Follow Me Down

MDH

[holeintheground]

Lou (1942 – 2013)

My father plays a not-so-sweet Jane full of bum notes and feedback. But for you, for you it’s like tying shoes. A few effortless strums with your wrinkling wrist. That cigarette lives there, doesn’t it? In the right corner of your straight lipped grin, bouncing up and down when you tell the crowd to take a walk on the wi- wi- wild side. I know you’re wearing a leather jacket down there, in your coffin lined with velvet, underground. 

[holeintheground]

Lukewarm

The front door shut like a drum, your car keys on the counter a cymbal. My knees bobbed like apples in the filmy bathwater. You blurred past the crack in the bathroom door and walked back to bend down and kiss the air near my face. I want to care about how your night went at work but I don’t. The walls were an uncomfortable white, like gauze. I stepped out of the tub as elegantly as I knew how, my legs pink with heat. I trapped my apathy in a brown army towel and wondered if we were both listening to the muffled wheeze of the drain.

[mallorina-deactivated20190503]

If bad behavior or bad luck were essential ingredients of a writing life, our de-tox centers, prisons and twelve step programs would be full of writers. All one has to do to be a writer is to write. We’re writers only when we’re writing. Writing, in other words, is an activity, it’s something we do, and not something we are. When we’re not writing, each of us is just another poor slob trying to get through the day without hurting anyone too much.

Alan Shapiro (via mallorina)

[ladymacbethlives]

[holeintheground]

Warm

we shower at midnight cause we've got no place to be the water pools in your collarbone and spills when you laugh at my smearing mascara and call me Alice Cooper tap water drips down your teeth while I lather your chest with lavender soap our pruned feet slide along the warm floor  and we share the water I forget I’m paying for

[holeintheground]

On the first night of autumn

she drove to the strip mall. The one on the corner that people only drive by. No use going in when the stores change twice a year. She uses that parking lot to smoke cigarettes. The ones she steals from friends when they're in the restroom. Too ashamed to spend her mother's hard-earned money on shameful slips of paper. Or running into anyone she knows buying them. On the first night of autumn the cigarettes taste better, the tiny ember on the end floating in the low of 55. The first cigarette finished so quickly so she pulled the envelope out of her center console and took another. Then thought about how much her friends would laugh at her  for doing this. Let out a soft giggle and lit the second. She pulls her hair down this time and watches it swirl through the wispy ends. She'll blame the smell on the guy she had an awkward dinner date with two hours earlier. He told her she looked pretty and smelled clean. She giggled again, the ember highlighting her laugh. Clean.

[holeintheground]

you drove the car into a fence and before I could ask if you were okay you were outside in the grass apologizing to all the fallen posts. your hands poking the air at the God you only talk to during disasters. I sat shotgun while you cried on your knees pulling your hair out of the corners of your mouth; salt and slobber the only working headlight shined on the silver post of a stop sign i cracked my window so at least someone heard

[holeintheground]

There’s two women lounging in the crevices of my brain. Well, one lounging, the other sitting upright, her spine a perfect line. She watches the other woman nervously as she kicks dendrites and spills her glass of wine.

An Italian wine she can’t pronounce to save her life.

Or my life, she lives through me.

She swims around in my bad decisions while the other disinfects the water.

But it’s thick, confectionary. A viscous mix, begging for water or ethical choices. But the boiling chocolate is so sweet.

[holeintheground]

He built the house without a backdoor. No fire escape. Painted the windows shut in ’94. The winter left spaces the creaky floorboards, a few extra mouths to drink with. He filled the holes with scotch and swallowed some himself. Gin for the attic, whiskey for the kitchen. A pool of red wine for the cold cellar floor. A toast to missed holidays, dates he can’t remember. A kiss for the plants growing healthy because they drank the water meant for him. And rum for the bed as he threw the match into the blaze.

[holeintheground]

I wanted to write this poem but I decided to get in bed. I wanted to write this poem but I convinced myself my head hurt. I wanted to write this poem but the scab on the soft skin of my elbow needed to be picked. Then the scab on my chest, my shoulder, my back, my face. I wanted to write this poem but I knew I wouldn’t sleep tonight so I took a break. I wanted to write this poem but the dirty dishes needed to be stared at. I wanted to write this poem but I had to cut my nails. I wanted to write this poem but I put down the nail clippers and bit my fingers until they bled. I wrote this poem but it took me nine hours and I hate it.

[holeintheground]

I heard you sliding your legs across the cotton of the bed sheets— secretly happy I’ve gotten up.   I slipped a loose dress over my knotted brown locks and pale breasts— secretly hoping you’d watch.   But this was a morning I’d have to set traps to wake you— cinnamon, coffee, bacon. I could surely lure you out.   But you laid there with your lips curled up and your forearm covering your eyes.   Three cups later and the traps I set seem to have caught my legs instead.   I tugged on your hair. I hate your hair. And you knew, mumbling “just cut it if you hate it so much.”   So with a pair of fabric scissors and the morning light, I chop it off in stringy blonde clumps.   Then you sat up straight and swept tiny bits of hair onto my criss-crossed legs and we fell back asleep on the threads of you.

[holeintheground]

I wanted to apologize for always ordering the same drink as you. I never drank with my parents like everyone else growing up. Alcoholism runs in the family, you know? I couldn’t tell you that. I’m sorry I drank my beer so slow. I tried to like it, I did.

I wanted to apologize for crying in your shower. I would have asked if it was okay first. But I guess it’s too late. But I’m late for everything. You’ve always told me to set my clocks early. But that’s cheating, you know? I’ll be late every day but I won’t cheat.

I wanted to apologize for all the trash in my car. I would have cleaned it before you got in but I was running late.

I ordered a different drink this time but it tasted the same. “I like it. I think I’ve finally acquired the taste.”

I’m sorry for lying, and for the salt in your shower. and for never acquiring a taste for you, either.