Crematorium

© N. Saravia This is my laundry room. Everything is tossed in the void, washed in cold water, remaining in the cycle 'till clean. Drying is optional. Here there are words that are stories waiting for plots while conversing with characters. Respect the works.

[uncapricho]

i drop to the bottom of the universe where it awaits with a clipboard in its multicolored hands i didn’t expect you just yet, it says in a bored tone Liar, I reply, dusting stardust off my skirt. Stand by the window, it instructs, preparing a pot of coffee i stand i forget how oxygen transforms in my lungs i forget how blood travels around my veins i forget how acid is produced in my stomach Here, now, is everything A whole of black sucking me in A whole of every one’s entire existence It blinks It doesn’t i am imagining every one of its movements What is this? I ask A warm mug is placed in my hands The ceramic is old, cracked Would defining it make you feel better? i cannot know. I do not want to know. If I know what t h i s is i will forget everything I have learned until now i will forget me i cannot bear to hear its name spoken outloud. The mug crashes against the glass floor Whose laughter resonates across an entirety of space? A mouth against my ear, a rush of air discusses the fine print we are told to read before we sign ourselves away

[uncapricho]

Xenoglossophobia

Language is the poison, and my mind became the antidote

tainted in a stuffy elementary classroom

Oppression deposited in a 10 year old mind (minds. we were so many)

No one will take me- us- seriously with a heavy accent, you said

and you thought you did us a favor, gracias

It’s uneducated.

I loved school, then, foolishly assuming it was the crib of education

I feared the

uneducated.

I mutilated my tongue to sound like the world wanted me to sound--

a promised future, a prestige

the accomplishment of imperialism

Fear lulled around my rolling r’s, my strong y’s.

Setting aside the Spanish that by divine intervention was sprinkled in my veins

at birth.

Coveting a foreign language,

the one I use now to get your attention

your politically corrected respect.

This elementary classroom, this education blinding my eyes with another country’s flag

planting a rifle in my hands

Shoot. Let your aim be culturally bland

Murdering a barely grown persona

Suicide.

You congratulated the death with diplomas.

You failed to tell me that this respect and praise would end like Cinderella’s charm at the strike of brown skin.

Que tonta (it sounds more natural when I simply call you a fool)

Now, you are offended

Now, when you listen to my tongue—the one you designed—denouncing your

h a t e

Now, when you expect me to mute myself because I’m different, because I made it, because I’m not    t h e m

que tonta

Now, when my voice lures you into confidence, when you open your

baby blues

Your English is so good!

Now, when you step back as if slapped at my response

I would drain out all of these words to retrieve what was rightfully mine

You wanted English.

Now, I will force you to listen

[uncapricho]

Your voice always mattered.

Except now it shines underneath piles of rotten garbage.

You voice was never silenced.

Except now it echoes to greater distances because so many have been quieted by shock. fear. reality.

Put it all in a silver box, stick the key inside your ribcage, every time it punctures your lungs you will be forced to - e x h a l e -

You were never talking.

You were never screaming.

Crown yourself with coal; the burning ceremony is only commencing.

You sing.

[uncapricho]

In Memoir

If you could mummify my body, what parts would you scrape out first?

My brain to keep my memories?

My hands to ensure all talent is stunted?

My feet so I may never travel in the afterlife?

My heart to shut out all regrets?

My lungs to ensure all sighs end?

You.

You I wouldn’t mummify. Wouldn’t wrap up for preservation. I’d burn you in the pyre to ensure all of earth eventually breathes a part of you. 

[uncapricho]

-Why do you knock on open doors?

-Because someone else is already inside.

-And why must your entrance be announced?

-It gives them the opportunity to ask me to leave. In a crowded room, their audience at their command. They arrived before me, they should ask me to turn around,  walk far away and never return. 

-And if you knock and they never answer?

-I will smile and forget the door.

[uncapricho]

I exist in four damp walls.

No.

I am trapped by design within four damp walls. Confined like the petrified butterflies you keep in your living room. 

The day they brought me here- brought, brought, brought- the door was unlocked, welcoming and deceiving. I wasn’t pushed in-- the only time I wasn’t pushed-- blindly I strolled in, ignored the smell of stagnant water, accepted it all.

All.

A speaker mutters over static: nothing written is ever new.

I rebelled the first time this truth was washed over me.

Prove you wrong, I whimpered. I can prove you wrong.

Good, carries the static, good. Prove me right by finding the wrong.

[uncapricho]

I want to erase you from my maps, so the disdain of your borders never deports me.

[uncapricho]

There are many things I should not tell you. They’re trapped, these things, between the mattress and the wall, underneath the sink, molding in the fridge.

There are many things I want to tell you. They’re out in the open, these things, on top of the night table, next to the sticky notes that are always blank, next to the toilet paper, soggy from the shower. 

There are many things you take and forget. You hear them, these things, and I see you mouth them back at me in cruel remarks, jokes that make no one else in the room laugh. Have you noticed? It’s just the two of us now. Left. 

There are many, many, things: trivial, crucial, elemental, monumental, revolutionary, prophetic, catastrophic. I cannot call them things. They clutter the ceiling, and the backyard, and the garage.

Place them inside my left eyelid at closing time. Swallow them like you’ve swallowed the entirety of everything. 

[uncapricho]

Concoctions

I breathe fire on my good days. There is poison brewing in my belly and a thirst to foam at the seams.

I positively sneer on my bad days. Tar pumping my heart and a cunning eye for weaknesses. 

I can charm the most wicked ones on my worst days. A sour sweet tooth circulating my entire system and a two-edged tongue flickering out to hunt all those who once attempted acquaintances. 

Why, do you ask? I will never answer with disdain. Not me.

Meet me on my good days, leave all favors for my bad days, and -absolutely- only order me around on my worst days.

I will take your hand and keep it.

Who am I?

[uncapricho]

Terrible things always happen to fish.

Too bubbly. No air. Too scaly. Raw.

A hook and a bait. 

Terrible things always happen to fishermen. 

Who ate the terrible fish? You cooked it, you.

[uncapricho]

A crowd makes the individual useless. 

[uncapricho]

My mind is blurred with dust, the rush of crashing waves. My mind is caves and depths and locks and forgotten lakes. The bouncer at the door never remembers your name, kicks you out, punches you left and right -- why do you continue to queue?

[uncapricho]

New Year

The birth of a year is the death of a previous one.

This is not a fantastical revelation. It shouldn't be, at least.

The new year, a smooth faced baby that gurgles and giggles. The old year-- broken and bruised, feels his ribcage crushing as he draws near to the final breath.

It is only by mistake that mortals stumble upon the dying year. It is only the bright, adorable, just-born year everyone is searching for.

Babies are only cute in the very beginning.

What do these mortals speak? All dying years have experienced this during their last countdown. Perhaps the longest of their journeys.

"You took everything" snarls the fair headed woman, three tombstones behind her; the flash of a car crash thundering, ending all possibilities.

"Thank you, thank you" coo the newly-made parents, a bundle in their hands.

The wizened body is no fool, only wishing for its vocal chords to work in order to let the baby year know this thankful family might be cursing in 364 days.

Fickle lives in a wavering timeline. 

[uncapricho]

The Story of This

You promised adventure, and thrill, and more than this. I believed. 

Just like I believed there is calm after a storm (why, oh why, did I avoid hurricanes?) No one warns you of perpetual storms, of winters so harsh your limbs will break off if you reach the door before frost bite claims you. 

You promised unassuming and majestic. You've delivered banal and fickle. 

Nothing stands strong when built over quicksand.

(You are sinking and I am pulling)

A once rich vocabulary replaced by commands. You promised a story to burst at the edge. Now there's merely washing machine quality.

If I sigh any longer I will soar away - sigh, sigh away.

[uncapricho]

Discounts in Aisle Six

These lives are rotten. Pre-expired. Found in the aisle with 50% off because they are not sought after.

They bask in simplicity, they move in lethargic content.

Can I blame them? I can not blame them, I have not been granted the power to judge. I, too, a rotting one.

We continue to claim immortality. We watch ourselves go apart in explosions go apart in starvation, murder, war, disease. We watch ourselves evaporate like foam in a turbulent ocean, and we still claim immortality.

Immortality, immorality. 

Siblings, conjoined twins at the head, immobilized at our feet. We seek one to achieve the other.

Couldn't we seek the waters instead? To dive deep, away from sunlight and greater possibilities of causing harm. Swallowed by a sinking darkness.

A quest for merhood. We would taint the oceans, yes, but all of that can be washed away. 

[uncapricho]

I beat my words against a brick, for they have failed me. I drag them out of warm beds, tighten the rope until it hums in murderous anticipation.  I flog them red, I flog them black, I flog them rough, I flog them soft. Watch them crumble, watch them ink, watch them splatter against old sheets.

[uncapricho]

Quick as a mouse. The morning light shifts through the window, and there is a stillness to the last breath before waking. The woman turns, groans in her sheets, the stain of her sweat sticking her eyes shut; again today, like yesterday. Outside a vendor promises fresh fruit, old vegetables, empty rooms; again today, like yesterday. The woman turns, cold feet cramping against the cement, the alarm mute and traitorous. A mistake in the breakfast, the ripened bread spoiled by the milk, the milk of her breasts also rotten; again today, like yesterday.

Quick as a mouse,

Dead as a mouse.