"Oedipa nodded. She couldn't stop watching his eyes. They were bright black, surrounded by an incredible network of lines, like a laboratory maze for studying intelligence in tears. They seemed to know what she wanted, even if she didn't."

Thomas Pynchon ^

Somehow everyone has gone home and Robert keeps making mumbling gestures, kissing my cheek and holding his hand on my side so I can feel its weight. Too afraid to even take off my scarf I sleep with it on. My make-up is smeared in the morning as I look around at Robert in a gray undershirt and a typewriter in the corner and flag of Kansas against the wall--a little less grown up than his last room.

There are so many stars up there when you get out far enough. On the road, talking to Ryan's dad about schools. Ryan turns to me. That's nicotine gum; he's addicted. She cries in front of the cash register in McDonald's because she can't find herself the way Depok Chopra can. She gets a chocolate-dipped ice cream cone; her dad coffee.

Driving to the water to see it. Me and the lone branch standing up against the wind. The layer of stillness and boat abandoned out there where there's no parking in front of the gate and I run back to the car for exercise, looking up at the stars because I don't want to be the only one anymore.

The train tracks invisible until the train passes and our arms are linked like we will walk tight together in front of any train, but you only spoke Spanish after pulling me on top of you and I can't stop hearing you say "Me encanta cuando ries." Sitting like Buddha. And I don't mention the lack of handwriting about to affect the curriculum, but I do bring up the spelling bee.

oh, the future

are we there yet?

I came home to a girl with dark hair, cut short around her head, stirring marinara sauce and munching popcorn in the dark. We curled up in front of Netflix for a couple hours and I forgot more things, days, amounts of money, addresses, people I know, it all. There was a lot of curling up today.

I have started to ask myself serious questions. Am I the woman carrying a filing cabinet to her classroom? Am I four years old eating pizza at a table in the cafeteria? Was I featured in People magazine for losing weight? Did I run into a tree and suck my thumb next to a girl's knee? Did she pick the rubber mulch out of my hair and tell me "What do you have in here, toothpaste?" Did I not understand until tonight, in her arms, that outer space was not pretend? I gave birth to twins and found them sitting in the lap of a girl, watching a movie, then repeated how dark it was in the room three times.

Do I look darker to a person coming in from the light? I felt a little stranded next to a farm house, but also managed to buy a cappuccino and park in front of the lake where it was hard to see the stars. Red, blinking towers stretched out before me like dim and alien souls in this mess of children and pregnant newly weds. God save us all.