowpanes, not thick enough to hold it in, still not as thin as my own skin.

I am walking past and my eyes are searching the sidewalks for the community cat and she is no where to be found in the rain, I recall: Cats dislike water. A sign above a bodega advertises “A dozen roses, $10.00″ and I think to myself, jokingly, ‘well hot tamale!’ and then think, ‘yes, they probably serve hot tamales there as well.’

Little speckles of rain coat the cars parked on the side of the road. My face. My jacket. Another man says, “So beautiful,” and after a pause, “I swear!” I fought with this man a week ago outside of the laundromat. He was angry that I sat down to have a cigarette. He began shouting at me. I pleaded with him, “Porque no me dijo? Porque?” The alcohol and the exotic women must have helped him to forget this incident.

Inside of my building I notice a new emergency exit sign in the lobby. I wish it led to some place that felt like escape. Later, in my bedroom, I think ‘all of this space is mine, it isn’t much but it’s enough of a place for me to think in and work in and exist.’ Compared to the home I grew up in, it should be written off. I should be written off? Sometimes my head writes poetry and it does not make sense. It is how I exist.

Sometimes when I walk I pay attention to the trash, what does it say about anything? An empty, plastic, purified water jug, a styrofoam cup, an opened condom (used?), a pin that reads ‘Tell Dem Slavery Done!’, a very large hairpin, candy wrappers, a tumbleweed made from fake hair, and all of the etcetera’s you could ever imagine. Does it say anything about anything? Have I ever said anything about anything?

No, no. Of course not. It’s only in me to create and to keep the substance in. You know, they tell me they don’t want to hear it. Not explicitely. They don’t say it, per se. They imply with their gestures and their calculated conversation, and I was never taught to be that, and I wonder what it is like to know their secret codes, their rules that make being alive easier for them. If you know what to do then you can interact with everybody else who knows what to do. No, not me. I am strange. They have told me that too. Explicitely. They say it. Per se.

That is why I am not invited into the bar with the pool tables and the lacquered balls on the felt tables that are easy to mar. That is why I am not invited to speak the language or shop for mangoes or listen to loud music outside of my apartment in their cars. That is why they yell at me in Spanish outside of the laundromat, and when I beg them not to be angry in Spanish it upsets them more. Use your words, your only power, but keep them inside of your head, lest they lose all power on a recipient who does not want to hear it. Tell us another story about a cat, okay? Don’t say that you are fluid and sensitive and have observed our garbage and judge our priorities and character by it. Do you know any jokes about tugboats?

No, but I have one about choo choo trains.

The Invisible Barrier July 14, 2008

I am standing in line. The man in front of me is wearing a ribbed, white, sleeveless shirt. Long, dark wisps of hair curl around the hem at the back of the neck and shoulders. I am holding a bag of black cherries and a napkin. I pull out a piece of fruit and pop it into my mouth. I crush my teeth onto it hard so that the juice squirts into my cheek in one quick burst. I suck the pit against the roof of my mouth to remove the stringy bits of flesh that cling to it, then push it out of my lips into the napkin, which is balled up and becoming sweaty in my fist.

I do not like this place. I lean to the left to see the front of the line. An elderly woman with matted gray hair pulled into a bun at the top of her head is looking over her thin glasses at a stout Lebanese lady. The lenses are long rectangles. Her flesh is the color of steamed salmon. I don’t like this place, but I like her. She is behind the glass that separates her from the breath of the strangers she assists.

I still don’t know if I want to buy a ticket, and if I do, I don’t know where I want to go. I could take a ride to Massachusetts, but I wouldn’t know where to stay or what areas are safe. I recall that I have a friend there, but we haven’t spoken in over a year. I stuff the empty black cherry bag and their pits into my purse. I take out my phone, wanting to call Holly, she moved to Pennsylvania a little while ago and I know that she would let me stay with her. I think she is beautiful and I wish that I were a man so we could do more than just kiss when we are drunk. I know that if I were a man she would want to fall in love with me. I never want to fall in love with anybody.

I close my phone. The line doesn’t seem to be moving. I peer around the man with the ribbed shirt again, turning my head sideways and imagining that the people in front of me are a stack of books shaped like human beings. I continue standing with my head tilted so that my ear is against my shoulder. I wonder who I would want to thumb through, if it really were a library of people. Who has been taken from the shelf the least? The most? The small Lebanese woman is still standing at the window. She is thrusting her hands above herself in exasperation. The lady behind the partition just keeps smiling apologetically and shaking her head in a way that means “no.”

Finally we move one spot forward. I notice that we are all using the dirt-brown tiles of the floor as place markers. I count the number of squares to the front of the line. Seven. I wonder if seven has any significance to my life, because maybe that could help me figure out where to buy a ticket to. I always hated the number seven, it reminded me of my oldest cousin who didn’t dote on me like the others when I was little. It was his favorite number, and any game we played he worked it in somehow. The first person to shoot seven hoops on the basketball court won. The first person to run from one end of the hay field to the other seven times was the winner. When you play hide-and-seek you only have to count to seven. Yes, seven. This means that I should not take a bus home to Michigan. This would counteract everything I am trying to do.

I am trying to get away from myself. It has been exactly four days and two hours since the overwhelming feeling of being trapped inside of my own body began. I awoke feeling heavy in my bones, a prisoner to the various systems of my body. The nervous system, the circulatory system, and the uterine cycle trap me the most. I remind myself of a wild tiger caught in a cage, clawing and scratching at my ribs, wanting to scream for somebody to just let me the fuck out. I think about my body and my mind being controlled by the same organ. Everybody else has a brain that is shiny, slicked with fluid. Their brains are bundled up in smooth waves that fit perfectly inside of their skulls. My brain is sponge-like and lacks gloss, I imagine it resembles strawberry marshmallows. Like the others, my brain fills the inside of my skull, but it is an ill and awkward fit. I’ve never had a CAT-scan, but I know all of this somehow.

The line moved two more places. I am no longer eighth in line, I am sixth. There are five tiles ahead of me. Does five mean anything? There are five boroughs in New York City, but that is the city I am standing in. Perhaps it means that I shouldn’t leave. Perhaps it is forcing me to go. I can’t decide what any of it represents. I make up a poem in my head, it reads:

Five boroughs and five tiles

            Fall in love and have a child

            One by one they ask of me

To keep visiting the salted sea

So they can live vicariously

 

I write everything out in my head, the inside of it looks like a notebook of endless paper. I write the words out very large sometimes when I feel them too strongly inside of my body. I write the words very tiny when they are shameful or secretive. I wrote the poem I just made up in a calligraphy that I cannot write in with my own hand.

            I decide the poem meant something. I step out of the line, expecting to trip on the invisible barrier of the edge of the square tiles. I was fifth in line and now the person who was sixth is moving into the void I just created. I wish I had the ability to create voids, vacuous spaces in various places. I wonder where I would start.  Right here, I think, I would create a void right here. And then I move towards the escalator and do.

………………………………………

            I am in a subway car. It is heading to Coney Island. The first time I saw the ocean was at Coney Island. It was chilly outside, then, but I stripped down to my underwear and scarf and danced in the water. I liked the way the salt dried onto my skin as a white powder. The lakes in Michigan are made of fresh water and don’t burn any small cuts one might have.

            In the subway car there is a man slouched into the corner. He is looking at me. I am a plain woman and I wonder if his eyes are simply using me as a place to rest. They do look wearied. I am plain but when I was younger I was beautiful, everybody liked to dote on me. I grew up, and now nobody wants to pay attention, I don’t mind since my words are often pointless and without value.

            The train moves underwater in a tunnel for part of the trip; it moves high above the ground for part of it, also. I like to take this train when the sun is setting. It’s a nice surprise to be a passenger in the darkness and then to be carried into the changing colors of light. I have some photos of the stunning sunset but I do not have any pretty photos of it. I am terrible at composing photographs. Here is a short list of other things I am bad at: returning letters, controlling my temper, being good to myself.

            I am arriving at Coney Island now. My knees hurt from having been sitting with them pulled up to my chest in the subway car. There was an empty can rolling about the floor. It clinked against the walls and poles and ricocheted calmly, directionless. I thought, that’s me, the way that it wanders reminds me of me. I had lifted my feet from the floor so that I would not accidentally block it or propel it in another direction.

            I am walking towards the water. The feeling of being isolated inside of my own body is faint, I am hoping the grandiosity of the ocean will dissolve it entirely. The sun has been down for a while now. I watched it in the subway car and it was beautiful, but I don’t have a camera with me. I don’t mind since my photographs often appear pointless.

            It would be dark here if it weren’t for the streetlamps that line the boardwalk. I find the darkness close to the water soothing. I walk towards it, I am wearing an old pair of jeans and the sand hitting against the bottoms of the legs makes the denim feel stiff. There are no other people on the beach that I can see. I am not worried if there are. I feel tired. My chest slumps, the muscles of my back feel tense but when I try to straighten it out they do not want to tighten. My body is the victor, the triumphant. I wave an imaginary white flag into the darkness.

            I don’t bother testing the temperature of the ocean; I know it’s always going to be too cold. I am standing at its edge and I unlace my shoes, slip them off and then remove my jeans. The fabric feels more pliable in my hands. I bend my body in half and pull the sweatshirt and thin undershirt off together, over my head. I toss them onto the dry sand ten feet behind me. I no longer believe in underwear or socks, they only aid the feeling of confinement, so I have nothing more to remove.

            I am confused about how I feel. I should dance in the liberation of removing a layer of myself, a societal layer. I should frolic in my skin, twirl into the water and duck my head under so that I can immediately wet my hair and don’t have to struggle with keeping it dry. The first time here I was filled with joy, now something feels as if it were dwindling inside of me; wilting, perhaps. Everything seems blurry, I am losing track of my thoughts, they are taking over my head exactly as the snowstorms do to the streets in Michigan. White and kinetic, everything is becoming static.

I have stopped thinking. I am reduced to a single spark of rage. I run towards the ocean and throw myself into a large wave as if it were a wall. It is not a wall, and that angers me more. I want the fuck out. I want to breathe on the inside, to be able to inhale into the place where my emotions become destructive. I am kicking in the water; I hate my limbs for not aching. I am trying to punish my body for trapping me inside of it. I am mad. I am a madwoman. Nobody on the whole ugly face of the earth understands what is inside of me. I hate myself for this. I hate my skin for trapping my emotions inside of me; for not letting them seep out and become thin in the air. I hate this ocean for cradling me when I want to be harmed. I let out a scream. It is the scream of the madwoman inside of me. It sounds like a wild tiger trapped in a cage, scratching and roaring to be set free, it’s head filled with nothing but the color red.

I stop. I am panting. I look towards the boardwalk and notice a man. He is watching me splash in the water.

“Can I join you?” he shouts in a tone that is perverted.

I realize that I am naked and feel exposed. All of me, bare in the water. My girly bits and breasts, my scarred back, I don’t want people to know them, they are intimate to me and only me. I scramble back to my clothing, tugging the layers back onto my body pitifully. I am pitiful. I am not very good at running away. Or, I am good at running away, but not from myself.

I am wishing I had a jar and that moonlight could be gathered. I am sitting near the water, it spreads onto the shore and touches my cross-legged knees. I dig my hand into the packed mud next to me. It hurts my nails when I try to scoop it from the ground and leaves impressions of all of my fingers except for my thumb. The water washes into the crevice I just dug, leaving sediment and eroding it so it is not as deep. You can no longer see my fingers.

I am thinking about the hole I dug in the ground and wishing that I could leave holes all over the earth. I dig another hole, shallow and closer to the water. It fills it up and carries it away. The ground there is smooth now, like the brains of people who are not me. I realize that I can leave uninhabited space anywhere I like. I stand, shake the sand from my pants, move towards the train station, and leave another.