A Giant iN This HOuse julia alexander
YEAH I Mean I Wrote A Book About It, But That Doesn’t Mean I Actually Want To Talk About It, GOD I search endlessly for the fabric to cover my body fully. I want to keep hiding, but no longer feel that it is an option. I feel the hands ripping apart my clothes and leaving me bare again. I am becoming. I am thawing as the seasons change (painfully slow) from winter to a blooming spring.
The Night I Pissed In A Bucket Like A Real Lady sip on liquor, slip on ice, crack the bone, sip on liquor, falling palms to pavement. words trickle down like the blood on my kneecaps not that i didn’t mean them, just didn’t mean to say them out loud. i smash a bottle against the house. drive home with no window, this body is shutting down. i just wanted to know that you feel the same. i just wanted to know that you want this body even when it is broken, even when i am shaking too much to actually love you, even when i am crying too loudly to make any sense.
A Poem You Have Been Asking For if you tell a girl she’s too loud eventually her voice will get softer. if you teach her to be small eventually her shoulders will hunch. you, of all people, should know that. sometimes not-teaching is its own silent instruction. sometimes the only way to fix something is to ignore it. i learned how to avoid an apology, how to shift the blame, how to abuse. how to abuse. how to abuse. i have been too consumed with being quiet to explain why we were not speaking.
Teaching Myself i will make myself whatever shape you need me to be because that is what is expected. we fold, we cut, we shrink, we twist, we twist, girls have to twist. i always somehow get the dress to fit.
(do you still read my poetry?) in the summer i found the family dog bleeding on the garage floor. we swam in circles for months. we painted the walls of this house in uncertainty. two years later i was still treading water with a stomach ache that has never stopped, we were waiting for an unwelcomed end. i felt a pull behind my sternum that was only relieved each time i saw his chest rise and fall again. when i went away in july they put the dog to sleep, couldn’t stand to see him suffer anymore, when there was a way to stop it. i don’t even try to not cry upon realizing that no matter how long something lasts i’ll never want it to be over. ten months isn’t long enough. ten years isn’t long enough. they buried the body in the backyard before i even got home.
Finding Refuge in Secrecy i run; i cannot escape this. i cannot simply avoid questions anymore. there’s no changing the locks. i’ve already kicked down the doors. when someone asks how are you they never really want to know. i shield my eyes from the light. i’m not ready to look into the sun. when you disrobe publically you can never truly cover up again. people will always remember what you look like naked. these are the papers i need to burn. you will never have to read them. i will fold myself up, so you aren’t forced to watch me break again.
2001 temporary house, wood rotting off the well in the front yard, boxes in the garage that we would never unpack. the babysitter painted our nails. i peeled the polish off in the driveway. we rode our bikes that whole summer, and a reconciliation came in the fall. i was young enough to believe that things turn out ok. i was too young to have the word war sit heavy on my tongue, but i knew the sweetness of a surrender which eventually turns to an over ripe peach. i knew how to bite into this. i learned to take what i could get. now i paint my nails to remember not to bite them. now i’m old enough to know that things just turn out.
A Giant In This House I don’t think I’ll be leaving. anytime soon. I’ll just be getting bigger and bigger until I have to walk through doors sideways and my bed frame breaks and one day my feet will just shoot through the floorboards. I avoid girls from high school like the plague like speaking to them would be life threatening like her knowing what I’m up to would just about kill me. Not that I’m not doing ok I am ok. Just not spectacular. Just not any better than her really. I duck down in my car in the parking lot, a coward as always. This house it too small and the whole world is huge it’s huge it’s huge there are so many places I will never go, so many concepts I will never learn, so many people I will never love.
I am a piece of dust shooting through this expanding universe. It’s only getting bigger. The whole thing is being pulled apart. Why would we matter when there are stars exploding in other galaxies killing alien life forms? They probably did everything better than us. They probably didn’t cry over missing a period, and they all probably signed up for their classes on time. They probably did it early, definitely not on the first day of the semester, and they all probably moved out of their parents’ houses before they were in their twenties, but now they are just rubble shooting through space probably I guess, if they even exist, I guess I guess I guess if I even exist.
Where You Cannot Sleep The first time I open my windows in spring I can hear church bells from the center of town at noon. I spilled nail polish on the floor and stripped the finish off the hardwood trying to get it out. I hid the mark with a carpet. Every weekend this past summer, I scrubbed vomit out of it- each time promising this would be the last. I fucked my friend in a pile of blankets and pillows. The friction burned shame in my kneecaps, deep red, chaffed, and throbbing. I’m most reluctant to admit that there have been many nights that I knelt on this floor and prayed you’d wake up the next morning, prayed all the blades dull, prayed all the world be still so you could go outside and lay in the street just to feel sun on skin. I have done this on nights you seemed fine, even on nights you didn’t tell me you were struggling.
There is guilt pulsing through me. It is the only permanent fixture here. When we sleep in this house together, you have to be on the couch downstairs. I’m content with that. I’m happy to never let you see the indents in the carpet that my kneecaps have left, to never let you pull away carpet to see the filth in this room. Sleeping alone on my twin sized bed, I am relieved you are a safe distance from this place. Back at your apartment, we lay next to each other again, and I swear I hear the bells though we are sixty miles away.
re: I’m just getting tired again When you feel the way we do, all things begin to end in the same way, a slow rotting creeps over you. It starts with small crinkles in the petals, and pretty soon the whole plant is brown. There’s an emptiness that comes when you feel too much all at the once, a phantom ache, flipping through television stations, never finding one of any interest and turning it off in the end. If you’re a boring story, then I want to fall asleep reading you every night. I want to curl up in your spine. I want to shut myself inside you and collect dust for all eternity.
Becoming i never felt at home in a pink bedroom. my shoulders were too broad in my white communion dress. i have only felt comfortable with hands gripping my waist. i have only felt safe with someone there to watch over me i used to only define woman by the hands that touched the body not by the body that was being touched, not by the thoughts inside the body trying so hard to get out. i became woman at some point before buying cheap faux-satin bathrobes and dancing in cheaper motel rooms, but at some point after learning that this body has value, that some people gauge my worth by the width of my hips, the size of my breasts.
i used to take prozac so that i could let everybody else forget how pointless this is. if i stopped trying to kill myself, we could all go back to pretending we don’t want to end it sometimes. i became woman the day i realized i had no choice. i could either end my life, or i could run head first into this holy title with one hand on a baseball bat, and the other filled with glitter.
Julia Alexander is a poet from Connecticut. Her first book of poetry The Dirt I Rise From was published in early 2015. She was the literary editor of Insert Lit Mag Here throughout its run in 2014, and subsequently started and continues to run Chipped Tooth Press. This may as well be Julia’s hundredth chapbook of poetry. At this point we’ve all lost count. There have been a lot. She plans to keep writing until she runs out of things to say. She can’t say exactly when that will be, but she hopes it’ll be soon. You can find more info on Julia and her book at: juliaalexanderpoetry.com You can contact her directly at: juliaalexanderpoetry@gmail.com
Chipped Tooth Press is a writing collective which seeks to instill a love of poetry in even the most relentless naysayers. We seek out work that bares its teeth and artists who are willing to allow it to do so. If you think your work meets that criteria send an e-mail to chippedtoothpress@gmail.com You can find out more about us here: chippedtoothpress.tumblr.com