Water I Won't Touch It's hard to explain my persistent sadness when I keep so many blueberries frozen in the freezer. Nirvana, in the past, has been plenty of fruit, and all the moments spent outside of myself. But currently, I am trying to pull the planets from retrograde, and remember all the ways my drinking can kill me. I still want a lake-sized sip. This is such a citrus habit of mine, such acid rusting away my tooth enamel. I never learned to drive because I knew one day I would learn to drink. I have always been almost selfless like this. Sure, there are some things I regret: I once left my mother's Minolta on the hood of a car, and I regret all the memories lost in turn. Because I am an alcoholic, my memories are seven amens and a few holy spirits from hogtied. I name all my favorite bars after churches. Pigeons are swans if you squint. You know, the cherry blossoms bloomed again this year, despite all the damage to my liver. And autumn is coming, even though I've said things I do not mean. Sand & Silt In the beginning, there was a boy who touched me as he shouldn't have. His hands around my ankles--claustrophobic-- a plot of cattails on the water's black silt. We all have a story like this, innocent in its setting, nefarious how it stays spurred into our bones as we grow. I think I knew I was a boy when the boy touched me. I know this boy is now a violent man with a large collection of semi- automatic rifles. Some things are so absolute. The point at which rain becomes snow. The way fruit eventually spoils even under unblemished skin. If I make a metaphor of my body, it's a desert. One part longing, one part need, the rest withstanding. Of course I would prefer to be thirsty for nothing. I'd rather do so much than be touched in this angry dark. Violent men want me to be a violent man. Or they want me dead. What a privilege to have an option. My Partner Wants Me to Write Them a Poem about Sheryl Crow but all I want to do is marry them on a beach that refuses to take itself too seriously. So much of our lives have been serious. Over time, I've learned that love is most astonishing when it persists after learning where we come from. When I bring my partner to my childhood home it is all bullets and needles and trash bags held at arm's length. It is my estranged father's damp bed of cardboard and cigar boxes filled with gauze and tarnished spoons. It is hard to clean a home, but it is harder to clean the memory of it. When I was young, my father would light lavender candles and shoot up. Now, my partner and I light a fire that will burn all traces of the family that lived here. Black plastic smoke curdles up, and loose bullets discharge in the flames. My partner holds my hand as gunfire rings through the birch trees. Though this is almost beautiful, it is not. And while I'm being honest: My partner and I spend most of our time on Earth feeding one another citrus fruits and enough strength to go on. Every morning I pack them half a grapefruit and some sugar. And they tell me it's just sweet enough. On the Benefits of Learning by Example I'm always writing about heavy things: headstones, fathers, a feather painted with blood. Below the equator bats are boiling in the night sky. I know this is the product of global heat, humans, but all I remember is my father taking bat after bat from the night sky with a BB gun. The first thing I ever learned is that it's not hard to kill. He held them together, dead in his hands and rolling like tiny red plums. When I fall in love with my partner it's as fast as a downed bird, smooth and in a tailspin. Our bodies are not meant to live together, in such queer blood red harmony. But some sins are sweeter than others. Sodom and Grace are all wrapped up in the backwoods and yes, I will always be loving my partner just like this--soft and dusted in Pennsylvania dirt. As far as I walk from my roots, they grow to reach-- and that teaches me everything I need to know about being good. One Geography of Belonging: After Ocean Vuong What becomes of the girl no longer a girl? Dearest Mother, The stretch marks from my once-breasts have migrated to their new tectonic flats. But you can always find hints of what used to be. Trust me, it is more beautiful this way, to look closely at my body and name it things like: Pangea & history & so, so warm. Look at me now and see how blood faithfully takes the shape of its body, never asking. never asking too many questions. Dearest Mother, how many rivers did I run across your belly? Do you love that they will never dry up? Mother, I'll make all this water worth it. Echo When they look inside your chest, the sonogram calls your heart an orchid, each petal pulpy and abnormally palpitating. You and I both imagined it would behave this way, flowering too big where it shouldn't. We have both pressed our ears to conch shells and clocked your heart as it gallops into another season, another faulty bloom. Perhaps it is an early symptom of aging, to worry like this, with every sense, in every room of our bodies. Perhaps it is wrong of me to be so critical of your heart--to want it to speak more like mine." Excerpted from Water I Won't Touch by Kayleb Rae Candrilli All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
