Mind the Gap

by: Maria Burbato

2019-2020

the kids are quite transcendental these days and my! isn’t that a word I wouldn’t have known how to use it six months ago or without you. nobody can just hang out anymore. the floor is cold--we lay on it anyways-the space we take up reminds us we’re real. we talk about killing our selves. mind the gap, please. the space that separates mind and body. the body is a brain commanded by desire. cut the thread-this is how to die without making your mom sad. it’s all about ego death. Transformation! with a capital T. what if I don’t want another metamorphosis? god, forbid I stay the same. if you’re not moving forward you’re backwards. if you’re not moving you’re sinking. i’m not moving but the room is. i watch from ten feet above as my body twitches next to yours. i’ve been here before. i’ve been here before, with you, in separate rooms, in quiet places, in darkness. face pressed against the outline of your ghost. pressed-the phantom weight of your body pressed-to the mattress. in separate rooms, in quiet places. next to you i wonder would he have liked me in high school? i didn’t like me in high school. you next to me is a sick kind of proof, i guess, that this person is dead now. i digress until we are lying side by side on the cold floor wrists kissing ankle bones considering each other and taking inventory of the space that could be breached, the gaps that might be crossed if one of us was a little more useful or a little less frightened. with a capital I this time I find YOU-in capitals like i’m screaming it in my car in the dark, because i do and i do it often. YOU because i believe in twin fantasies and twin flames in the shadow animals our mouths make in the dark “like two microphones kissing” you can focus on the static between every word and decide what i really mean. grow used to becoming the object. realize i’ve always been the object. i want to be your object--allowing

this desire to fester has rendered me unrecognizable. frosted glass boxing me in from all sides. shadow people looking in and laughing. gawk at this needy creature! i said i didn’t want another metamorphosis. who am i if i am always shifting? there must be some sense of permanence. a foundation. the body was a blade, the body was in pieces. the mess was all i had. the sickness was safe it made sense to me. i don’t know what to do with all this joy. fuck you, i said i didn’t want another metamorphosis. i said it’s okay if we stay exactly as we are as ourselves as we’ve ever been.