On the Bus Ride from Arkansas to Michigan, the Window Frames Me
After Chantal Akerman
I.
Sugar straight from the bag buries me
from the inside out. Tonight, I travel,
a Selena Gomez sad song on repeat. I float
on Arkansas cotton fields,
where a lightness brings me down
under the cold moon I call mother.
II.
I create static hands through hair, I create electricity, I—
III.
Day dawns,
and my mouth has grown over
like a scar across: raw red and unsightly.
But I broke all my mirrors before I left home anyway.
IV.
Marble crumbles. I’d rather be kept in bones, mutating
V.
I see a kitchen table in every tree,
and a lighthouse in every musical rest.
VI.
A stranger on the bus told me to smile, and
my friend texted, well, you do cry too much.
Out the window, the moon teaches me patience,
waits her turn. My death would not complete anything, but
maybe it could be a beginning. I count out
centuries until the next stop.
VII.
I take off my coat and stand outside to wait my transfer.
I seek a numbness that matches me, form and content.
My fingers tingle only for a moment before losing
all feeling, remind me pain is part of the journey to relief.
VIII.
I make momentary goals: Tomorrow, wake up somewhere new.
Keep my grocery lists when I’m gone; they feel very
physical to me. I lose my socks. I lose my voice
IX.
We pass into corn fields, and I think that when I die, I want to be wrapped in raw
cotton, an itch the last thing keeping my spirit here until my skin is gone.
X.
There is a disconnect between myself and my siblings. We come in contact
only in accidental spaces.
We have lost our blood :: we are no longer bound
I wonder, when will this become irreversible?
I text them; they bristle, and there is trickle-down disgust—I text them; they bristle, and there is trickle-down disgust—none of us
want to be where we’re from, and that is the one thing
we have in common anymore. They ignore my calls,
as I ignore those of my parents. We make no families,
we just make tribes.
XI.
I arrive home, but I cannot sleep. Instead, I turn to the
field behind my apartment, bring out a childhood game.
I point to the moon, then swing the bat.
The wood vibrates against my palms// the world swerves
with the rotation of my torso, but
my foot will not plant.
XII.
When I return to bed, I dream that there are two cats on my bed, and when I get up for water,
they follow me bite chase softpaw my ankles until I give up, sit cross-legged
on a hallway floor. I never get that glass of water, and when I wake, there’s only one cat,
and he’s lonely like me. Together, we live-tweet a Fast and Furious marathon. Like always, I stop before we get to the one when Paul Walker died.
XIII.
My mentor tells me healing is not a static condition
—Mamita, you are an independent state.
But I buffer. Last night I broke open, yellow and runny.
***
Author photograph courtesy of Suzi F. Garcia
