Who Feels It Knows It

“Unless you know, you don’t know.”
RIP Robin Williams

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someday you will find this. in some box of old syllabi and grammar drills or with some notes for something i planned to write and revise and publish. you will find it and you’ll sit down right where you are. you will stop. stop everything and take some time.

and you will bunch your eyebrows together, or raise them. and your mouth will open. that bottom lip drop way. or else you’ll feel your lips tighten together to hold in the spit. because your mouth will get dry. and you will read this. and you will say something like ‘i never knew.’ either out loud or to yourself. or you will think ‘i figured that.’ and you will start to piece incidents and comments together to try to shape this into something like sense.

you’ll feel a little guilty and wonder if you are to blame. you’ll think that there was something you might’ve/should’ve done. you’ll cry if you’re that type of person. maybe just a wetting of the eyeball. not bawling or sobbing or anything. maybe enough so that someone will enter the room and be like ‘what?’ and you’ll just hold the paper to them like that is a fair response. and they will smirk. like it must be a nasty love letter or something. they’ll think, ‘she wasn’t so goody-goody after all.’ or else they’ll list all the names they’ve heard her say with question marks behind each one. d____? a____? a_____? g____? and then they’ll see your face.

and it will be too strange looking for it to be possibly be that. it will be pale-like, like the blood has rushed from it to try to give life to what is in that paper. that paper. it will be that bottle of acetaphetamine perpetually on the nightstand, the blinds left open all night hoping someone, anyone would notice, the squawk of swans, a cd of thunderstorms, sex, the quest for numbness, ice cream, the fight against living death, the wish for happiness. it’ll be all of that. and more. and neither of you will get it. you still won’t get it.

28 September 2003

***

It speaks where your words belong:

I am sneaky as hell.
I smile in your face while my arm is wrapped around your waist, my other arm ending in a knife-filled fist that’s stabbing you in the back. I tell you that I am the one for you and that no one else will be as close to you as me. I control your relationships by taking up your time so that you don’t have time to really nurture them. I’m selfish with your time, and when I can’t have it, I make it so that no one else can. I make you sleep. I make you feel lonely even though there are people all around you. I make you think that you can’t be without me because I give you words, eloquent words. I give you a voice, but only the one I want you to have. I’m always around. You see me in the mirror everyday and even when we’re not on speaking terms, I am there. Seductive, telling you that you will come back. And you do.

1.26.04