It’s a double feature tonight folx. This is an experimental piece in four parts. Part of the reason for the run-ons is that the period key on my computer is stuck. 🙂

Part I

If I drank any more water that would be it and I would die. Already whenever I rolled on the paltry bedspread my belly rolled like a Jeep rolling off the highway in slick driving rains, with a great mass, I must have drunk two jugs of water by now, by the cupful, and still she kept on, gentle on the door, never exasperated, I wish she was, imploring me to drink more water in the middle of the night, well I won’t, I can’t any longer, my tongue has rotted in all that water like bread forgotten by the ducks, all that sog sinking sour to the bottom of my throat, an urge to cough brings the water back lukewarm, back up the throat, I cannot sleep because my best friend is coming tomorrow and I am not prepared. Must drink more water. Must drink more water, she said it again from the doorway, the insistence of water coming in from under and around the door, she never seems to make a door that creaks to creak, nothing obeys her, peering at me now Grandma always delighted when someone is sick, well I won’t play along, her powderblue slippers and her powderblue hair which glows and leads lines of hair like tired horses down to her cracked lips looking at me looking at me struggle I roll my eyes catching the moon outside like a reminder drink some more water, Munchkin it’s just nerves after all my best friend is coming tomorrow Grandma sits by the bed always happy when someone else can’t sleep old women never sleep I don’t know what I will do without dreams I’m sitting up though my belly is fit to burst if only I was pregnant instead of bloated but never could I best friend said never will I and I am not one to go first into that dark woods am I Grandma’s humming her powderblue veins absolutely shoved with blood like a fucking hero straining to lift burning logs off the house but it’s just her reaching over me stop Grandma you’ve gone too far let me take it the terracotta mug with more water set it on the nightstand with the books and the bookmark with the peony watch not to spill on the books so nice of you to bring it she looks so creepy sitting on my bed what is she doing so close to me we never touch smoothing down the bedspread limiting my thrash why isn’t she happy anyway her children love live near each other and they all dote on her like an old turtle lives in a hole dug for it by lizards I wish she would leave let me thrash to feel my belly push against itself like shaking a like plastic water bottle half air she’s petting the bed beside me involuntary throbbing to be Little! I hate that I feel that I could cry because the moon floods out her face when she looks to the window I can see clearly in the corner the people in dresses which reminds me I am dreaming the lucid way where I have to be careful not to open my eyes haretrigger Grandma says from far away a scolding rinsing over the dinner plate after we’ve eaten the warmth of the dream she washes it clean I do wish you’d stop catching the baby toads Emma-love it scares them so you’re torturing them and then she goes at last I take half the water in the terracotta in one gulp the nausea is so bad waves of blood more than needed migrate to the highways in my knees and beat there I can hardly breathe my body is so tight with water I was told to drink water every time I want a drink of liquor and now I cannot stop drinking water fuck them all. Making me drink water well I won’t anymore. I fall asleep again and when I wake my legs are wet with urine and my brother is standing over me evil as dogs in the glare of the moon. 

Part II

The softness in my brother’s face is all my mother’s but it doesn’t mean he has a weak character. The room was silent as I cannot have a ticking clock whittling my sleep hours to crescents as I am powerless against it so who knows how long he was standing there, although he is not particularly patient but I usually wake up, and now him standing over by the windowsill occupied by the roof where my tar-trampled reading blankets lay out dirty and wretched and I saw he was lining toads upon the windowsill I sat up and gave an awesome burp that made him approve of me he looked so much like our mother that it occurred to me to hate him by proxy Why aren’t you in bed, I said It’s morning he said and I looked and so it was, not the glare of the moon after all but confused clouds edged pink like baby’s hats are default gray until some unmistakable revelation comes and he said Morning dawn best time for frogs I asked him what will you do with these obedient frogs, also, they are toads, lined like soldiers on the windowsill with triangular wet asses pressed down all silent and moody like the old men we passed while walking with Grandma always intuiting her story wrongly from the way my brother and I followed in her footsteps and the way she held herself in high regard at least attempting to point towards the truth but that’s just the way they teach you to walk in a hospital you have to look like you know where you’re going or you’ll get stopped and in church too, you must hurry to obey when we should I hate it so much the frustration rubs on me like something awakening and it just makes me hate it more but the truth because I can’t stop it waking up truth was was we were just stupid and had to follow behind her exactly or else we’d get murdered by a passing Chevy never do what we can when we should I took a sip of water excitedly and then remembered I was wet with urine the room collapsed Go out on the roof I need to change I whispered to my brother You wet yourself he said in triumph not believing I’d hand him something like this Go I said sounding just like Mom when I said it and he removed the screen and crawled out between the row of frogs and he took one in each hand as he went each frog had golden eyes the likes of which I had never seen on a boy and I felt myself around and realizing I didn’t smell urine and I brought my hand out from the covers and it was sticky with the slides of brown blood more and more of it came sliding out of me and clots too everytime I moved even a twitch of the thigh and hot waterslides and wet packaged ovals too like bugs get caught in the wax of a candle and slowly liquify along with the wax and I stood up I was so weak my legs shook and it was cold relative to the bed I piled the sheets so that the blood wasn’t visible thank god I hadn’t lost control and wet myself after all and I dried myself with a towel and then wet the towel with the remaining water from the terracotta mug and rinsed my legs with the other half of the towel unable to go slowly and take care of myself properly as my brother had come into my room without me letting him in starting something I was behind on and now he was on the roof anxious to be out there and see the sun rise and all those frogs looking at me and I still did have to pee so I relieved myself in a kombucha bottle with a wide bottle cap and shoved it under my bed and put on a new nightdress that was still clean leaving the bloody one in heap atop the towels and leaving that disgrace behind me like climbing out of a dirty pond I joined my brother on the roof he told me as I was coming through the window Hand me two more fellows, please and so I did ducking back inside to take another drink of water and getting two more toads. For we were throwing the fellows off the roof to hear their soft bellies flunk on the grass.

Part III

My neck was cramped Here she comes Oh goody Princess Munchkin said Mom in reply The last one awake Like it’s an offensive hour, I said, my neck is cramped like I took a swan dive off the roof and fell directly on the knob of my neck killing whatever controls me there Well good morning to you too said Mom and Grandma didn’t deign to respond to such lowballed rituals at all, pushing a terracotta mug into my hands the boogers in the eyes would need to be addressed the knots in the bushy hair. The woken women fixed on those like wrinkles in a bedsheet smoothing to be tugged first one way then the other finally taut with technique never pull too hard. Inevitable after sleeping so long I had the feeling I had walked into the wrong void as if the kitchen where I sat should really be Grandma’s bedroom such were the intimacies that passed between them: Mom with her back to them doing dishes passing historical objects with chipped rims from one shoulder to the other Grandma sat at the table as the idle old are wont to seem to do but she was doing so in an irritating way: the cloudy light protected any one of us from harsh temper too early in the morning: it was a shrouded sort of day with a warm wind at the best moments and yet she really pissed me off, Grandma, with her snide backwards way of saying, The cousins are out, What did she really mean, As is your brother, they went off on bikes again we probably won’t see them til lunch Ah said I, But isn’t there any coffee You’re drinking it, said Mom never one to carry the conversation finding more power in correcting that which brings itself into existence like a referee and sure enough it was watery coffee It’s too watery, I said, I literally thought it was water, Ah Emma, said Grandma, I know you’re awake when you start making complaints, please wake up a little bit more and see you’re hurting your poor mother who brewed that coffee for you, if she made it the way she likes it that’s nothing to sniff at, Help us in the garden this morning Mom said as a statement of fact sip of coffee Ah but Oh yes and when will Taylor be arriving recoil Grandma felt her move back like animals do when the sense some kind of sleight of hand, a false treat, the barrel of the gun unseen but looking down from the canopy, I don’t know she said furious to be made to admit it gazing without gazing at the white wood of the kitchen table full to the brim with the three of them like an eye fills with tears but does not spill You know her it could be anytime Why don’t you help us then you’ll be relieved for work a creeping rose her freedom shrinking she needed time to brood and to write decorative idiosyncrasies for her for Taylor these two glaring old women she took a sip of water fine so it was coffee Grandma turned back to other politics with that settled We shall tend to the grapes and the huckleberries today but Taylor liked best the smell of strawberries with their unlikely little white flowers and she smelled of drugstore vanilla always so she would tend to the littlest flowers in the vast green glade under the brim of the sun hat of both her mothers one old and one older she would be free to daydream fairies under the petals a secret world of anguish in the mulch-hill when it was besieged by fire ants and the fairies clung to the underside of leaves and cradled water perhaps freeing the bugs caught in spiderwebs perhaps they were too lazy for that and her nipples getting hard under her nightdress to dream of her best friend the last time she had seen she had screamed at her or had she been screamed at? And Taylor’s mom’s house shook to pieces and the Coke can she had been holding she squeezed it all because Taylor wouldn’t shut the fuck up about her Emma having tunnel vision and sabotaging her to keep her forever squeezing and soda sprayed her face and soaked her dress in the worst spot and razored her hand the sharp edges of aluminum can and her blood had mixed with the red wine on the foot of the stairs and Taylor had said she always did have a gift for eloquence If you go you’re never coming crawling back and she said Fuck you and she said Good riddance and she drove home drunk and was laid up for three days with fever from slicing her hand open and losing so much blood luckily Mom and Gram didn’t believe in doctors and the whole drive home she saw deer with gunshot wounds in their necks and the people in dresses again along both sides of the road with their eyeless lidless smiles would Taylor remember that? Except she had driven home alone Yoohoo there she is! said Mom giving a royal wave to Taylor coming up the drive with her sunglasses on.

Part IV

As Taylor approached graceful in her navy dress in her knit cardigan up the drive never one to disavow the pleasure of pine needles on the ground she stepped feeling a thousand crackles under her feet in the dirt that was first red and then black meanwhile Emma (I) stood there like a stupidhead with a white daisy in my hand like the fly trapped between the screen and window unable to go anywhere but shrunk to the function of a compound eye she came she really came Grandma and Mom both bemused they knew the whims of young women are never still like the waters of the creek moving on one after the other ceaselessly becoming without comment on what was well I went to her at last Taylor with her stepping stone manner after beaming at my Mom the smile she flashed over her shoulder making them fall over themselves in laughter the two crones they didn’t even have to hide their hysterics from me I’m too wrapped in Taylor to care she came, she came I’ll take her from here, I said anxious to get her to herself someplace we could inhabit and grow wider within slow down perhaps such relief now that she is here at last everything will be ok again I will make happiness fall out of your ears, she remembered her promise looking at Taylor but then she remembered more, that she was meant to be angry, and that cancelled her words entirely, so that she stood before her, wanting mutely to kiss her cheek, but Taylor didn’t do that kind of things, a cousin had hit her before Emma had known her, before she could do anything about it or kill anyone with a scissors across the throat, Taylor still reenacted it sometimes with a scissors across the wrists, she resisted an urge to look but yes, Taylor had covered her arms in bangles and saw her looking at her wrists her own craning reflection in the dark sunglasses which Taylor still wore, did she have the same eyes under there, to not know was almost unbearable these were the signs that not all was right with the world and this is the suffering they bore. But to make it right at last Taylor said Hello and that was all and Emma said at once Come and see the toads, which was not what she meant to say but she was here and now do let the squirrels make their complaints again everything could move now that she was here again a ghostly hawk passed overhead the green bars of the sun bent towards her The power she has over her, said Mom to Grandma, You never have friends like the friends you have when you’re young, said Grandma, and what else she meant would kill Emma to know. Let her be, let her follow, said Grandma, and I followed Taylor past the green glade to the back of the house where the lawn was wildest where the mint had gone to seed and the clouds had relieved themselves of duty and shoved off to break among the high cliffs in the mountain country to the north leaving just a speckle of dew on the face of the house in fact Taylor had never before come so early and I hated her so she made everything better with no effort she just simply was and the smell of vanilla and everything was better but what to say I must give her something wishing suddenly I could take a sip of water This is where the toads are I said pathetically and now that they were alone Taylor removed her dark fashionable sunglasses to see the toads and her left eye was as swollen as an overripe blueberry What happened! I blundered before I could stop myself Just an accident said Taylor in a way that made me wish I had said nothing for now she knew I cannot keep silent and Taylor now choosing to look not at me but at the overturned bellies of toads littering the yard You did this didn’t you she said turning to me the unreal attention made me giggle How did she know? Say it now while she’s here say it to make her stay say it in front of her here in the sun with the sunlight purple on her eyelashes and the left half of her face dead as an eclipse how horrible You did this didn’t you said Taylor hysterically You killed these frogs, They are toads I feigned to defend myself Why is she accusing me? Of course I did, You’re capable of anything Taylor said you and that little bastard, if only that were me, Thank you for coming I said instead of saying what I should be saying and everything was still strained between us because of course I had never thanked Taylor for coming over before Would you like a sip of water Taylor said Say it give it to her Yes I nearly shouted and I took the waterbottle from Taylor’s purse because Taylor is never liked to start these things herself although she brought them along and the bottle was heavy with hot sweet wine not water and I said I missed you and Taylor said I know. Say it Say it I don’t ever want to be like my brothers and cousins, said Taylor, and I said, we can’t be. We have already killed that part of ourselves, or it died on its own, but we are forgiven, We are forgiven? The mint leaves moved as if they were water falling. We are forgiven by coming together, me coming here for you, my favorite person, Taylor said, kicking at toads and giggling, to keep from crying, having a favorite person is so dangerous, I will never tell you how I feel. You’ve changed everything, the course of the day the wind on the lake, I’m like a little boat, lead me, I missed you so. I’ll eat you whole.