All The Endings

Glue

I think sometimes I’m held together only by those silly little traditions and habits and bits of advice you left behind.

Pour the cereal in two parts, milk in the middle. Four clockwise turns and one counterclockwise for the drink, the soup, the paint. Shoes tied with two bunny ears, the clumsy method. The right contact lens and the right foot first. Love fearlessly. Peel tangerines from their belly button. Cut pieces of birthday cake for people who should be there but aren’t, and let their candles burn down. Never, ever loop your Y-tails. Sixx shot every new bottle. Blue pillow goes on top of the black one. Tuck the sheets in folded triangles under cold feet. Write five lines before you turn off the light. Remind yourself you’re loved as you fall asleep. Let silly everyday life be sacred by never letting the word “sacred” become too full of itself.

Where we put pieces of ourselves.

“I said, he asked me what I think about when I masturbate.”

Trenton paused, scuffing his feet in the dirt. “Jus like that?”

“Just like that. Took the cigarette out of his mouth while leaning over that splintered porch railing right next to me, and just asked me outright.”

“Whadja tell ‘im?”

“I told him I think about the way my body feels when I take a tub, floating with my back out of the water, and I arch it and run my hands over my tits to the tops of my thighs.”

Trenton’s eyes widened, the blood rushing up through his cheeks pushing warm and hard against the back of them.

“That really wut you think ‘bout?” he finally asked, his voice soft.

I looked down at my toes, suddenly smiling at my chipped pink toenail polish.

“Really is.”

Today my handwriting looks like someone else’s.

nostalgia. N-O-S-T-A-L-G-I-A.

three chipped teacups with faded orange flowers, 2 beer-stained New England road maps, one off-white tatter of a baby blanket, your six leftover rigs (icarryyourheartwithme), one necklace from the collarbones with the sweat and breath of a Momma, one Sikki Ikki,  one beat up metal jewelry box, three times A.A. Milne, two pairs beauty school shears, a photo of a mahogany grandfather clock (yousaidifyouputitunderyourpillowyoucanhearittick), eleven bottles of whiskey, four bags of stiff cottons, one nursery picture frame, the key around my neck, a billion of your blue eyes staring up at me from photos, a billion more staring from memory.

I chipped a tooth today.

Once we were sitting at the very top of

a knobby skeleton tree overlooking our little city

with a birthday cake resting in our laps and

you leaned over to kiss some frosting off my lips and

then you looked at me in the ocean air

with the headlights of the highway in your eyes and

asked me if

I would come with you when you die.

(i said forgive)