Miami1345326739.Pdf (147.67

ABSTRACT

“ISOTOPE”

by Alice Ladrick

By referencing elements of the domestic and positioning the female body within that space, this thesis attempts to create non‐traditional, partially autobiographical narratives that delve into gendered representations of selfhood as well as women’s relationships with the world around them (including relationships to men, other women, etc.). The epistolary form of Dear Alice emphasizes the role of address in narration and the representation of the self through written text. This form draws attention to the relationship between author and speaker, speaker and reader, and author and reader, as well as to the artifice of intimacy that direct address can create. Meanwhile, Isotope and The love of my life is emotionally inept use pop culture references, punning, and inventive line breaks to address similar questions of intimacy and representations of female desire and sexuality.

ISOTOPE

A Thesis

Submitted to the

Faculty of Miami University

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts

Department of English

Alice E. Ladrick

Miami University

Oxford, Ohio

2012

Advisor: Cathy Wagner

Reader: cris cheek

Reader: Keith Tuma

Table of Contents

ISOTOPE 1 REPEATEDLY BENT OVER AT THE OFFICE 3 MY MOONING COULD BE IT, YOU GUYS. 4 THESE POEMS AREN’T MINE, I CONFESS THAT I STOLE 5 SMELLS OF THE DARK ROOM STAINED BY MY HANDS 6 AFTER FEELING VERY PROUD OF MAKING UP 7 THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO WANT ME AND I KNOW IT. 8 I’VE BEEN SPLIT BEFORE BY WHERE 9 LET ME START OVER, SYLVIA, 10 I SAY A LOT OF THINGS WITH MY MOUTH, MAN 11 SOMETIMES THE ENDINGS ARE MORE LIKE JOKES TO THESE 12 WHEN I WROTE THIS I HAD DIARRHEA 13 AM I COMING TO? 13 EVERYBODY’S MOVING IN WITH THEIR BOYFRIEND AND I 14 IMAGINING MAGNETS IS NEVER AS COOL AS 15 TO HAVE AND TO HOLD I’LL NEED YOU 16 WHEN I SAY “HATERS TO THE 17 MY MALE PRONUNCIATION PRO 18 I THINK MY CAT MIGHT BE MY BEST FRIEND 19 I’LL START IN ON THAT 20 THEY SAY THE HORMONES WE EAT 21 THERE HAS TO BE A THIRD 22 COMMUNICATION INCREASES AS THE INTERNET 23 RESTART THIS TIME WITH THE COUNT OF CHILDHOOD 24 THE HD RADIO PLAYS TRICKS 25

THE LOVE OF MY LIFE IS EMOTIONALLY INEPT 26 BACK IN THE BIG HOUSE WE HAVE CORNERS ON THE COUCH AND A SEAT IS MINE EVEN AFTER I LEAVE. A 27 OBVIOUSLY THERE IS FLUID MISSING IN THE RELATION 27 BETWEEN MAN AND WOMAN WHEN MAN IS TOO FAR 27 BABY BABY WHERE DID OUR LOVE GO? OH I NEED 27 THERE WERE TIMES WHEN I LOVED YOU SO BUT BABY 28 OR CRIPPLED MIGHT BE THE WORD WITH WHICH HE LEFT 28 NAME ME WHAT YOU WANT I WILL 28 MY UTERUS WANTS NONE OF THIS BUSINESS BUT TO SPLIT THE BEES 28

DEAR ALICE, 29 I GOT BORED WITH YOU AND GAVE YOU AWAY BUT NOW THAT I’M LIVING 30 I WATCHED A MOVIE ABOUT POLAR BEARS WHERE THE MOTHER LOST HER 31 WE TWO STRETCHING APART, BLOWN AS GLASS. PUSHING MY BREATH 32 MY SISTER PLURALIZED MY NAME AS THOUGH SHE KNEW THAT ONE 33 YOU’LL BE DISAPPOINTED WHEN I COME BACK. MY STOMACH IS FULL 34

ii ON THE FIRST NICE DAY THE SUN SETS ANYWAY AND I PICTURE YOU 35 WHEN I FOUND MY ASIAN FATHER IN THE GROCERY STORE MY ARMS 36 YOU’RE ASKING ME TO DIG UP LANDMINES ONE BY ONE. MY SENSE OF 37 MY SISTER HELD THE LITTLE PEOPLE IN HER FISTS AND I HELD PACIFIERS 38 THE CROCUS CAME AS THOUGH IT KNEW THE THREAT OF FROST. I WAS 39 THIS IS AMERICA, THERE IS NO RAINY SEASON. YOUR EYES HAVE BEEN 40 TOUCHING THE WORMS IS HARD WITHOUT SPLITTING THEM INTO TWO 41 ISN’T IT ENOUGH TO SHAVE THEIR HEADS BALD WITH SCISSORS OR DO I 42 IT’S HOT OUTSIDE AND THE GRASS IS TURNING BROWN. I DON’T KNOW 43 I COULD HAVE DIED YOU KNOW, YOU SAID AND MY HALF OF THE ROOM 44 REMEMBER HOW YOU PUSHED ME IN AND I SHOUTED AND I SAID I 45 I’M BROKEN WHERE LIVES COME FROM BUT THERE IS SOMETHING 46 PEOPLE START NESTING AS THEY GET OLDER, BUILDING LITTLE HOMES FOR 47 I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOUR FACE LOOKS WITHOUT TURNING INTO MINE. 48 YOU USED TO COME EVERY SUMMER BUT IT’S BEEN YEARS. I NEED YOU, 49 I HAVEN’T SHOWERED IN DAYS AND THE SALTINESS COMING OFF ME IS 50 TIMES AND TIMES AGAIN MULTIPLIED I CRIED ON MY FINGERS FOR THE 51 I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT YOU WALKING AWAY FROM ME IN A 52 THE PAPER SEALS THE VIOLETS IN AND THEIR DEPRAVITY IS FREE. I 53

iii

Isotope

1 I had this whole thing written out about being a sock and having this foot inside you and stretching out and out and sweating all over it ended with wanting to be fergie and pissing myself on stage in concerts only you can totally see the urine running down her legs.

The thing got scrapped because there wasn’t anything to it my friend reading about radiation poisoning when all the bad scientists died because they radiated themselves and disagreed with madame curie like all those dopes in phantom. I’d rather paint my nails than be here. The physical gains are collecting at a rate of 1% a month. Multiplication leads to answering machines.

They asked me to take my bra off for the x‐ray my back to them and to the side, breasts propped on a forearm then dangling hardly romantic.

2 Repeatedly bent over at the office they found the spine to bend to the right where it would knock hard on the ribs just so sweetly leaving to rub against my tailbone. My walk is crooked for reasons not to be shared during confessions through cracked doors.

My bloomers served me well when I knew dying early is a thing for movies or if you have a white lighter in your pocket when you’re twenty‐seven. I’m wrong‐ handed except for the times I could do both, obviously not at once unless in multiples of two, but that’s not okay at school.

Ending sentences like lines is easy until you sneeze. The generic blue seems less so then. Round‐ headed so much like a circle, she said

I was round.

3 My mooning could be it, you guys. The process of howling could take months at the end of this phase so hurry the fuck up.

(Sure that language is an excuse, though I got on well with an ass like that. The only girl I knew named Jenny was a bitch with a tattoo that looked like marijuana behind a vagina.) You can say Georgia O’ Queef again, it made my dad laugh. (Anyway the tattoo was on this girl’s thigh just so when she got fat so did her vagina.) I wonder how many times I can make it so that people leave when I say vagina. Really it’s just a place to store things like tampons and the future of huge manatees. Alright I’m joking but it really does sound like humanity. On my face your hands, webbed.

4 These poems aren’t mine, I confess that I stole them from the internet. Is everyone happy? Should I keep it?

When I told everyone it was hard to be brilliant even though I know that really nobody is supposed to call me out because I won’t answer anyway.

What good is golden hair if strangers don’t come up and tell me I’m made of flax and straw like ‘little dolly I could burn you but my white lighter’s all out of fluid.’ That sounds like a gross inyourendo and there I’ve done it.

Alienate the audience with your sexuality. Again

I find somebody looking into me, scoping my pelvis for anything tractable and deserving of a beating or bearing. My dream about the little fetus that I threw down the toilet.

5 Smells of the dark room stained by my hands I didn’t know were awake even when they pushed me out of bed. It was all mine anyway until I got there, some more purple than others in the hallways. Yes it was very specific when I lit it up in the attic though it may not have been real. There’s a question of how I walked having played in the mens’ room several times a week. If you’re thinking about the Rosenberg’s you’re on the right track with me the way she thought about getting vodka straight. Oh, signing is alright but I’d prefer the museum part of your hair drifting onto my fingers; brush it behind my ear for me as a new favor sweet and crippled by electronicity. Heat is expensive in this climate. In trying to make their own lives accumulate the poison showed up only on the plates.

6 After feeling very proud of making up this form I decided not to google it to keep my originality full of itself and rising so it hits the point where the reactors can’t stop the heat from getting out of control. That’s total bullshit and I know it, but radiate it all over Japan. Monkeys testing themselves while wearing necklaces can be problematic because they can get caught on things or submit incorrect readings from the machines around their necks.

Monkeys also can’t sign waivers. One waves from the hip with one hand leaving spaces around like if these hips don’t lie.

Sorry for all this nostalgic bullshit but space has to be filled somehow and so far garbage is doing a pretty good job though sometimes I think getting hit would be better.

7 There are people who want me and I know it. What I love just like everyone is to be needed because then I’m a purpose and don’t need myself. Selves are overrated. Cats are under rated but also under my couch and my skin. Not like an allergy but like something I’d pay a thousand plus dollars to save.

The right side of my neck is shortening. Radiation is my lover and sleeps in my body, tightening its muscles over mine. People out the window are legit. Maybe too legit to quit me and my neck spasms. That’s with a z.

You can choose where.

We do these things day in. gut day out to make a hole filled with nothing. If it’s filled it’s not whole.

8 I’ve been split before by where the atoms break from hitting the radio activity too hard to really cause mutations.

My whole family’s got it in our necks; in our blood the thing that stops us does but in death only. I’m pluralizing the progressive verbs making circles again multi. Bone more curled than hair lost in the shower even if I brush beforehand this shit is getting disjointed. Fyck.

Redo. Start it over maybe with cat hair this time. Mention the Rosenbergs again, make them think I’m political in my referents in reality I’m talking about women all the time and in the shower I’m thinking about someone else. There aren’t enough patterns to make my panic attacks valid without claustrophobia and radiation creeping through the x‐rays.

9 Let me start over, Sylvia, a woman I knew once pushed me with my own hands, the force in proportion to the smallness of my palms. Psychics scare me just because thinking I know what they will tell me isn’t what makes it real. They could and I assume there’s more than one at the time but the news wouldn’t be good, you know? Constant inflammations keep me on not the edge of my seat or something rather near tears but on it no less perched for hurting. That sounded like hunting, didn’t it?

I leveled my aim months before you.

Place mats in back of hair seemed the directive while a wriggle is an indicator that some things happen when you push a button even if it’s just a sound of the placebo.

10 I say a lot of things with my mouth, man some bougie shit comes out like raps when I’m home alone. I made a playlist of every song in my library that uses the word lonely. But the bourgeois loneliness, that’s just for poors in denial. Nobody wanted to marry me again today. I won’t keep you waiting long, my love. I’ll hang all your pictures in the hall so I can knock them down. The real shame here is that Shamu is a girl in a tank top performing masculinity just like me and my undercut desires. Crafts, another way of saying to the world “I don’t have enough to do without this scrapbook” and memories and table scraps. Bougie girl won’t eat off the floor on her hands and knees even though the five‐second rule is bullshit too I’ll call your name and request my final meal. Just wieners.

11 Sometimes the endings are more like jokes to these but who knows about my audience. I guess it’s you guys looking at me. How’s my hair? I tried to do it so it’d be suitable for the chair. Now I’m proving I can rhyme poetics and junk it up with some clunkers here and there. Down the rabbit hole. Swallow a whole bottle of pills one day at a time. Measure’s inaccurate in a curate position. I guess you see what I did there. It was a pretty slick move.

Last December it took too long and I was lonely. A little bit broke and I started ending things with verbs. Vocables, electrocutions and elocutions. Really he had no idea I meant my hands when I said they pushed me out of bed. My own want me away from the place of consenting sometimes

I think again maybe I’d rather be chaired.

12 When I wrote this I had diarrhea not of the brain but the real kind that comes out your anus. I’m really slowing down on these.

This afternoon I went by the place I’d dropped him off and hoped it wouldn’t make anyone else as sad as I remembered being. That was it.

Trying to speak French turned inside out. Out out damn spot. Parting is such sweet sorrow. What a fucking lie, right? I’m looking for some approbation here it’s okay for you to respond but please only positive words welcome because I’m sensitive.

Not liking the kitchen isn’t a reason to leave or not do the dishes. Living in in in in. fuck in. fuck me in at night. What

am I coming to?

13 Everybody’s moving in with their boyfriend and I decided to get a tattoo: “ME” all caps on my ring finger, call my artist my jeweler when I go in for touchups. Get it sized up (cuz I’ll gain weight). I’m watching my figure. The way I figure it

I’ll be that sprinter‐poet. Shit. Spinster poet. Write it all at once like once is a place you’ve been and can go back to it. My boyfriend dumped me on my birthday. I’m not bitter but I am a liar.

Never going back there (lie) where boys are appealing. Fights with myself always end in sex.

14 Imagining magnets is never as cool as actually playing with forces. I’m concerned I’m convinced magnetic waves will move through and crush me.

Not the waves themselves. A couple or ton of magnets paired up run through me. They’ve been sharpened. Guillotines need to be sharpened daily. I hate it when people pronounce “Gill‐oh‐teen” even if that’s right.

It sounds so stupid on your tongue. Everything does. How’s that as a quip?

I messed up the pattern again; rogue waves keep stepping in my visuals tied to that city running scared.

15 To have and to hold I’ll need you to release my hands from behind my back. I’m always sweating and very attractive. You like me because I’m tasteless. When thinking, talk instead like your tongue didn’t know how. Conjunctions are so literal they’re boring. Not unlike watching microwave heat cook meat invisible and melt. Murdered plastic and flab. Can a nuclear reaction happen in space. Space not meaning open spaces or gaps but the other one where there’s nothing. Doesn’t exist without being around things. I’m anticipating the anti‐meltdown.

16 When I say “haters to the left” what I really mean is “get the fuck out of my house,” my house being a poem instead of a machine. Made of rooms spaces to crawl into and form the lovely spinster poetess William Carlos Williams said I’d never be a poet cuz ever a woman never a poet: an axiom or ass‐iom, really the only vacuum I’m in: a man’s head. Okay okay just joking. I’m suffering from a disease called femme inanity, if you ask me. You aren’t WCW but you’ve eaten my plums. Now everything

I own is yours.

17 My male pronunciation pro‐ tips don’t earn me enough money to live off of gimmicks. These breaks are too hard to enter. This girl was posting pictures of herself on facebook, like oh boy, I love you, but I’m thinking you’re too hard to enter. Come again another time.

Knock harder. That mouth, those two words to end it. Back to the Rosenbergs. Wear florals in the spring, write my entrance on your palm. Staring from the doorway into rooms is a habit often held by psychopaths, she said, her voice rarely trembled with undercooked vibrato. I meant to order but it isn’t in the dictionary showed to me. Built through erection. election. electrocution.

18 I think my cat might be my best friend (stop qualifying) My cat is my best friend always meowing at me. Love is keeping one another alive; that’s my name with one letter different. I watch a lot of House Hunters because I feel like a nomad’s home. A mermaid’s home underwater where my cat can’t come.

That’s where I’ll drown in it. Chernobyl comes home with me from work after the movie. I can’t shake it like the meters around the monkey’s necks. Somebody on the show is complaining about moving. Cambridge sounds pretty good compared to the empty apartments above and below.

A toast! To the whiners like me. To god knows what else named my houses and their owners. Call me a house.

Alright, you’re a house.

19 I’ll start in on that tomorrow, it’s summer and the trains have started; I mean the trains going by on tracks just across town. So it’s summer at about 2 am and I’m going to the beach tomorrow with Bossy where are you going.

I stubbed my electrotoe, heard the beep. Pain signified. I wrapped it in duct tape the diving board tore off.

A dive was always too much into the reactor. In the reactor I found people swimming dead‐eyed growing extra limbs like genitals bumping into one another. Futuristic Hamlets through the HD radio genitalia glowing active. The activity increasing as a form.

20 They say the hormones we eat get in our bodies and fuck us, our development, I mean.

Between that and the waves running their fingers through me it’s no wonder I didn’t come out untouched.

My training bra stuffed somewhere at the dump with family I cry every time.

Even with my maternal instinct enhanced with dairy I don’t wanna fuck with having children. Emotionally, no wonder watching sixteen and pregnant is an issue for us; the hormones have our bodies clocked, planned out. My births will be all hormonal.

21 There has to be a third because all things come in threes. We whisper our names in the dark.

The sun also rises like Hemingway said my girls would get up in the dark, make eggs sunny‐side up. Cover a waffle blanket up with my children.

You can microwave plastic and eat it later. You can put your face right up on the door to it. Plastic microwaved is Wonka vision. We, all of us, in tiny particles gamma‐ed, reassembled much smaller in size.

It’s in our necks when we’re shrinking.

The thickness can’t withstand. We have more of them. They are thinner and softer than before. They are more.

22 Communication increases as the internet gets to know you. Christian Mingle ads think of my childhood as inexorable as I type on my iphone. I get get the emails about me getting married one day nobody knows about the fetus, the toilet I’ve imagined a thousand times.

My cat is a twenty‐two‐hundred dollar baby. That’s all I can handle until I get new glasses at least to fix my focus.

She walks on my stomach at night when the trains come through town because she doesn’t understand rails or ropes except for toys.

Transporting is sporting cross country. We love to read them that way like the meters so we always know what’s up.

23 Restart this time with the Count of childhood in numbers once large enough desire becomes us mainly residing in the fingers and tributaries sent from hairy root to tip (maybe that image is sexual, you decide in this choose your own adventure).

Trying hard to be easy as such a loss naturally happens when your lips are chapped bare and ready over dramatically white teeth or really they’re more yellow because belief won’t let vanity obsess too deeply toward the gums. Guns. The sound of electric toothbrushes shocked me once as an outlet holds power instead of emptiness. Electric, my cunt is full of secrets that’s why it’s so that once she punched me in the face.

It was either awesome or aweful.

24 The HD radio plays tricks with its activities. It practices magic like the trite and true

AM radiation of waves, the sound kind to our ears. Or really through them or off them, us, off us in refrainders

I wanna detain sounds; the Rosenbergs’ feet on the ground, Chernobyl. Passing through waves

At the beach and sometimes getting bowled over. I messed up the pattern. The pattern matters.

So does half‐rhyme and internal imagining. Magnetic resonance sounds like the room we left for the holy spirit.

The love of my life is emotionally inept

26 Back in the big house we have corners on the couch and a seat is mine even after I leave. A pregnancy test in the drawer that caused suspicion remains untouched, store brand and unnecessary for now when none of us want to become mothers for lack of faith. If I had your experience maybe I would be different but I don’t know what I’ve been initiated into. I’ve crossed off men both younger and the same age for lack of a better term because my back is too weak to have a child to carry on my hips, whiskey‐breathed, is more than I can stand. I’m the drunk here; isn’t anybody worried about what might become of me, with boys to save, isn’t there a need allowable. My allowance is never enough and my M.R.S. degree is still in the mail. My father always said not to show aptitude at something you don’t want to get stuck doing and I should have listened but carelessness is the least likely thing in a woman. This babysitting and playing super man is exhausting, the sheer weight of fictional manhood denser than steel.

∗

Obviously there is fluid missing in the relation Between man and woman when man is too far Away from it to hold on to more than just Hips and warmth.

∗

Baby baby where did our love go? Oh I need You but you hurt me so bad. I’ve got this burnin yearnin feelin inside me. You have me with what you got always. Monthly.

∗

27 There were times when I loved you so but baby I’ve got to go because you drew me in Pencil, lightly, held me skinny‐armed and broke Til we had to move.

∗

Or crippled might be the word with which he left Me with my love over one shoulder Stuck in the same place we started though neither moved on Feeling like we weren’t done but over

∗

Name me what you want I will Respond to your calls at night to be next to somebody Even your smallness won’t keep me from the body I deserve.

∗

My uterus wants none of this business but to split the bees Knees for insertions of sweet sweet honey baby I’ll fuck you Oh baby how I miss you when there’s nothing on TV, When there’s nothing more of me to need.

Dear Alice,

I got bored with you and gave you away but now that I’m living alone I still feel your body behind the door, crouched into listening, ear to the wood. I kick the door, hard. I want to pluck out all of your eyelashes, starting in the middle and taking one each day. I wonder how far I can push you before you’re unrecognizable; then you’d look like the doll you’re meant to be.

I watched a movie about polar bears where the mother lost her baby cub and never found him again. If I hadn’t been watching it alone I would have made a point of crying. My dolls are all underwater and I’m blaming you. I want to push your face into a bowl full of them.

We two stretching apart, blown as glass. Pushing my breath out of my body reminds me of how I pushed us out and myself into empty rooms.

The cold coffee grounds in the filter smell burnt like my throat. Like these letters and the smell of your hair. How long before our hair comes out at the roots and the tangles hang themselves from doorknobs? Would their knots slip through because we never learned to tie properly?

My sister pluralized my name as though she knew that one wasn’t enough and there had to be more of me. The alices in tangled wing running or sitting, faces towards the fan.

We rested our knees together under the table, as though to say, “I am feeling just fine.” I dreamt about trimming pubic hair. When your pet was lost, how long did you look for her?

You’ll be disappointed when I come back. My stomach is full and the pets have run away, knowing we’re a fake. If I could I’d burn you alive and bathe myself in smoke. I’d use it to keep the bugs away.

I’ll send you a picture of my body so you can see for yourself; beyond the layers we’ve caked ourselves in the stomach protrudes.

On the first nice day the sun sets anyway and I picture you walking home, belly full. The taste in my mouth reminds me that I could call you. My ears are warm when I don’t feel well. Hot air on my neck, soft and unmenacing and intimate. It doesn’t tickle like a moth, doesn’t kiss like lips—though powdery residue remains. I’m going to tell you everything once I find out how to say words quietly. You know how I love daffodils and their crinkly paper cravats; I will cut them down and press them between wax paper in your palms if you tell me what I’m missing.

When I found my asian father in the grocery store my arms were itching and you were chasing fluff, not paying attention. What does smelling like a man make me? My mother suggested I try, and I tried everything. Hearing someone else sing your favorite song pushed the clouds across my eyes so fast. I miss you and am bringing the fan outside onto the porch.

I have hands like paws and curiosity, it gets the best of me. You weeded me out and left me without a scratch, so I’ve had to dig in myself. The place where my ring sinks in is red and cracked; it’s made a place for itself. A month ago I was writing the same things but now I can see the signatures. I want to breathe yours into my lungs and give you mine. That way if I died and you lived, you wouldn’t.

You’re asking me to dig up landmines one by one. My sense of drama is lacking except for when I’m alone and put my hand down into it.

My sister held the little people in her fists and I held pacifiers in my mouth, three at a time. Now I hold my own hand while I sleep. I listen to music from old records until it comes from ghosts and try to remember my grandfather’s face next to the lake. He picked me up high in the kitchen where he drank little glasses of milk. I feel my face all over to find signs of you though I swore I had me in here yesterday. I’m trying to be productive and have removed many of the weeds—I need the flush of my cheeks to pull up the rose bushes, send it to me if you can.

The crocus came as though it knew the threat of frost. I was tempted to pluck and kill it. The river running out back through the garden is a creek I’ve tugged into springtime.

I’m making a small boat out of fallen tree. I think of the pilgrims immediately and how much you hate them. I think in terms of this and where it puts me.

This is America, there is no rainy season. Your eyes have been so round that people find me ill and frequently. If I fought stranger would you worry about me? This guilt is my stomach and the contusions are spreading purple around my waist, budding out from the skin in streaks not unlike showing. In gardens it’s common to find buds. Intuition can tell me anything. Prod it hard enough.

Touching the worms is hard without splitting them into two and four, multiplying their selves into others. You know when you have scissors I need to find something to cut.

Isn’t it enough to shave their heads bald with scissors or do I need to deface myself facing west to make the sun love me? I got a tattoo of a line so I fill in my needs for each day and wait for them to absorb into our bloodstream; the veins blue on my chest run away from my heart in fear of a beating. Picking the skin off my feet in shame makes the garden hurt more in winter when insertion is the point of consuming.

It’s hot outside and the grass is turning brown. I don’t know where you’re living now, that’s how I feel about you. I heard you whisper through the screens, locked outdoors. Mom tied my laces too tight. There’s no good dirt without you anyway.

When my stomach is empty and I’m feeling dramatic, you’re the first thing I swallow. Even then the flowers don’t talk much.

I could have died you know, you said and my half of the room was the third. None of this has to do with leaving except that we were here once, weren’t you, Alice? I thought I remembered the crash and the smell. These dreams are too real again and the trees have tripped into in the river. The fort is ruined, I can see it from the window. I haven’t been out.

Remember how you pushed me in and I shouted and I said I didn’t want to get wet I didn’t want to so you cried and I’m not sure why it mattered only then everything was soaked and we had to change. Putting on clean dry clothes has been a favorite of mine but not that time. The color from my red shorts bled onto me and ran onto your socks, staining.

I’m broken where lives come from but there is something filling that space for me, so I’m not alone or without potential. When we dig into the garden, the shovel fills the hole then makes it cycle bigger and bigger and slow down, waving outward. The sun doesn’t reach full noon but your shadow’s been gone months and I’m not being followed. If it’s there it sits on my shoulder like letters to you dangle feathery from my earlobes. I braided you into my hair.

People start nesting as they get older, building little homes for loves out of scraps and sticks and shiny keepsakes that soften under pressure. Everything must go like at the store when I thought if I hid in the racks maybe you’d get left behind.

I got lost at the children’s museum. We made giant bubbles until soap got into our eyes and fingers, my face reflecting rainbowed in the image. I see myself backwards and look ugly in pictures but not spoons.

I don’t know what your face looks without turning into mine. It’s funny how you disappeared in patterns at first and then all together, your human jacket blowing out behind us. I hope when you check the pocket you find a note from me that makes you want to stay away. If I came back now disappointment would speak from our mouths in welcome tones and you’d replant the garden in ways to ruin; me in the background, biting our thumbs.

You used to come every summer but it’s been years. I need you, Alice, isn’t that obvious? I had to cry or fight every night that you were gone and I’m tired. The bed is pushed up to the window so I can see the garden whither. My hands are too small to hold our books and your mind is already occupied. Don’t forget to take your pills, Alice. You’re so full of it.

I haven’t showered in days and the saltiness coming off me is dirty ocean breeze. The wind barely reaches here and I can’t either. I have coddled the flowers; I’m cultivating a softness that could lead to molding.

When you come back I will press petals into your palms so that you can feel their coolness and aren’t they growing with such composure? They will rub translucent between our fingers and we can eat them. They’ll become your tongue as you put them in your mouth, so be careful not to bite down hard.

Times and times again multiplied I cried on my fingers for the trick but nobody told me there wouldn’t be one for everything. I remember our fingers squeezing your arm angry and following regret around on sunny days. The water I’m drinking still tastes like grass after you rubbed my nose in it. You aren’t here to judge results.

I don’t know anything about you walking away from me in a shrug and told yourself we’d be better that way. You made a cradle for my hands out of each other. Your own weight is crushing me but we take everything I want. When I eat your pretty blue eyes maybe you can come see me.

The paper seals the violets in and their depravity is free. I placed all the change you had as a secret I can’t follow. I am the center of it.