The Drawer

Amanda Kovattana: helped client empty boyfriend's sock drawer. We figured he wasn't coming back; he walked out five years ago.

Arranged neatly, in short columns of black, brown, green, and gray, are his socks. The drawer contains only about ten pairs, each having its own story: The gray pair came from his father, whose feet were wider, rougher. The brown were a gift, dress socks worn thin from too many job interviews.

"Maybe, he'll remember that he didn't pack these," she thinks to herself, but after five years, they still line the drawer, soft and stubborn, like the single wrinkle between her brows.

In the cedar drawer, they're protected, like warm little secrets. "This gray pair, this is important," she recalls, holding up a folded bundle. "He wore these when we went to dinner." The subtle little argyle pattern stretched taut over his ankles, covering an odd mole over his left talus bone. She feels like the talus: muscleless, needing to be surrounded by those like herself in order to function.

"Yeah, yeah. He'll remember," she says finally, and closes the drawer again. She used to open the drawer more often, not long after he left. Then, she only opened it twice a year, sometimes forgetting they were in there, sometimes being afraid. This last time, she opens the drawer and leaves it open, waiting for the moth who'll never come.

Shells, Shelter

They hide the ocean in a shell.
- Arcade Fire, "Half Light I"

It isn't fair how
little effort it takes
to swallow all of your heroes
and let them harden
in the kiln of your gut.
It is easy
to write about stars because
it is easy
to write about ignorance.
How can I trust my eyes
when light travels so slowly?

When the fire is out,
the inspiration is ready.
Be careful not to burn yourself.
That's easy, too.
One day, the antimatter
in your gut
will take those stars
and eat them.
How can I trust my brain
when antimatter and matter,
the yin and yang, the good and evil
are composed of atoms,
then strings
laced in and out of consciousness?
What good is reality
when it's hidden behind
layers of skin and muscle,
trapped in the universe
of one's body?

Zeta

How the universe began is a rhetorical question, a function or formula. It hangs off the New Moon after coming back, decades after circling Saturn, transforming, restructuring.

I pretend to count your eyelashes, each one its own universe. Somewhere, with child-like wonder, I’m counting the veins on a leaf, counting the spots in my eyes, hoping for parallelism and connection.

In all capital letters, I ask, and the questions always come back--return to sender. That’s the center of romance. The center isn’t the heart; it’s the lungs. It’s the breath it takes to ask, to aggressively strum the vocal chords.

The number of veins is twenty-five. The number of spots is forty-three. In my throat, the answers bloom, and I trace them to Jupiter, where they separate into two paths of philosophy--to move forward or backward, the feature of balance.

Nexus

The day I decided I was done with forgiveness was the day
the sun shined into my window,
and an angel told me not to worry,
that my enemies drank poisoned wine in the night.

The day I decided that I was done
with being seen and not heard
was the day that my hair caught on fire
and a prophet said it spoke to him and told him
not to enter the same kingdom as I entered,
not to face the same sky from whence I fell.

The wine was simple and sweet, like the temperament
of a certain child, before the nest in her hair sparked,
and the birds flew from it, frightened,
their feathers glowing red.

That was the day I was done,
because the nexus was broken.
Each bully dropped his glass, betrayed.
The god, the angels they knew
were simple and sweet, not wrathful,
and yet, here, they collapse,
killed by an unnamed moon, a child of Saturn,
a messenger, a follower of god.
At least, this is the fantasy.
This is the string of kerchiefs, emerging from the hat.
On this day, illusions and reality are the same,
and the only thing separating them, coloring them
just a little differently, is belief.

Transitioning

Despite the quiet, the chill in her chest
made an awful sound when she breathed.
It was like a short rattle
in a long, abandoned corridor.
Several years after the flood,
there was a threat of fire,
and once the secret was out,
that's when the chill started.
It lingered in the corners
of the room. It hid in the folds
of her dresses.
Eventually, it ended up
in the same place, creeping
from her brow to her cheekbone,
from her throat to her clavicle,
before resting in her chest,
between the second and third rib
on the left side.
She once thought
that the chill was a messenger,
warning her about condemnation,
telling her that it wasn't enough
to be kind out of context.
Maybe it's not enough to be good, she thought,
but her god had other plans for her,
and the cold moved from her ribs
to her stomach, where it stayed
until a seed grew there.
The fire never came,
so she lit the furnace on her own
and raised the child by herself,
a small piece of her rib poking
where the cold once lived.

Misgivings

I.

I am a tender thing, and when I am a tender thing, I chew on the fat of my misgivings. Small and jagged like stones, my privileges gather: visible, inconvenient, dangerous. They occupy the corners, the space between each tooth in my wanting mouth, wanting more of the fat, the stuff that lacks nourishment but maintains indecency and ample amounts of tenderness.

II.

I am well-intentioned, but I am not you. I do not know what you face. I do not know the ideas brewing in your brain, the shapes of injustice carrying weight in your own life. I am only a child, a tender thing, chewing on information, breaking my teeth on confrontations, confirmations of my being me, my being white, my being female-born, my being. I am a tender thing, because without missteps, without compassion, I am not myself.

III.

My privileges are also me, pieces of my broken teeth, and everyday, I try not to swallow them.

Hopeful

As long as we are swallowing air
in our little glass bubbles, and as long as we aim
our sights above water, we can make do,
swilling our chemical soda and taking candy
from strangers.

I only did that once--take candy--but once was enough.
It was because he didn't care for it,
each wrapper filled
with little sugary puffs of air.
I breathed life into his mouth,
but it never reached his lungs.

I poured myself
to fill the contours of the glass,
surprised at how well
I adapted to the shape,
until the cracks showed
on the other side,
and the air I swallowed
stretched my gills,
and the soda I drank
gave me a headache. I only want
to be seen. I want
the softness of my ghost self
to wrap around your ghost self. I want
to look over the rim together
and see beyond the glass shell
and into the wild of a fresh start.

Pasta and Tomato Paste

Is this my life?
Am I breathing
underwater?
- Metric

With a life carefully measured,
one can find time to tear-up
between four and five p.m.,
before the buzzer rings
for the next shift.
A smart one is a quiet one, a careful one,
refusing to spill milk
to cry over.
"When you're finished with school,
your life will be fine," they said,
thumbs under suspenders,
and I believed them.
Instead, I'm the little engine that could,
and I'm running out of steam.
I'm the little hamster running furiously in the wheel,
working hard, blood pumping
to all the right places,
but getting absolutely nowhere.
"We need to know
where our students are coming from,"
they said. "Some of them
use food pantries."
And I know, because I've seen young people there
while I'm picking up my own generic pasta,
my own off-brand tomato paste.
I'm told that this is America now.
I'm told I'm one of the lucky ones.
Some days, between four and five p.m., I forget.
I allow my brain to shove that file,
full of blessings and prayers,
into the back of the cabinet
so that I can be angry,
so that I can be sad
before starting another shift at a different job,
before trying to be quiet and careful, and failing.

hudor, endure

We hold the same fears, the same troubles
washing up on the shore, rocks turned to pebbles,
smoothed by the waves crashing, the heaving, the sighing.
Secrets kept like broken
shells spit-up by the ocean--
we lie to ourselves,
and we have the misfortune
of washing up on the shore
all of our indiscretions,
our tiny hopes, sanded smooth.
Directly, we scope out
a safe place to lay our blankets--
not too close to the edge,
but not too far, either,
so that we can watch the sky meet the water,
introduce themselves over and over,
like forgetful lovers,
each creation
a rebound.
I am the sky
and you are the water.
I am the shell
and you are the sand,
brushing me clean and smooth.
How much of a flake am I?
Pieces of myself
flake off everyday,
and wash away.
How much of a lover am I?
I wait by the edge of the water
before I am clean and smooth.

Waiting to Spoil

We broke each other's hearts,
cracked thin little shells over the heat.
It happened gradually, with clumsy hands.
We let each other down,
not easily, not intentionally,
but we let each other down:
our hands hard, our fingers joint-less,
holding each other's hearts
over the black gas stove.
                                                     We punctured the membranes
with our sharp little traumas.
When the insides cooked,
the scent filled our nostrils
and we questioned whether to feast
or to turn the heat completely off
and let the evidence of our failures
grow cold and stick to the sides of grief,
waiting to spoil.