“Wherever you go, there you are. ” -Unknown
Foreword – 6
Sentence – 17
commencements – 21
The divorce rate for first marriages in America is 41%
says divorcestatistics.com – 31
Ekphrasis – 37
Crosswalks – 41
Taupe Beads – 47
Plagues – 51
My Dad – 57
Feb First – 67
The Sun in the East – 75
Jumper – 77
Puberty – 81
Until 10 – 91
Presby – 97
Baby Timbs – 109
It’s cold – 113
Acknowledgements – 114
Works Consulted – 115
An apparition is a moment where the past reappears in the present. It is a ghost of something seemingly dead, something you once knew, alive again as it arrives into the now. This project, Apparition,is a sensorial retrospective evoking the haunting nature of time: how it hangs, how it moves us along… the palpable effect of the past in relation to the present. Many questions guided me through my working process and continue to linger and hover around this project. How can I embody the nuance and complexity of nostalgia, temporality, and memory which largely exist only within feeling? How can I mobilize archives, history, and revision to give structure and tangibility to these forces? How is my own growth informed by memories both cataloged and constructed within the documents I am working with?
Apparitionis an anthology of my work, which consists primarily of short stories, but also skims into other genres including experimental prose, poetry, analytical observation, reflection, and both short–form and longer autofiction. I wrote each of the pieces at various points in my life.
I am a massive record-keeper and collector of physical remnants of my experience, so I had all of these pieces saved in different documents or hard copies I’ve held on to. It is not chronological, as
I feel the reader should dip in and out of these waves of varying experience, just the way we dip in and out of scattered memory. The book begins with the earliest moment: a sentence I wrote at age six, when I felt a natural draw to writing that I couldn’t quite explain, a pure and untapped passion that I strive to replicate but can really only thrive in the innate curiosity and unabashed determination of a child. I was riddled with anxiety and mental illness by this age, yet fearless and unconcerned with the thoughts of others when creating. The book ventures into my eighth-grade experience when the pull towards writing began to transition into the question and discovery of
who I am as a writer, certainly informed by my emotions and perceptions at the time. There is much from high school, a time in my life when the way I knew how to cope with tumult was to write through it. This was arguably the period of my life in which I produced the most writing with the most consistency. All of this culminates in my work in college and present day when I embraced the element of embracing critique instead of feeling attacked by it. When I learned how to ask for help, and how to accept it, something I was vehemently opposed to as a child and young adult. When I learned that listening to others, writers and not, and picking and choosing what felt important to me to implement, made my work better and made me better. When I truly learned how to revise.
Revision is the bulk of this project. It is the revision–the reflection on and transformation of the past–that will allow me to exist in a space of nostalgia and temporality. Revision is the mechanism with which the past engages with the present, as does the ordering of the revised documents that allow me to tamper with the chronology of my life. Each piece is paired with a photograph and a song lyric that have personal significance to me, and that I feel match and are inextricably tied up with the fabric of the piece. These different mediums enhance the quality and authenticity of memory, as experiences are often mentally patchworked with associated sounds and sights. Each piece is also accompanied by a blurb of contextual information regarding my recollection of its history and background as it relates to my personal life, as well as its relevance to my growth as a writer and a person, and to the collection as a whole. The blurbs also offer insight into my editing process and why I made certain changes. The pieces are bound together into a physical, serving as a manifestation of memory, and a new memory of its own.
Revision is essential to my interaction with the past, and, therefore, to the observer’s interaction with the past: both my past and their own. Revision affords me the supernatural ability to alter the past. Revision functions as a form of time-travel, allowing me to edit that which no longer exists. Only writing has the functionality to realize this capacity that humans ordinarily do not have. The revised pieces maintain their relationship with the past by existing as the ideas that they were while simultaneously existing in a new form. The brief reflections, photographs, and lyrics also maintain the integrity of the past. With both the past intact and the present infused, the way the pieces have morphed over time will be visible. My work morphs, and, of course, so does my life, both of which are caught up in each other. The metamorphosis of it all is visible and trackable across the physical book. I also morph as a person and a character as these pieces do. On the micro level, every character grows on a journey that can be followed in the narrative, mimicking the macro process I, and everyone, undergoes. We are constantly changing and editing ourselves throughout our lives– learning and correcting as we look back. We also all have emotions invoked by this tremendously loaded process of interacting with the past, present, and future simultaneously.
Revision, I feel, is a fantastic way to engage with nostalgia, which is a tremendous theme throughout Apparition . Nostalgia is the intangible theory of past fusing with present inside the body and mind, and revision is praxis. Revision is a practice to put in motion physically and capture the sensation of nostalgia. Nostalgia, for me, is rooted in bodily sensations and cannot be adequately captured through words and description. It can be incited through these modes, but nostalgia itself is a phenomenon to be felt . Nostalgia is absolutely essential to this project as it encapsulates how one feels about the past now. The multi-media nature of this project works to
reconcile this. The past can be visually and sonically captured in endless ways; memorialized by music, photographs, words, video, talismans, etc. Nostalgia comes into play when the viewer/reader/listener comes into contact with these objects. Reflection on and emotion towards the past exists in the space between the observer and the observed.
The body of work that is Apparitionis all composed and contained within a physical book that I have crafted. As the eye meets the page and the hand flips it, the observer comes into direct, tactile contact with the observed. This close contact heightens the emotional experience as the proximity between mental memory and visual representation of memory increases, which rapidly accelerates a more intense somatic response. The haunting of the “apparition,” the reappearance of something gone, transforms into grief when the space between observer and observed decreases dramatically. Haunting is an intangible sense of the past lingering, and grief is the beginning of the actual process of recognizing and coming to terms with the past. Seeing the past on the page forces the observer to notice it, and to start grieving it. Grief grants nostalgia its sadness factor, as we mourn what once was and its inability to return. The page is the past returning in an altered form that can be viewed and touched but not lived.
The physical book element is also important because it serves as a new memory of its own. The memories contained within the work regenerate themselves into a new being with a new meaning: the collection as a whole and all of the memories interacting with one another. The physical work will bring about in a future observer, most probably me, the same sense of nostalgia for this project that once existed or still does exist for all the memories enclosed within it. It functions as a scrapbook in that sense, and like a scrapbook, it is something I have created and patched together with my own hands.
I, of course, am by no means the first individual to undertake the process of mixing past and present. We are all doing this every second of each day. More specifically, I am not the first writer or thinker to attempt to capture this experience in writing and art. The work of those who have come before me was invaluable to my project. It provided inspiration, guidance, and an entry point for my work to exist in the larger conversation. Most importantly, it provided me with some answers to my guiding questions. I began with Joan Didion, a tremendous influence for me as a writer for years now. Her book, TheYearofMagicalThinking , is an exploration of grief through the modality of memory. As the dead arrives in my project, so does the grief that always accompanies mourning, reflection, and the desire to hold on to something that is still there but no longer the same. Didion deals with grief through the vehicle of retelling, reflection, and reconstruction. This is not at all unlike what I have tried to do in this project. She deems certain memories and periods of time as “mudgy,” a word borrowed from her daughter Quintana, meaning blurry and real yet unreal. I have put great effort into leaning into the “mudgy” space throughout my work. Didion conjures up emotion while reflecting on her past throughout her writing process, and, by extension, I did too. I want to do for readers what Didion has done for me. As I read, I cried about my own past and my own traumas until I wasn’t sure why I was crying. This speaks volumes about how someone else's experience reflects back on your own. Didion proves that writing is an excellent vehicle for doing so, and I have tried to embody that in Apparition .
It is also worth pointing out that Didion is the master of line repetition and reimagination, which is a technique I am so naturally drawn to and frequently make use of in my writing. Her brilliant line, “you sit down for dinner and life as you know it ends,” is all over this
me as a child,’ etc.’ the Photograph is never anything but an antiphone of ‘Look,’ ‘See,’ ‘Here it is’; it points a finger at a certain vis-a-vis…” (5). This is the exact interaction Apparitionshould facilitate. It is a vehicle to be employed to achieve what Didion brought out in me: reactionary emotion towards memory.
Fiction is often the practice of what is said in theory, and there was one novel of fiction prose in particular that was indispensable to me in the creation of this project: TheFriendby Sigrid Nunez. The book, which deals with themes of writing and being a writer, includes a tremendous amount of intertextual literary references that guided me as I positioned myself as the author of Apparitions . It presented me much to consider in regard to my motivations as the creator of this project, and how to inject historical, archival, and outside language throughout the fiction in order to propel my themes of nostalgia and temporality. Around the book’s inception on page four, Nunez writes, “It’s all about the rhythm… Good sentences start with a beat.” This led me to realize that rhythm is essential to my project, as movement on a sentence level will bring about the flow and drift through past and present on the scale of the whole project. On page 55, Nunez begins a list of quotes on writing by writers, and one in particular, written, of course, by Joan Didion, stuck out to me. Didion proclaims that “Writers are always selling somebody out. [Writing] is an aggressive, even hostile act… the tactic of a secret bully.” As my project deals with memory, of course there are real or fictionalized versions of real people involved. Didion prodded me to reconcile the dangerous yet inevitable (“always”) functionality of this. Nunez also cites Ernest Hemmingway, who said “you write for two people. First for yourself, and then for the woman you love.” This sums up what I’ve found to be my entire experience in writing and begs the question of who “the woman I love” reading this is. I think there are many answers which I
When I was in first grade we wrote and “published” books. Mine was called SylviaandOldMan Troll . I can’t find the book and I can’t remember much else about it, but this line is burned in my brain. I think this is the best sentence I’ve ever written.
I’m going to kick your teeth out and turn them into little boys’ earrings.
“Andyoutoldmenottofollowyou.”
This story is virtually unrecognizable from the original. I slashed the shit out of it. It was initially called “heartbreak, etc.” I wrote it about a cruel boy who didn’t love me back. I didn’t yet know I was a lesbian, and was hyper-fixated on elusive, manipulative, and alluring boys that I never had an actual chance with. I think chasing unattainable boys kept me safe in that I unconsciously knew we would never be in a relationship, and therefore could internally maintain my gayness. I have changed the love interest to a girl now. That feels right to me at present moment. It has changed in many other ways that I don’t feel the desire to mention.
A commencement is a beginning and an end. A graduation from one thing and the start of the next.
hate the prospect of the talking doctor. thats what she told me a therapist was called. but i hated him. dr peter. he taught me the word fuck. he taught me what sex was. he told me my dogs were not playing with each other. but rather fucking each other. he told a joke that went a fat lady is dancing in the apartment above you and her floor breaks so your ceiling breaks and you look up and realize oh my god she isnt wearing any underwear. all because i covered my eyes when people kissed in the movies. all because i told my mom i didnt deserve to be on this earth. i dont know how his practice was relevant to that. dr peter was freudian. it couldve been relevant. i dont remember. because i was six.
dylan was kind. at first they sometimes are.
i met her on my first day at brooklyn college. i nudged my way into her life. i waited the months till winter break to say something. i thought i would be brave with her and say things i historically didnt. after two hours i told her that i think she knows and everybody knows that i really really like her and i cant keep on acting like i dont.
she wasnt surprised. i knew she wouldnt be. because i knew she knew how i felt. and that she didnt feel the same way. we both knew that. a month before this she wrote me a sonnet. i dont actually know if it was a sonnet. not exactly a romantic poem but certainly a complimentary and direct and intimate one. an intense one. she wrote it for my nineteenth birthday present. its titled claires birthday. i dont know why she did it. she yanked me around.
after i told her i liked her dylan blew cigarette smoke out from her lungs and said that she cares deeply about me and that were just not on the same page. you know what i mean she said. i hit
my juul. which i own because its space age type jetsons shit. and i like to do the things that my generation is doing alongside them. i am a sociology major. she said she doesnt want to hurt me. and that she loves me so much. as a friend. and would never want to lose me. she isnt uncomfortable she said. i knew she wouldnt be. i am though. she said shes sorry to say this but claire you just want a relationship because you think itll solve all of your problems. i think maybe it would. i repeated to dylan something i had told her months before. i said i know ive told you this but no one cares about me as much as i care about them. she knew this. and it was so heartbreaking to say. and to hear. but she did not care about me as much as i cared about her. we both knew it.
i always knew i didnt like dr peter but i didnt know why until i was eighteen. this was when i first mentioned to my current therapist my wretched fear of grapes. i hate when grapes are lying on the ground. ripe to be squished by a foot. it repulses me. it repulses me to write this even now. at eighteen i thought this fear was getting worse so i told my therapist. she is relatively freudian. she owns many books on freud. she related the grapes to testicles. i laughed. she remarked that i never talk about sex or romance. except for when i came out to her at fourteen. and even that was a loveless conversation. more matter of fact and practice for telling everyone else. she said im uncomfortable with sex. and i always have been. shes right. she asked if anything happened to me when i was little. i thought on it. i told her i didnt like to see people kiss in the movies when i was younger. i saw in my mind dr peters body boiling apart and soaking his ugly brown therapist armchair. his face melting off his skull like that nazi in raiders of the lost ark. i remembered the fat lady joke. the dogs fucking. the word fuck. i said to my therapist the penis gets excited and goes
into the vagina thats what he told me and when i said i didnt want to hear that he said it was something i had to know. i hadnt thought about any of it in twelve years. not once. i kicked dr peter in his gut when i was eight. i told him the only person i hated more than him was hitler. my body shakes every time i remember that i used to feel guilty for hating him.
that stupid stupid winter break day i missed therapy to talk to dylan some more. i skipped it. i canceled. whatever. my mom was angry and rightfully so. i said id pay her back. i wouldve if she had asked again later but she never did. it was raining and there was water dripping from my hair and my eyelashes. we ended up in murray hill. a place which isnt a neighborhood. we argue about whether its a neighborhood. dylan says it is. this didnt surprise me because she is from dumbo. another neighborhood invented by the real estate industry. bedstuy has always been a neighborhood. i dont know how we ended up walking all the way to manhattan. a man with a hat and a tan. thats how kids from new york learn how to spell it. it took two hours to walk from brooklyn. it took me two hours to say what i said. how i think she knows and everybody knows that i really really like her and i cant keep on acting like i dont. i said it clumsy and honest. she said she didnt want to make me feel worse. i said she couldnt. she knew this. she also knew she couldnt say anything to make me feel better. maybe she couldve said she loved me. or wanted to fuck me. but those two are a lie. she couldve even said she was proud of me. for being brave. maybe thats a lie too. who knows.
that was a few weeks ago. she told me our friendship wont change. i believed her. she said one day ill find someone who cares about me as much as i care about them. she said my family loves me. i explained that my mom cant love me the way i want her to. the way i need her to. she said
we all carry the weight of our parents in our cells. shes wrong. my dad didnt die in a fire. i said my parents are fucking divorced. she said she knows. shes sorry. i believed her.
my eyes always tear up in the wind. in the rain. this is an issue in the wintertime which is right now. im back in bedstuy for winter break. id been tearing up a lot especially because id been having allergies to these puppies my mom was fostering. jamie and theo. i named theo. jamie is her given name. i want to keep them. my mom cried when she gave them back to the shelter the other day. in two weeks time she said if theyre not adopted she will adopt them. i said to her we are not meant to be a family without pets. my old dogs were seventeen and sixteen when they died. respectively. they were older than i was. i dont get a say in this matter. my mom said thats because i dont live here anymore.
my mom doesnt want to adopt the puppies because she doesnt want to go through the heartbreak of when they die. or when they get cancer or something and she has to decide if they die. weve already gone through the heartbreak by giving them back i say. we will see in two weeks time if this changes. i told my mom ill take allergy medicine. and that i dont care anyway. my eyes always tear up in the wind. im used to it. dylan wrote about this in the poem. the most endearing bit i think. take the time to dry your eyes/i know its cold outside. when i told her i was conceived by two people who didnt love each other i started crying. not sobbing. just tears falling out of my eyes. stinging with allergens and hot with sadness. i dont know if she noticed.
ive been through a lot. dylan knows this. she said so. she also said i was too dramatic. she cares about me. maybe. definitely not as much as i care about her. that is sad. i deserve someone to love
me. dylan doesnt understand why anyone deserves anything. she was a test tube baby. conceived in a petri dish. she lived in the womb with a twin. and an aborted triplet. she saw an abortion with her undeveloped fetus eyes. it makes a lot of sense to me. her conception. she carries this weight in her cells. i was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around my neck. at the turn of the new millennium. i was born in a disgusting hospital loathed by my mom. she was refused the epidural she wanted. i was born the eldest daughter of my parents. with an innate obligation to take care of them. like a dog for blind people. from the only couple in the family not divorced. yet. i was born without the weight of my parents in my cells. i was born with a history of profound lovelessness yet to be created. with the umbilical cord wrapped around my neck. i noosed myself at the first chance i got. my dad jokes that he initialed my foot with a sharpie when i was born. so the doctors wouldnt try to swap me. for someone elses baby. perhaps im unlucky. perhaps im just ugly. neither can be fixed by any action. only time and waiting. i waste winter break taking trains all over the city. i ride them around to nowhere. i hop the turnstile. i wont pay when theres no destination. i ride the two train downtown and i look at the stops and i turn my palms over and around each other when i know the last stop is next. flatbush ave brooklyn college. i know im sweating cause my hands are wet. spring semester starts in a few weeks. i have time. but when it starts ill see dylan. we wont talk about what i told her and i wont know how to act. i fidget on top of the blue plastic bench of the two train and change the song thats playing. i dont like this one. there are distractions. but mostly there is time and waiting. and hoping the puppies return in two weeks time.
“Iloveyouanyway”
My eighth-grade English teacher and his class had an immeasurable impact on me, as they tend to for burgeoning lesbian writers. TheCatcherintheRyehad an absolute chokehold over me. My first encounter with the unreliable narrator. Holden–exactly like me–was a pretentious, precocious, know-it-all New York City teen. I became so obsessed with Salinger that I obtained a Princeton library card and forced my mom to take me on the trek to New Jersey, so I could catch a glance of his unpublished special collection. I sat in a room dominated by mahogany, prohibited from using a camera or taking notes, and read for four hours straight. All the legends were there; Allie, Phoebe, Franny, Zooey, their siblings… sketches and anecdotes that never made the cut. This propelled me in a direction of writing that I, in my naiveté, perceived as innovative, ahead of the curve, etc.
For my eighth-grade English class we had an assignment to write two poems: one on something old (ie: horse and buggy) and one on something new (ie: car). I decided to write about love and divorce, respectively, which I remember thinking was brilliant. This poem is the second of the pairing. My teacher sheepishly asked me to read it in front of the whole middle school at our poetry assembly. I did, mixed with a boosted ego and an embarrassment of my public admission that I might be smart. The poem, as it is printed below, is the exact original text. I wanted to maintain the integrity of this formative moment for me as a pubescent writer with a complex (earnest yet obnoxious) persona. I still think this poem is smart. I still think Catchergets a bad rap.
The divorce rate for first marriages in America is 41% says divorcestatistics.com (2014)
You live in more than one house. I usually learn of this when we take attendance for Gym class. You and three other boys who also forgot their uniforms again and 123 million girls who won’t get enough practice rolling their eyes.
I will never understand. But, I want to. So sometimes, I linger on my Mom when she was in the Sixth grade but mainly College. Also, Massapequa High School Dad’s mouth getting washed out with soap. Mom lost her Dad twice. Dad had a mom twice.
I worry about my cousins. Ezra thinks he’s much too old to be related to a baby. A baby that breathes and doesn’t seem to like him, at least at first. Jane feels much too young to be betrayed. She always thinks she’s getting betrayed. Ninjas are never betrayed, but I don’t know any ninjas. Neither does she.
Sometimes, love is gross
Ezra goes skateboarding a lot. He takes medicine now; I think we got it too late. Jane dyes her hair; age ten. The bottom half purple, the bottom half turquoise until she finally regrets it.
I asked and turns out Juana’s husband went back to Mexico for nobody knows how long.
“Raising little chickens,” Isa tells me. “The kids cry a lot.”
Sometimes it’s a soccer ball autographed by Pelé. A prize for MVP of the tournament and Dad tells us, “I deserved it!” That jerk won it instead. Thirty something years later we have that soccer ball, a better one and it’s in a glass case. We’ve also got one signed by every Cosmo. They’re museum exhibits (on display from when they came in the mail ‘till twenty minutes after that) and hide amongst holiday cards and my cat’s ashes. I say it’s because I prefer basketball but I know that’s not why.
It can be pacifism, Woodstock, “I’m always right”, suburbia, three stepsisters so similar to those of Cinderellathat it’s frightening, Orthodox Judaism, producing Martha Stewart then pitching shows (not in the job description), lots of money, “please don’t kill that mosquito!”, no more money, and most importantly the temper tantrum because we want loser’sballbut she wants makeit,takeit . I’ve seen that one more times than I have fingers to show you on.
Tearscansupplementarticulation , psychiatric journal confirms. Every 36 seconds a new kid somewhere in America begins to forget his uniform and cry.
“I’minloveforthefirsttime..don’tyouknowit’sgonnalast?”
Don’t Let Me Down by The Beatles - The Blue Album
This is not the best song ever written. This is, though, the best lyric ever written. I can barely describe its brilliance in words (even though I’ve been trying to prove for pages here that I am a writer). An attempt to do so feels futile, but I will try, only briefly. It captures first love, better than anything ever has and ever will, in a mere thirteen words. I was born on the 13th, which I feel obligated to mention because I have raging OCD, so I love dates and numbers and synchronicities. In essence, being in love for the first time feels undeniably like it will last forever. It almost never does. It didn’t for me. First love is dialectically so fleeting and so everlasting. This lyric is tragic and gorgeous, and I don’t know if anyone else feels the immaculate nuance I feel from it. I don’t think it’s a worthy pursuit to convince anyone to.
I wrote poems for my first love. This one is my favorite.
Your eyes are green to me
And they are centrifugal force power in structure and wise, obviously
“Itrynottothinkaboutyou,butIdo.”
So Long Without You by Bent - The Everlasting Blink
In 2021 I bought a pretty notebook and had no idea what to do with it. I decided I was going to work on a story in it for fifteen minutes every day. I had a title and a first sentence. This historically has not been a great way for me to start stories, but I always end up doing it.
I was at the height of my active addiction and deliberately got high every time I sat down to do my fifteen minutes because I was confident drugs bolstered my creativity and made me a genius. It became evident that this was false, but I ignored that. Ironically, I later wrote my first, second, and third steps for NA in this notebook.
This story was a mess when I found it. I knew it was a mess at the time too, which is why I quit after eight days. It was disjointed and going absolutely nowhere. It seemed beyond repair when I found it.
There is a note in the front cover of the notebook that was the only launching point for direction when I finally approached the daunting task of making something out of this story. “Ameditation ongrief.Post-grandpalandscape.Thewayinwhichweblameourselves.”
We told Scott that green lights mean stop in Italy, and he died instantly. His body roasted under the car windshield. The heavy heat reverberated and Violet screamed. With this on my conscience, I now understand the importance of not making cheap jokes at others' expenses.
Scott’s impromptu Italian memorial service is at the other end of the crosswalk. I wait for the green and the words in my head pound along with my feet: greenstopredgostopredgogreen gostopredgreen.
The soil is hard and Violet strains to stake the little white wooden cross. There is no casket because Violet assumes Scott wants to be buried at home. His body is rotting in the car.
Violet nudges me silently, as if to ask me to say a few words. I decline to say a few words. I could’ve said:
Scott,attheageoftwenty-five,hadn’tgrownintohisbodyyet.Hehadsproutedintosomething largeandgangly,asifhehadbeenleftoutinthesunfortoolong.
Violet would not want to hear this, and I now attempt to not make cheap jokes at others’ expenses.
I also could’ve said:
AninternationalstandardizationoftrafficlightswascodifiedonMarch30,1931atThe ConventionoftheUnificationofRoadSignalsinGeneva.
This would make me feel guilty.
Violet doesn’t talk to me at the memorial service. She chooses not to, which is okay, because I don’t want to talk to her either. I am distracted because I see Scott standing by the cross.
He is standing hollow. He won’t look at me. I feel guilty.
He heads for the crosswalk. He steps in. He waits for the green to do so, and I am glad. I don’t want him to die again.
I’m not sure where Scott’s crossing to, but I want to go with him. Violet would wait until night and sleep by the cross if she had it her way. I don’t beg her to stop crying, and I don’t tell her it’s okay to cry either. I do not follow him.
We haven’t told anyone. Violet and I don’t know Scott’s phone password to find some numbers to call. Violet and I don’t want to make calls. Violet and I wouldn’t want to receive a call like this.
Violet and I don’t know how to ship a body overseas.
Guilt is when you feel bad for something you have done. Shame is when you know you have done something bad.
“IguessthatyoubelieveyouareawomanandthatIam someoneelse’sman”
Mazzy Star - She Hangs Brightly
This was originally a whole paragraph. It was horrendous. I’ve isolated the only sentence remotely worth mentioning. I think it warrants mention.
What if I hung on the chandelier knowing it would break and I could just lay on the floor covered in the taupe beads.
“Gettin’tiredoflooking,youknow,andIhatethegame”
Andromeda by Weyes Blood - Titanic Rising
On June 29, 2017, I received an assignment to pick a story from the day’s newspaper and write a story about it. I chose “’Like We Don’t Have Enough Problems’: Trash Piles Up in Athens” from TheNewYorkTimes. Across is the story I wrote.
When I was smaller, my mom told me stories of times when the streets ran with blood. She came into my room late at night and told me not to cry. She spoke of the Israelites in Egypt, and how they never cried when the Nile turned to blood and poisoned their drinking water. They bathed in the crimson and rejoiced. They did not cry. The Egyptians were dying. The Israelites were thirsty, but just fine. Blood told them it was time to leave. Plague number one, Exodus 7:17.
This only made me cry more, and my mom didn’t understand that.
My mom also spoke of 1972, when she was an Irish girl only six years of age. She said she pressed her nose to the glass of her window and she swore the cobblestones were flooded by a red river. She swore it had a current, flowing to the east. She said the stiff, blue and red clad men shot and shot and shot and she pretended it was fireworks she was hearing. She said she didn’t cry because her mother told her not to. Bloody Sunday. Plague number five million seventy-one
She told me not to cry because she didn’t cry.
Our streets are flooded with garbage. The white bags reach above my ankles as I wade through them every morning to go to school, and every evening to go home. The workers are on strike again. I tell my mom that we are living in a garbage house. The roof is made of plastic thin enough to poke holes through with your fingertips. The floor is made of snakes and rats. The walls are decorated with cardboard portraits and food wrapper picture frames. “Sinéad, you are being ridiculous, our house is a house,” she says. “It’s big,” she encourages. “Well, big enough.” I shake my head and think about diving into the trash face-first. Piraeus, plague number a zillion,
29 June 2017. Above the heat I hear my mother whisper something about how at least the streets are white and not red. I try not to cry.
June in Greece is hot. Americans and Russians fly all the way here to sweat and burn until it gets so unbearable that they must jump off of their yachts into the blue sea. They float in there until they get too cold, and then they climb back on their boats and comment on the blue of the sea, and how beautiful it is, and just how blue it is can you believe it. I think our sea is green. Green like American money. We have none of it, I think it all must of melted into our oceans. My mom left Ireland because they planted all of their money in the soil and it grew into rolling hills. The Americans and the Russians take a break from mocking each other to mock us. They mock us as we dance on the street and swim in garbage, begging for them to throw their American dollar bills at us. Begging for someone to give a shit.
The trash is hot. The sun cooks it like the tiropites my dad used to make for dinner. He cooked them the night he left us. He left them on the wooden table and went out the door and never came back. My mom says he went to America in search of paper money. The garbage bags sizzle on the black pavement and I ask my mom if I can borrow the spatula and go outside and try to flip the bags. “They’re ready to be flipped,” I say. “No, you fool,” she snarls. “I’m using the spatula right now.”
I go to school where the streets are clean. My teachers give us the day off to reflect on what has happened. I think maybe they are on strike too, but they are not. In their act of kindness, the teachers send me back to my trash. They set flame to Mount Olympus before my very eyes. A classmate stops me before I set out on my path. He wears clean white linens.
“Yes?”
You can tell he feels bad for me, but he doesn’t know why.
“It’s a shame, what they’ve done to you.”
“Yes.”
“The government, I mean.
“Yes.”
“You are welcome to stay with me”
“Thanks.”
“It’s a plague unlike anything we’ve seen before.”
“Well, I’ve met many plagues.”
I walk away. I pass neighbors and strangers and countrymen. People my mom calls “my people.” I don’t see how they can belong to us when we belong to them. I stomp loudly on the pavement on purpose. I want to be loud. I start to walk faster. I want to get home before the trash spreads to the water. I have a feeling it might. My mom says she left Ireland to learn how to swim in the oceans of the Gods. Gods who aren’t ours.
“AndIthoughtaboutwhatIwannasay…”
Instant Crush by Daft Punk featuring Julian Casablancas - Random Access Memories
I had to delete a lot of this.
My dad drove his dad’s ‘74 Ghia through the wall in the garage, right into his brother’s bedroom.
My dad tells me things he shouldn’t.
My dad was a Sears window salesman for a brief period of time. He decided to sell at boat conventions because there’s too much competition at window conventions.
My dad charged ten cents per ticket for a “flea circus” in his backyard. The kids looked under a magnifying glass and saw nothing. He swore there were fleas doing tricks if they looked a little harder.
My dad’s cat Zachary traveled all the way to Brooklyn without anyone noticing. Zachary liked to hang out on the roof. He got to Brooklyn by stowing himself in the neighbor’s trunk. When Zachary returned, my dad’s brother said, “his feet don’t look too worn out,” as he thought Zachary had walked to Brooklyn and back.
My dad bought M-80s, equivalent to a quarter stick of dynamite. He lit them and threw them into the canal because the wicks were waterproof. I never knew this. My dad told me about it when he started reading this. All the fish came up dead. He told me to add that line.
My dad sold tic tacs in 1st grade. One dollar per tac. His mom made him give every kid their money back.
My dad tells me stories I’ve heard before. He knows I’ve heard them.
My dad invested the $10,000 to his name into Spaceplex, an indoor amusement park. They only took cash, so it was seemingly a great business move. Katie Beers was allegedly abducted from Spaceplex, but she really wasn’t. It was her uncle’s alibi. He had just locked her in his underground dungeon. We own the book 17 Days: The Katie Beers story. It mentions Spaceplex a few times.
My dad ripped out a stop-sign and crashed his red Volkswagen Beetle the next day because of the lack of stop-sign. His prom date was in the car.
My dad’s family kept a wild bunny as a pet. My dad’s dad captured Bun Bun by propping up a box with a stick that had a string tied to it. The box had a carrot underneath to entice Bun Bun. He pulled the string and the box trapped Bun Bun. He chased the box around until he could tackle and secure it. When it was my dad’s sister’s turn to feed Bun Bun, she unloaded the task onto my dad. He went outside to Bun Bun’s chicken-wire habitat, and to his surprise Bun Bun had been eaten by a dog. My grandma encountered the remains and called to alert the local radio station.
My dad drank Green Midori Liqueur out of his parents' liquor cabinet. I remember my cousin doing the same with Vermouth when we were teenagers.
My dad had a parakeet named Perot (after Ross) when he was 23. He always votes Independent. I asked him what color Perot was. “Green, obviously. Like all parakeets.”
My dad’s neighbor found his mob guy dad stuffed in the trunk of a car. The dad was dead. A couple blocks down Amy Fisher shot Joey Buttafuoco’s wife in the head. The wife lived.
My dad’s dad owned a pharmacy called City Drug. In college he was in a pharmacist fraternity. He sold t-shirts that said “I get my ups at City Drug.” My dad’s sister wore it to school and got suspended.
My dad sold t-shirts that said “Berner Soccer” on the front, and if you lifted up the t-shirt from the bottom and flipped it it said “sucks.” He also made one that said “Massapequa Penitentiary.” It didn’t sell well at Massapequa High because no one got the joke, or had $20.
My dad is the middle child.
My dad’s friend Urbs got a girl pregnant. She hid her pregnancy from her dad, and Urbs, the entire time, and then gave the baby up for adoption. The baby was adopted by child-murderer
Joel Steinberg. My dad found out on the news years later, only a little after Urbs did.
My dad’s brother once came upstairs from the basement and said, “can I keep playing? It’s only a small fire.”
My dad’s parents announced their divorce to him at his sleepaway camp visiting day.
My dad never knew Televangelist Jim Bakker, successor of Billy Graham, who cheated on Tammy Fae Bakker with his secretary. Her name was Jessica Hahn, aka 1984 Miss Massapequa.
I made up the year 1984. I actually made up the whole pageant aspect.
My dad exaggerates some of his stories for dramatic effect. He doesn’t lie, though. I can tell which ones are altered.
My dad played soccer. He made a banner that said “GO AMES BEAT MCKENNA.” It didn’t rip when the team ran through it.
My dad turned 55, so I printed a replica banner at Staples for a gift. I told him not to try to run through it.
My dad played soccer with the Evangelical Baldwin brother and Brian Kilmead.
My dad skied in jeans because he was poor. This is actually my mom’s story, but I changed it to be my dad’s. They both insisted my brother and I learn to ski at a young age to avoid this sort of embarrassment.
My dad designed a frequent diner’s card for the deli he worked at after airlines originally launched frequent fliers. He never did anything with it because he couldn’t figure out what the reward should be.
My dad’s chore was to shovel coal into the coal stove. His dad had 55 gallons worth of coal delivered to the house, pulled inside through a trapdoor. My dad has asthma now, but thankfully not black lung. My dad’s first child was me. I inherited his asthma.
My dad, twelve years old, rode his bike to the Unqua School parking lot flea market, drinking Budweiser nips and shooting bottle rockets.
My dad comes to my apartment when I cry.
My dad tells me he’s already seen it when I recommend any show or movie. He will rewatch any of them with me, especially when I cry.
My dad was promised his Bar Mitzvah money, but it instead went to remodel the basement. He did get a pinball machine for consolation.
My dad wore an orange velour blazer and plaid pants to his Bar Mitzvah. He looks like my brother in the photos. His outfit was all the rage in the 70’s. He never looks like me in any photos.
My dad’s mom made him wear black galoshes with huge buckles because they didn’t have green galoshes money. He tossed them in the bushes before he went to school and put them back on when he got home. His mom grounded him for the offense.
My dad and I agree that all of the names mentioned here are too perfect to fictionalize. He does fear his enemies might come after him if this goes public. We agree that it’s worth it.
My dad dropped a wheelbarrow on his dad’s ‘74 Ghia, which was the first time he learned it’s “okay to make a mistake.”
My dad’s elementary school, Fairfield, was exclusively referred to as Faggotfield.
- It takes a genius to whine appealingly -
“Mydogismybestfriend,andhedoesn’tevenknowwhatmynameis”
Rereading this piece for the first time in years was a wild experience. This is a genuine, straightup, fiction short story. I do not write like this at all anymore. There’s flowery description, there’s clear plot, there’s a structure, there’s a narrative…I don’t remember how to do this. I don’t know if I care to, but it’s exciting that I once knew how to. I barely revised this; I was too proud of my young self.
Sentient beings are enthralled, perplexed, and captivated by vastness. There, in the unknown, lies a camouflaged danger. There lies the possibility for a heaven or a paradise. Humans find this captivating because they are self-centered idealists.
Cosette was a self-centered idealist. As a ten-year-old girl with disorderly hair, she built tin foil rocket ships (intended to be tangible encapsulations of her imagination. Ten-year-old Cosette didn’t know that the expanding utopia of a young astronomer’s mind could not manifest itself in an arts and crafts project). She threw the aluminum prototypes in her filled-up bathtub to see if they would float (she could not simulate the sky, and she figured it must be quite similar to the ocean, which must be quite similar to the bathtub). There were little bits of Aveeno Oatmeal
Bath Mix floating around in the bathwater (planets? stars?), and the faucet was still running. One particular day, she tossed a plugged-in hairdryer into the bath as well, for good measure. She did it because a ten-year-old astronomer is still a ten year old, and a ten year old simply has to discover the result of something she hasn’t yet tried. After the experiment, Cosette looked up electrocution (noun) in her dictionary and added the definition to her arsenal of answers to unanswerable questions.
Cosette was a self-centered idealist because she spent her time dreaming of a world where nothing could go wrong, and everything occurred according to plan (her plan). Cosette was sensible, and she knew that to find this world she must look to the sky instead of the Earth. She didn’t know what was in the sky (especially the night sky), so she thought surely it could be whatever she wanted. This, combined with her ferocious desire to know and explain, destined
her to a life of astronomy. Most people turn to Jesus Christ for answers, but for Cosette with disorderly hair it had to be constellations.
Cosette spent middle school nights on her Washington DC roof with a cheap telescope, Jack (her green pet lizard), and her homework. She sat crisscross-applesauce trying to master prealgebra with a dull, stubby pencil and a distracted mind. Every so often, she would take a break to scrunch up one eyelid and connect the white dots in the black silk sky into seemingly scientific shapes.
Cosette spent the later part of middle school nights exiting her roof, fumbling down her rusty fire escape, and entering her room (via the window). Jack followed behind her, scampering silently. Cosette believed he knew the route by heart and could get from the roof to the window on his own, if need be. Once the two were safely inside, Cosette used her soft hands to place Jack and his padded feet onto the soft floor of his cage. The cage had no top, because she wanted to make sure Jack could breathe (she didn’t feel the holes in the wire lid were large enough). She hoped Jack would curl up and go right to sleep. Cosette curled up, in her own bed, under her Star Wars sheets. Before she went right to sleep, she glanced up at the full night sky one last time. She hoped Jack would do the same.
An eighteen-year-old Cosette with disorderly (and occasionally braided) hair was Gifted and Talented (and quite possibly a Tortured Genius) and on her way to The Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A Physics major and Astronomy minor, even though she wasn’t so much interested in Newton’s Three Laws of Motion as she was in stars. Physics was more respectable, she figured, and it was also the only option available at MIT in the field of Astronomy. MIT did not allow pets in the dorm. But it did allow Star Wars sheets, a few medals, Powerpoints, and
papers. And a clipboard, a very professional clipboard. Cosette knew how to research answers to her unanswerable questions in textbooks instead of simply pulling them out of the thick black sky. Of course, a little imagination remained, just enough to drive her to discover rather than memorize. Just enough to make her an astronomer.
Twenty-year-old Cosette was in the neighborhood and visited her Washington DC Petco to check on Jack’s family. She was disappointed to find that all of the small, soft green baby lizards she remembered had now grown fat and ugly and adult. She was glad that Jack was still a skinny lizard (although she worried that he might be malnourished or emaciated and blamed herself).
Twenty-two-year-old Cosette tilted her graduation cap and asked her mom where Jack was. Her mom told her that Jack was at home. Cosette assumed he was busy and couldn’t make it (she was sure he was awfully sorry for the inconvenience). Her mom also told her that she was about to graduate college so could she please grow up and stop asking about her pet lizard. And could she please fix her hair.
Twenty-three-year-old Cosette with slightly less disorderly hair stared at the white walls of her NASA office through the lenses of her glasses and wondered if Neptune was watching over her. As she punched keys down on her NASA computer and mapped out coordinates she felt as if she knew everything there was to know about the small bit of sky (and Asteroid 325) that had been assigned to her. She wondered if she knew everything there was to know about everything. Probably not, she thought to herself. She yawned and continued typing sequences of numbers.
Twenty-three-year-old Cosette heard the heavy door slam as she walked into her apartment (because it was empty and everything echoed). She walked over to the windowsill and dragged her index finger along the side of an empty lizard cage (actually a large fish tank) that was sitting there. The glass squeaked. It had been sitting there for nearly a year. Cosette didn’t really want to move it (and she stored her DVDs inside of it, for convenience purposes). She took a few steps on the empty brown floorboards where her mom once stood asking if she was really sure about this, really sure about NASA. Cosette brushed her thumbs through her hair and they got stuck. She thought about how she would answer if her mom asked her those same questions now.
On February First (her twenty-fourth birthday), Cosette went up to the roof of her Washington DC office building, lizardless. The sky seemed empty to her. In its blankness she saw her mom asking if she regretted not having any friends or any fun. Asking why she liked stars. Cosette couldn’t answer.
On February First, Cosette paused before blowing air at the small flame of the candle atop her vanilla frosted cupcake. It was a glowing orb of fire, kind of like the one in the sky a young Cosette would admire until her mom told her to quit staring because it would damage her eyes. She didn’t remember that at the moment, though. Instead, she remembered a sky that had seemed empty to her earlier that morning. She wondered if it was always that empty. Probably not, she thought to herself. She blew out her candle and watched as the ribbons of charcoal gray smoke danced in the thin air.
About fourteen hours into February First the empty sky opened up to reveal that it had actually been housing rain. This pleased Cosette, as she always liked the rain, and after all it was
her twenty-fourth birthday. Her brief happiness faded though, like the raindrops sliding down the office window, like dark syrup dripping down a plaster wall until there’s nothing left but residue.
There’s an orange glow that bounces off the blacktop streets and golden lamps after it rains. On February First, Cosette noticed it through her office window. She swiveled around in her chair, peered at the streets, and swiveled back. She decided that she much preferred this glow to the sunshine (but not quite enough). Her favorite thing the sky had to offer was the stars, but lately the stars just felt like paperwork. She remembered being young; the stars in the sky reflected in her glossy black pupils. Young Cosette was like a storybook, like a rollercoaster. Aged Cosette wondered if life was unimportant because happiness was fleeting. Probably not, she thought to herself, but didn’t really believe.
Cosette readjusted her plaid skirt slightly and looked for something to believe in. She rolled open her desk drawer and placed a hand on a brown leather book. She traced her index finger along the gold letters that read HOLY BIBLE. It was left there by a NASA employee who had the office before Cosette. When Cosette first moved into the office she decided to leave it. How funny, she thought to herself, that astronauts and scientists are in love with God. She removed her fingers, sighed a sigh of dissatisfaction and discomfort, and closed the wooden drawer promptly.
Deep into February First, Cosette diagnosed herself as Jaded. She assumed that Jaded Girls were blonde and cynical and layered their clothes. She didn’t assume that instead they spun around on their swivel chairs in a depressed haze as their neat hair floated through the small
wind. She didn’t assume that they stared at the white walls on their birthdays trying to remember what it felt like to love something.
Cosette got up from her chair very calmly. She put the NASA pen she had been twiddling gently in its pencil cup. She closed the white shade, opened her office door, and walked straight out. She walked straight through the corridors and right onto the sidewalk (without clocking out). The air and the sky of the city suffocated her. Cosette, drowning in the undertow.
Cosette, lightheaded and dizzy and eyeing the glittery pavement. The astronomical life she had built exploded. The Rebels had blown up her Death Star, leaving her in the rubble, scavenging through and piecing together the remains.
In the later part of February First, Cosette stepped into the Petco on the street corner before it closed. She stood in front of the green lizard display, placing her sticky palms and fingerpads on the glass, crying silently under the fluorescent white lights.
“EverydayIsaythatIwon’t,andIdon’t”
Everyday, I Don’t by Anna Domino - East and West + Live In Japan
I always wanted a typewriter. My friend’s mom offered me one. I lugged it in a cab crosstown and wrote this on it. I don’t at all remember what I was trying to do here.
Pray by duendita - direct line to My Creator
I went home and wrote this on that very same typewriter right after I saw it happen
“IpraytomymomandmyGod‘causethey’reboththesame”
“Sijeleveuxjel'aurai.”Tout oublier by Angèle - Brol
When I wrote this my French girlfriend had just broken up with me. Like the heartbroken freak that I was, I told her I would write my second story for workshop with some French interspersed. I don’t speak French.
I asked her what to write about, and neither of us knew. I asked her to give me a word or phrase. She said plane crash, so I wrote this. I also asked her for French words, and I tossed them in where I could, or where I thought I could.
The character Clem ended up being a stand-in for Angèle, a pop singer and my only connection to French whatsoever. I have TOUT OUBLIER, a lyric of hers, tattooed down my shin. Despite this, I consider myself a francophobe.
When my professor handed this back to me he had written Sarah,Irespecttheaudacityofthis story. I thought this was funny and was secretly very flattered.
The plane hit the ground like a missile plowing through the grass of the campagnefrançaiseand pounding the mud in its landing. At least that’s what I imagine it looked like. I obviously wasn’t around to see it.
The plane crashed loudly but we died in silence. Everyone remembers Buddy Holly, but I feel like Don McLean won’t write a song for us. TarteFrançaisedoesn’t have the same ring to it. I guess AmericanPiecan’t really work outside of America, and that song is like almost fifty years old anyway. Besides, no music died in our plane. Only three sad sacks of thirteen-year-old girl.
Simone and Maddi and me could not have made music like Buddy Holly or Don McLean even if we wanted to, because between the three of us we had absolutely no talent whatsoever.
We were so untalented and absolutely fed up with the sounds of our own voices, in fact, that we were flying to hear someone else for once. The day the plane crashed Clem was coming to Paris to perform. All three of us had tickets. All three of us being me, who is Manon, Simone, who is my best friend in France, and Maddi, who is a bitch. We constantly relied on Clem’s music to drone out the garbage noise that spilled out of our mouths every time we opened them. We were thirteen-year-old girls, so everything we did and said was insufferable.
Every summer since I was too young to even know I was alive I had been coming to stay with my tante in the South of France. She lives in a really small house in a really small town in the countryside. For the school year I lived in Detroit with my parents who are French immigrants. I
don’t know why they moved to Detroit. It’s fine, but I think if they were going to leave the sud they should’ve gone to Paris. I’d never been to Paris before. My tante never took me because she hates the city for some reason. Clem’s concert was meant to be my first visit. But then, a few days ago, the day of the concert, we fucking died.
It’s weird to think of me, Simone, and Maddi as Buddy, Ritchie, and the Big Bopper when we were really just regular girls. Only thirteen, we had legitimately accomplished nothing. We didn’t know anyone besides our family or the kids at school or the people around us. I knew probably maximum thirty people in the entire country of France. We hadn’t had the chance to meet some people we might actually like. Simone I did like, but she was my best friend mostly because she was neighbors with my tante. We splashed together in the cold pond as babies and when I got older and my parents sent me to France on my own I had sleepovers at her house. Everyone in the town called us SimoneetManon , our rhyming names fusing into one. We thought we were gross losers whose only hope was to one day hatch into something resembling Clem. We never got the chance.
Maddi came into the picture the year before the crash. There was no room for her in SimoneetManon . Her name doesn’t rhyme with ours. Her full name does, if you say it with a heavy French accent, Mah-dee-sohn . It’s a disgusting name. Madison. She was so American. Not Madeleine , no, Madison, l’américaine . Money Money Maddi from the Valley, California, baby… VaaliiiiiiigurrlllMaadiiii-uh . She went by Maddi, not Maddie or Maddy and definitely not Madison. The only way she managed to convince anyone she was the least bit French is that she spelled her name Maddi. Because iin French is English e or ieor y or whatever. I knew she
spelled it that way on purpose. I am almost sure she went by Madison in the Valley. The spelling didn’t even matter, though, because I could tell Maddi was American the second she opened her mouth. Not just because I was also American. Everyone could tell. I had zero interest in being Maddi’s friend. I didn’t like her, but Simone did. I can’t blame her because we were thirteen and didn’t know anyone else.
Maddi’s dad is an American movie star, or she liked to say so. Once during a bragging episode of hers I’d had quite enough so I said, “Maddi, your dad is a movie producer. Pro-duuu-cer.” She whined, “vatefairefoutre,Manon!What do you know?!”Her Manonsounded like Maknown-uh to me, the fucking américaine . Why did she speak in French… she knew I spoke English! She kept going with it, “he appears in many of the movies he produces! Including the one he is making here right now!” I didn’t have the energy to yell back that he’s been nothing more than an extra in two films. I was American, she knew I knew the famous from the not famous. Whatever he is, money makes him move, and his daughter too, the fucking bitch. The movie Maddi mentioned had been filming in the sudsince last summer, when me and Simone first met Maddi. I came back this summer and the movie was still shooting, and Maddi went to school with Simone all year, and they had become best friends. Ouai . It’s cool, I had friends in Detroit, obviously. Just not best friends. SimoneetMaddidoesn’t really sound cute.
Maddi laughed so loud when I bled through my dress the other day. This is probably why I hated her, or the biggest reason. Simone’s mom, unlike Maddi’s dad, is an actual actrice , so she gets a lot of tickets to things somehow. She got us the tickets to see Clem. She also got us tickets
to see the ballet the other day in the local theater. This is something I loved to do. I always wanted to be a ballerina leaping across space and time. I wanted a tutu rouge to float in the air, following behind my body. But like I said, we were shithead nothings, so obviously I was not a ballerina.
Simone, her mom, and me had been going to the ballet for several years now. It was a tradition to drench ourselves in whatever makeup, old gowns, and costume jewelry Simone’s mom would give us. This summer Simone invited Maddi to join us, because of course she did. I was trying to be nice when Maddi slipped on the silk dress I have drowned in at the ballet every year for a while now. I thought this year it might finally fit me. Maddi refused to take it off because she’s a huge bitch, so I didn’t really argue and I wore something else. I didn’t even tell her that the pale blue of my favorite dress against her brassy yellow hair made her look even uglier than she already looked with normal clothes.
Us quatrefilleswere sitting in the audience watching Swan Lake when I felt something in my chair. I felt as though my insides were leaking out, blood and organs piling up in my underwear. I knew what was happening to me, but still I panicked. I thought all of my blood would drain out and then so would the rest of me. When I learned about periods from my mom years before this I wept for hours. “Crari?You’re joking… does it hurt? Every month for the rest of my life? Like, toujours?” My instinct was to cry. I didn’t want to be emptied out.
When I got my first period at Swan Lake I had the unfortunate luck of wearing a white dress.
If you recall, Maddi stole my original outfit. I stood up out of my chair during the intermission
and under the theater lights everyone around us knew what was going on. Or if they didn’t, they definitely did when Maddi and her stupid American voice pointed and said, “Manon!Manon!”a little too loudly and in fake concern. The reddish-purple blood was a harsh stain against the yellowed fabric of the back of my dress. I hid behind the little short hair I had and tried not to be caught crying by too many people. Simone covered my face in the space between her neck and shoulder while my body convulsed. Her mom said it was okay, not to worry, it was just an old wedding dress costume anyway. She would throw it out.
That was a few days ago, a few days before the crash. After the humiliating incident, Simone promised me she was done with Maddi. Maybe she meant it, but I didn’t believe her. And if we had stayed alive and Simone kept Maddi around, I wouldn’t blame her. I couldn’t. Maddi lived in the sudall year, and I was only there for the summers. Simone was just doing her best. All thirteen-year-old girls can do is their best. But they’re fucking bleeding all the time suddenly, and people are looking and laughing, so it’s hard. Bleeding everything they’re made of out into their pants. It’s hard to do your best, so I sort of weirdly understood when Simone said we should probably still take Maddi to see Clem in Paris. I knew we had no one else to give the third ticket to.
When Simone’s mom gave us the Clem tickets as a surprise last week, we made a plan for the three of us to take a train to Paris to see the concert. My tante agreed to this plan, not caring if I went to Paris now that I was old enough to go without her. Maddi did not agree, of course, because she agreed with nothing ever. She told us that there was an old plane on the set of her dad’s new film that was gonna be a prop. And then, she genuinely, seriously, for real, honêtement,
told us that we should steal it and fly it to Paris. “It would be so much more énervéthan the train, don’t you think?” Honêtement.I told you everything that comes out of her mouth is garbage, pure garbage. She used the word énervéwrong, fucking américaine . Simone and I talked her down from this absurd idea until she reached a barely less crazy conclusion: she would ask her dad if the stuntman who flew the plane in the movie could fly us to Paris to see Clem. Simone nodded like a scared sheep. I rolled my eyes, expecting this idea and this idiot to go away soon.
A week passed and on the day of the plane crash I woke up to the news that Maddi’s dad is, apparently, as batshit as his daughter. Money made that man move, and he loved a bargain almost as much as he loved Maddi. He had met her request. That’s right. The fucking crazy plane idea that was so crazy I had forgotten all about it, let alone considered to be an actual plan. He would kill two birds with one stone and film our flight to Paris, using the footage of us in the little plane for his movie. I know. I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried. But it happened, and I don’t really remember how. You can’t explain choices like this. They are made in a split-second, faster than you can breathe in and faster than the time it takes for a plane to blow up. All I know is I was on that plane for maybe twenty minutes, thinking about all the blood in my underwear, before it took a nosedive into a green French hill. Of course it fucking did. We were just trying our best and often fucking up in the process. Maddi’s dad, a grown man, I have less of an excuse for. Simone’s mom and my tante are innocent because they thought we were on the train. We obviously had no intention of letting them in on Maddi’s ridiculous plan. I’m really not even mad at Simone. I just can’t believe we fucking died to appease Maddi. We died, two losers, for a girl who was an even bigger loser than us.
We didn’t get to see Clem. I will never get to visit Paris. It’s fine, but if I’m gonna die in a fucking plane crash, I kind of want a song. I know Don McLean is definitely retired, and if he’s not it’d be corny to do un autre plane crash song, but maybe Clem and her team could slap together a tribute or something. That would mean more to me anyway because I died for Clem and Don McLean just sings music my parents played all the time. That’s not to say I don’t like him, I used to love AmericanPie . I had even jokingly whispered “this’ll be the day that I diieeee” to Simone as we boarded that stupid, janky plane. She laughed.
AndthethreemenIadmiremost:
Thefather,son,andtheholyghost
Theycaughtthelasttrainforthecoast
Thedaythemusicdied…
Whatever happened that day Don had one thing absolutely correct. God, Jesus, or whoever were definitely off drinking whiskey and rye with the good old boys and not watching over us when we got on that plane. They were elsewhere when three thirteen-year-olds exploded against the French sky, no one around to witness it. They caught the last train for the coast, heading to the sudfrom Paris. We would’ve passed windows and seen each other across the parallel railroad tracks if the three of us had taken the fucking train to Paris that day like we were supposed to.
“Nobody’sson,nobody’sdaughter.”
Chemtrails
I can’t help but write like this. The short sentences, the quippiness, the repetition… Sometimes I think I don’t know how to do anything else. I hope it’s working for you. Here’s another.
Also, love Lana’s little nod to Hole.
Our parents’ apartments are open all night and all day. The library closes at 10.
In Kindergarten you get a library card, enabling you to stay out until 10 when you are older.
In Kindergarten the cubbies flipped over, narrowly missing the opportunity to shatter a girl’s skull. Due to her small size, she fit between the confines of one cubby and the floor physically unharmed. Library bookshelves offer no such concavity. Skull damage seems likely. Fortunately, most library patrons are careful.
I am unaware of where the bookshelves are, but aware of the possibility of them toppling. My friend is aware of neither. We are high. We are not careful.
There is a man here who is higher than us. He is not careful.
We are on the floor. There are chairs at our parents’ apartments, but we are high. My friend lays on my shins. He is reading a children’s book to me. We laugh too loudly.
The librarian is easy to evade, but not when we laugh too loudly.
We relocate and read something adult. We choose from authors E through H. We laugh because we are high, but not too loudly, as the new subject matter affords us time to hesitate. Adults have this capability. Children do not, so their books are designed to accommodate their inadequacies.
I say hey at a moderate voice level to the man who is higher than us. He understands and walks over. He can select a book. I ask his name and he tells me.
I do not ask him to select a book because that is probably not the real reason I invited him over.
He does not ask my name, but I tell him. My friend lifts himself from my shins. He has, after a bit of a delay, realized something. I realize nothing.
HowisEmma?
The man does not look too far, or at either of our faces.
Emma’susing . The man does not want to tell us that. He is high and makes mistakes.
Emmarelapsed?We have.
Emmawantedtofuckguyswhoaren’tyou.
My friend does not tell the man he is a bad father. He wants to.
The man begins to tip the bookshelf. He is embarrassed and not careful.
I hesitate. The man returns the bookshelf back to where it was.
PIENSO EN TU MIRÁ - Cap.3: Celos by ROSALÍA - El Mal Querer
“Ydelcieloydelaluna,porquetúquierasmirarlo”
I don’t remember writing part I and II. They are definitely retrospective because in the moment of these events there is no way on god’s green earth I would’ve been able to string them together. I remember writing the rest. It was all I could bring myself to write when I was admitted to inpatient at New York-Presby for the first time. I didn’t go outside for twelve days straight during my stay there.
I worry that no one will want to read this. Or, rather, that no one should read this. I’ve decided I don’t care. This happened to me.
When I was discharged, I went home for two days before I was shuttled to Res at McLean in Boston. McLean is the hospital GirlInterruptedis based off. I hate Boston. They shouldn’t have let me go home first. I was excited, though, because I wanted to exchange my Nicotine patch for cigarettes while I had the brief chance to.
While I was home, I tried to tell my brother about my feeding tube. He squirmed and told me, very seriously, to shut up. I was infuriated that I lived through it and he couldn’t even stand to hear about it. This piece is like that. I lived through it, and, if you so choose, you can stand to read about it.
I have achieved nearly everything I wrote in part XII.
“You need a feeding tube.” I was throwing up, on purpose, like a motherfucker. I survived on one bowl of chicken noodle soup a day, and avoided the carrots because I don’t like carrots. I had an occasional smoothie loaded with calories upon calories via the goopy medium of Benecal. Then, I promptly dry heaved until I choked out a slim amount of yellow stomach bile. My mom told me I looked like a heroin addict kicking when she had to physically restrain me from opening the bathroom door. My therapist spent eight hours at my house monitoring me as I thrashed around in my bed screaming bloody murder that I needed to purge. Traveling pay-for-play nurses stuck IV’s in the crutch of my elbow or in my hand or in my wrist and pumped me full of hydration and Zofran and vitamins and probably a sneaky milligram of Ativan. I could feel the cold fluid running through my veins, which they said might happen. I needed the dopamine rush of spilling my guts; the two to three minute relief from my utterly intolerable anxiety induced nausea. The high always vanished, and I had to stick my fingers down my throat again. Someone would feed me a Xanax XR and I would fall into an incredibly light, wavering sleep for an hour in my brother’s bed. I don’t remember why I was in his room. My dad was by my side and I opened my eyes every time he shifted in any way. I would eventually wake up fully feeling a hearty, fullthroated ten percent better. In the evenings I would watch a glitchy, pirated episode of Kourtney andKhloéTakeMiamiin my mom’s bed on her ever-charging, outdated iMac Air. I then felt fifteen percent better. Bedtime was at eight PM, and I was relieved by the satisfaction of an
eleven-hour period of unconsciousness. I woke up in an insane panic early in the morning (early, by my standards). This lasted about a month.
“You need a feeding tube. Go to the ER and ask for an NG tube.” So we did. My therapist warned us that the doctors probably wouldn’t do it, but we had to take our chances out of sheer desperation. This was never going to happen. ER’s don’t do this. A nurse took my vitals. High heart rate and low blood pressure, I assume, but don’t remember. I’m orthostatic. We waited for an extended period of time, as one does at the ER. “Do you have any urges to kill or hurt yourself?” I stupidly answered yes because my malnourished brain forgot that you must lie in situations like this. I sat on a gurney for another extended period of time, my mom by my side. I begged for Xanax, and eventually received one pathetic milligram of Ativan. “We can’t give you an NG tube, but you do have to go to the psych ER ward.” Fuck. My stupid non-lie. I wasn’t going to do anything. Does that warrant the psych ER? Yes (legally obliged, probably), to the doctors. No, to me, no, to my parents who didn’t know what I non-lied. Maybe they did. I don’t remember.
Someone shuffled me to the unlit unit. “Say goodbye to your parents before the door locks.” I did. “Take off all your jewelry.” I pointed to my cartilage and told him “these one’s don’t come out.” “Fine.” He locked the rest up in a safe with all of my clothes. He gave me blue paper scrubs and a single (thank god). A cot with no blanket and possibly a pillow and grippy socks, of course. I asked for a melatonin. “Fine.” I woke up the next morning (early, by my standards), and immediately purged several times in the bathroom. No one gave a shit or even noticed. If they did notice, it was met with sheer indifference. ER psych nurses simply do not care about anything unless you find some innovative way to kill yourself. My parents showed up as soon as they could.
Only one parent (my dad, in this case) was allowed in the unit. I was only very, very loosely aware of the several cops harassing the woman sleeping in the hallway directly outside my door. My dad was aware, updating my mom via text on his Apple watch and trying to make sure I couldn’t tell what was going on. I was delirious anyway. They gave me back my two gold chains and my gold linked bracelet and my two gold rings and my five silver rings and my two larger gold hoop earrings and my two smaller gold hoop earrings and my emerald stud earring and my clothes and my shoes and my non-grippy socks. I don’t remember what I came in wearing. My parents promptly got me the fuck out of there. We took a cab home and crossed the park from the East Side to the West. II.
No one wants to say this out loud but to vomit is to be so honest, so vulnerable. It is to let all of my insides come out. All of my guts, physical and spiritual, come spilling out of my throat into the toilet bowl. My parents told me to stop praying to the porcelain throne. That is exactly how it feels to sit by a toilet. Submitting to my cold, white king. Engulfed by the majesty of bathroom tile. Hair in my face. Germs on my body. No one to tell me to stop. Only my king and me. Or I am the king. And the toilet is my throne. I would flush my insides all the way to the Vatican if I could. III.
The unit is just a long hallway with bedrooms. All I can hear all day are paces of sticky non-slip shoes walking up and down the hallway and I wait to see if they come to my door or not. My roommate is kind and doesn’t spend much time in here. I’ve identified the crazy girl as Fayga. She
bangs on the nurse’s station window and screams. They do your body check in a literal supply closet and there is a sign hanging there that says Fayga isn’t allowed to have extra linens or mouthwash. She talks loudly and manly. There is a girl named Shoshanna who grew up in Monsey and used to be religious. They decided to put the NG tube in after me not eating anything for around four days. There is a tube that runs up my nose down my throat and into my stomach. I can feel it in my throat constantly. I threw up as soon as they placed it. It took them forever to remove the vomit from my floor. Everything here takes forever. I can’t imagine ever being able to eat again. The worst thing about the tube is this horrible fucking noise it makes for like 6-8 hours straight. It is this whistling whizzing noise every few seconds that is going to drive me to the brink of insanity. It’s just so unfair that my life has come to this.
IV.
I attempted to write this by the glow of my NG tube which I thought would be romantic but I couldn’t see a thing so I turned the lights on and now I can see how much fluid is left, which makes me want to kill myself because the fucking sound won’t stop for a while. I have taken in 1043 mL so far, which seems like more than enough. I have decided to listen to my first song, Running Up That Hill, because it has been stuck in my head. There is an outlet in this room which is ridiculous because what are we allowed to plug in. I’m writing this with a fucking bendy pen for god’s sake.
V.
Jessica is a weird older lesbian leaving tomorrow. My roommate left today, after purging in front of me in the room yesterday. Mindy has 12 siblings. There is an Orthodox Jewish wing of this
hospital. Every night I can’t wait until the moment I can put my head to the pillow in silence and finally sleep without the noise. I promised dad I’d read, but I’ve tried and I don’t think I remember how to.
VI.
I had a dream a few nights ago that Marissa was giving me cake and a bunch of treats and I ate all of it and she asked if I was high and I answered yes though I wasn’t sure if I was I just thought I should've been because of how hungry I was. I like my new roommate. She knew how to turn the AC on which drowns out the sound of my tube. It sounds like popcorn being made.
VII.
I threw up my tube today. I guess I wanted that thing out one way or another. I couldn’t stop crying and I was in such despair. My social worker said I could maybe have the tube out Friday, which made me upset. Mom came to visit and we were talking about my despair. She said she thinks I’m terrified to leave the house and I threw up all over the floor and the tube came up and was just hanging out of my mouth like a wet piece of spaghetti for like 20 minutes. My mom asked if they could give me a chance without the tube and they said sure. I drank every Ensure they gave me. I am so fucking proud. First thing I’ve put in my mouth in a week.
VIII.
I threw up my NG tube
I threw up my NG tube
Not on purpose
“Purgers know how to make themselves throw up without shoving their fingers down their throat”
-my social worker
The worst is the whizzing noise
Two seconds of silence
Two seconds of whizzing noise
One second inside of me
My esophagus
My stomach
My nose
The next second out
Spaghetti noodle
Now when I hear wheels
I wince
I was willful
But how do you believe in something you don’t believe in IX.
I had a dream I snorted coke with Charli D’Amelio and my mom found out and she was so angry and then it turned out to be heroin. I feel so disconnected from the world. Mom told me
Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker are engaged which made my day worse. She should get back with Scott. X.
I feel the happiest I’ve felt maybe ever is in my dreams. The beginning of the day is always horrible for me. They moved me to solid foods at lunch and I had 5 bites of pasta and started crying immediately. I felt set up to fail with my huge portion. At snack I had pretzels and apple juice. First solid food in like 2 weeks. XI.
I finally had a bad dream. I dreamt grandma and grandpa (he was alive somehow, maybe in hospice for the past few years) had gotten in a car crash and I wanted to go see them in the hospital before they died. I had my Rodeph basketball uniform on and my mom was like you can’t go you have to go to your game. We feel this means I still have a lot of guilt. They started playing music in the hallway, mostly country, as if this place isn't unbearable enough. I cry every morning. I'm tired of looking at the most ugly, boring photos of nature on the wall. I worked so hard to complete everything at dinner and I threw it all up in front of everyone in the dining room. So disappointing and embarrassing after I worked so hard.
XII.
Preface: I think it is virtually impossible to achieve this life, so this is purely imaginative.
In my recovered life I would be able to have sustained healthy relationships with people I love.
My attachment issues would be worked through as well as my trauma, so I won’t feel extremely anxious or throw up every time I feel like something is imperfect or I’m about to be abandoned. I will get all the tattoos I want. I will cut my hair into a shag. I will spend time with my family. I will eat without fear or discomfort or excessive thought. I will love myself. I will graduate college. I will relearn to play the drums. I will stay clean. I will feel peace instead of fear and despair.
“Iwannawriteaboutyou, butIdon’tknowyourname”
Love in Passing by Adeodat Warfield - Adeodat Warfield
I don’t fancy myself a poet. I already find writing to be a humiliating endeavor, and I often wish I had a different skill. Poetry exacerbates that for me.
This is a poem I wrote that I think is okay.
hair is brownish so it must be spring (heavy duty pants)
shirt under dress pants under dress and my baby timbs
when kids dress themselves
I am the slope towards the bottom left forceful don’t touch me and plowing the emerald like the fish on my dress moves through fabric water
rhinestone emblazoned
vinyl brown and green
I’m unaware
“Thoughsheneedsyoumorethanshelovesyou”
I Know It’s Over by The Smiths - The Queen Is Dead
This is another poem I wrote that is okay.
I leave you with this.
To me you are like walking or anything else
We’ve seen or done together
Your hands are cold from the outside and mine are not or the other way around, sometimes And when you stick your foot in the deep slush that collects at the corner of the sidewalk
My foot feels cold too but I have no socks to lend you In that moment
Thank you to Professor Lauren Silber for guiding me with care and thoughtfulness, and for reminding me that this project is my own.
Thank you to my parents, my brother Andrew, and my cousins Mathias and Natasha, whom I would be nothing without. For sharing their lives with me as I share with them mine.
Gracias a María por todo.
Thank you to Michaela.
Thank you to everyone mentioned in my work who don’t know they are mentioned.
Works Consulted
CameraLucida – Roland Barthes
Nox – Anne Carson
TheYearofMagicalThinking – Joan Didion
TheFriend – Sigrid Nunez
Citizen – Claudia Rankine
OnPhotography– Susan Sontag