THE BRAKE ISN’T ON YOUR SIDE OF THE CAR
Julia Alexander
Chipped Tooth Press 2014
Falling Into The Deep End The worst thing you can do is start kicking right when you hit the water, even though as soon as your head goes under all you want to do is figure out which way is air and start breathing again. This is why I don’t walk too close to the edge usually.
He’s Seventeen Years Too Old, and This Will Never Work We love until we can no longer tell the difference between mirrors and glass. We love until we are tangled in each other’s webs with no hope of escape. We love until we bruise each other’s fingertips. We love until we rip each other limb from limb. We scream until our throats go raw. We lay in the sun until it burns. We lay beside each other in bed until it burns. It burns.
Phil Me Up i wrote a ghost story about his tongue in my mouth and his hands on my wrists. even now he still possess the majority of the space i occupy. my body shutting down, flicking off with the light. my brain tells me he’s here even when i am alone in my room. this story is called HYPERVENTILATION AT 2 AM and it is about the way i scratch my skin open hours after someone looks at me, the scary part isn’t that it happened. the scary part is accepting it, and you can’t hide under blankets to escape that.
i never used to have anxiety, so i haven’t figured out what to do when it gets bad In July I am still giving myself panic attacks just by squeezing my own wrist too tightly. I never knew anyone could be so afraid of nothing. Even when it passes and I calm myself down my fingers are still humming. One of these days I think they’ll finally make a break for it and crawl away like inch worms who don’t realize that they’ll never turn into butterflies. From your bedroom window I can see the street, but not your driveway, so I was a nervous about the car all night, and I looked out the window a couple hundred times just to check if I would be able to catch a glimpse of it, but I never did. And when your hands were pressed to my wrists I was afraid that I would get too scared and start crying, or even worse start gnawing off my phantom limb, but for some reason, I (for once) found safety pressed between your body and the mattress.
if i write something a hundred times will that make it come true? i’m not sure how i feel about you anymore. this is change this is growth this is me learning how to unzip my skin and walk around without it for a while. this is me shedding you. this is me making myself be happy. this is me pretending to be ok because that’s just how it works. we pretend to be fine even though we didn’t get what we wanted. this is me changing what i want. this is me accepting that you are moving on. this is me making myself move on. this is my life and it doesn’t have anything to do with you anymore.
In Order of Importance In the morning when you get out of the shower and sink back into bed, I pull you back onto my chest and try to memorize the pressure of your shoulders against my ribcage. In the afternoon in the museum I only remember pressing your hand into mine, but I don’t remember who let go. I leave the next day. I carry you with me like a dead language. There are a thousand words in my mouth that I forget how to pronounce when you aren’t around. Back in Connecticut on my twin bed thinking about the solar plexus, the hands, the thigh, the tongue. I don’t know yet if you’ll let me out of this intact. I hope that you do, and I hope that you don’t. I hope you devour me limb from shaking limb.
“don’t be mad at me forever i miss you so much” i keep forgetting what day of the week it is with no reason to remember it’s easy for things to slip the mind, like the way his jaw was wired shut after it was shattered. i always forget that part. the recovery is easy to disregard. i try to not know or care who you are anymore. most days it’s hard to forget your hands, the air you took from me as my eyes rolled backwards, the way i liked feeling you wrap yourself around my body, or the way i felt small and enormous at the same time when i was with you. i wake up and scrub vomit out of the carpet on friday mornings
“Actually, I really just don’t think about it anymore haha” There is a way of going about this, of being functional, of talking about the things that keep you up at night, of treading lightly. There is a way you can let the spiders crawl across your skin without shivering. There is a way to be at the back door and finally have someone let you in their home. You just have to stop scratching. You just have to stop letting them see desperation on your face. This is how you fake it. This is how you disguise it.
REASONS YOU SHOULD(N’T) LIKE ME EVEN A LITTLE BIT I have dirty pool water filling my lungs, and my feet have hit the pavement on the street I grew up on so many times I could have walked to your house and back again by now. I know the way a bus station can feel like home, and I’ve carved a life for myself in the stomach ache I get every time I travel to wrap my tongue around a new person in a city in which I have yet to find any comfort. But yours is the only lonely that tastes just like mine, that creeps into my bed at night when I have long since seen your face, that digs itself a burrow in my skin and hasn’t let go since I last spoke your name.
“lol i said i’m over it� i learned so long ago that there is no anger which falls like dead bird from sky. there is no anger that does not sting the mind like a wasp. there is never an end to the buzzing especially when it radiates through the bones to rattle the spine and all the things you have ever kept there.
The First Night You Missed Sleep Over Me there was secrecy in his mouth and my hands in the room at two in the morning. on friday my bedding still smelled like his body and I didn’t want to change my sheets at all.
The Poem You Deserved a Long Time Ago you kissed me in the parking garage and i forgot the names of every other person who has ever looked me in the eye. i can no longer remember why i don’t spend every moment in your arms your breath comes in waves over my skin, and i am no longer afraid of drowning. i never liked the taste of longing until i met you until i left you. i complain of my lack of permanent fixtures, but you are here. you are here, and that will always be enough for me.
(hey doogie this poem is about you) (you don’t care) (you aren’t reading this) i am flowers wilting wait, is that too cliche for you? ok, i am the door that slams too hard because of an open window across the room. is that an original enough way of saying i hate the way my voice sounds? i wish that i could be quieter, take up less space, and rot from the inside out until all that is left are the petals on my dresser next to the dried up stem. alright? have you ever counted the lines on my palms or the rings around my knuckles? do you know what they mean? do you know the hands i have held before yours? do you know the hearts i have cracked open before i even acknowledged yours? do my lips still taste like the blood? is my skin too rough for you? maybe.
i pressed my head into your chest, and tried to memorize the sound waves, tried to press you into a book but i couldn’t get used to this new rhythm. i tried to root myself in your arms but you wanted to pull the weeds probably. i told myself that i could make you want me opened, make you want to find the things i have been hiding for so long. i thought i could make you want to take me and put me in a vase on the windowsill, but i’m not really wilting flowers. i’m more of a pine tree just growing and growing and growing and nobody has been able to cut me down not yet at least.
One I imagine that at some point things will be different. When I have forgotten the taste of ash, I will have learned to force the world to turn beneath my feet. Things will get easier. I will forget what it is like to scratch at my skin and brain until they both go raw. I will forget the way his voice sounded with his hands around my throat. I will look in the mirror and there will be silence. There will still be a body, but there will be no more regret. But still in the end I will always remember that these legs knew to tread water before I learned to swim.