My hate is arching widely over the common,
catching the birds. It eats them lazily, crouched now
on the tops of the trees. It’s so far away from me.
Somewhere on the skyline, Somebody’s waking up;
my hate is watching it happen from the air,
shaping clouds like animal balloons. Somebody could see
the cruel shapes if he peered from his window.
Somebody loves me.
A mother with her little black babies is looking my way.
Her children’s wide, white orbs follow suit
and I flinch. They are watching my body.
Somebody’s watching theirs, too.
Once the clouds blow over, only my hate and I
will be left. Maybe we will converge, or my hate
will up and eat me, but probably not.
Hate is waiting for my move.
But to eat it I’d have to go spoonful by spoonful,
so painful. And who knows where its darkness goes?
Somebody would have to carefully feed it to me;
even then I’d have to teach my throat to swallow.
In the dark backyard on a Friday night next to Kelly, our brand-new dog, I realized there are too many stars, just too many, for my brain to sit still and be patient—and not enough gravity, not enough tying each of my vertebrae to our immediate earth.
I closed my eyes to the cacophony, but behind my lids was the Murphy family’s eldest daughter, Katie, our lithe and spindly neighbor, jumping rope in her very white shoes on a thick July morning.
I wondered about her wondering, imagined her imagining. She had a life before I was born, would have a life after I left April Way, and I’d never know who she was before or how she grew to be whoever she became.
Being born myself had seemed ridiculous, like such a grand coincidence, before that moment. I opened my eyes to find my palm over Kelly’s black belly, and the stars becoming fewer and fewer until I could see only one—luminous as all converged together.
Kelly’s body rose and fell next to mine, vivid. When I pressed my ear to her chest the pulse sounded frail, like a distant drum moving farther and farther away. We were ourselves, unbearably ourselves, but this was no miracle.
Deep in her doggy brain, Kelly might’ve been anywhere—running wildly across a private plane; in that moment, we were only close in time and space. We were so innocuous, so pointless and flawed and mysterious.
Placed on the infinite timeline, our two impeccable souls might be invisible, lying close together in summer, 1998. But we’ll never get far enough away to see ourselves from there.
Back in my seventh summer, we will always be colossal—purposeful, unmoving monuments trapped in the heat.
There is this screeching, terrible sound when you glide all pretty past my desk in English class. It’s only in my head, you know, this awful noise. But you’re still causing it—body perilously close to what wants it so much. Can’t you feel it?
I am not a very nice person, you know this. You glide past me all pretty, sure, but the eyes on you are like a predatory bird’s. Like you could eat me, like you’d have the stomach. Like you know my thoughts.
I can’t help what my brain thinks it needs (what I want). I can’t wake from the constant nightmare of you—your figure slipping through the door every day, your soft and breakable Aryan face.
I’d take you right out of your bedroom and keep you in a dark, dark safe. I’d pull your hair until some fell out into my hands, keep the strands in a vial. I’d hold both of your arms so tight in my fists you would cry—I’ve never seen you cry before, and that’s the only reason why.
In class you look at me like I’m the dying prey, but I’m no prey. You’re also not a bird and I’m not going away. Don’t you see it?
We’re two almost-lovers escaping a magical island. I’m swimming next to you through the deep, huge creatures following quietly beneath us. You’ve got such determination, like some continent will come up right ahead.
I don’t tell you what’s coming; I stroke your glimmering back instead.
I see the spindle spinning
in the corner of your eye, the city
where Samson is holding his hair
and Delilah is singing. The way
the plates of the earth move, so
do all of us shift and take our turn:
somewhere I am lifting up my shirt,
somewhere I’m touching the tendons
of a horse’s legs, somewhere
you’re in a supermarket holding
a cantaloupe. If so, there’s a place
where Samson sings too, a place
where you and I are waiting
to be born, even waiting for our planet
to collect itself from dusty fumes,
begin to spin, begin
to burn inside.
