you need to be honest. decide how much space your life will take up. you're high octane no past/all future, no record, no wreckage, you were raised by a sort with all four feet on the ground. this could be a metaphor. it's all on you.
where would you like to be? how many times can you begin again?
[[go home]]
[[go to the convenience store]]
[[go to your appointment]]"what is a body?" your psychologist says.
[["a body is..."|"a body is..." 1]]
[["a body is..."|"a body is..." 2]]is it skin, organs, bones, meat? teeth, sometimes, in places there should not be teeth. a container for oxygen and carbon, iron lead and gold.
is that [[all|it's more]] there is?aren't you tired of the body, of using the word body, the way we use it as shorthand and placeholder for things living and dead, the way we say "body" without referent, without doing the fleshy work of words, the way we pretend we are not complicit.
aren't you tired of the fact that [[no-one|end]] will [[hold you|begin again]] accountable?"i know you are thinking all sorts of things about me," says the cat, "but i am an empty signifier. do not associate me with cats that you know. i am not a cheshire grin, nor a witch's familiar. i am a cat without referent. i am a cat unto myself. do you understand?"
[["sorry, i have to go inside now," you say.|go inside]]
[["what the actual fuck," you say.|go to your appointment]]some people spend their whole lives making a home. as if a home isn't wood or brick or glass or earth. as if a home isn't the dismantled matter of a star once found in pisces. as if a home couldn't be a bodily embrace. a cat enclosed by sunbeams. welcome, the mat says.
welcome.
[[pet the cat]]
[[go inside]]"what is the significance of this story?" your psychologist says. please keep in mind, if you will, that this psychologist is a construction and is not intended to represent any real psychologists i may or may not know. "what you do you feel?"
[["my body feels wrong"|my body feels wrong]]
every convenience store is a liminal space. every convenience store is convenient because there is another just across the street. everyone has worked at this convenience store but does not work here anymore. many things do not work here anymore. every convenience store has seen a story like this.
why are you here?
[[to go the bathroom]]
[[for a cucumber sandwich]]six months ago at 2am right here in this spot under the light with the fear of god inside of me I touched the quiver in the back of my lover's tattooed thigh.
i like a mouth best when i am in it.
[["i think it's happening again," you say.|for a cucumber sandwich]]"i hope you're [[sorry|go to your appointment]]," says the cashier.
[["i left my wallet at home," you say.|go home]]when a body falls apart, it means that
thought memory dreams
is falling apart. isn't a human body just a system, a technology, driven by electrical signals in the brain?
isn't a human being just [[data|it's more]]?"you startled me." your face probably does something that faces should not do.
"oh," says the cat. "i suppose you thought this was a parable."
[[keep petting the cat]]
[[go inside]]you are here to see your sister. there is a sister in this poem because i was told that i do not write enough poems about sisters.
i do not have a sister. do you?
[[yes]]
[[no]]i'm sorry, i got it wrong. you're not here for a sister. you're here because houses are bodies the same way texts are bodies, which is to say, the history you bring to this act of reading outstrips the very things i will inscribe
[["so i think i'm hearing voices again," you say.|go to your appointment]]"what are you doing in my house?" the woman in the hallway says.
[["and that's when i woke up," you say.|go to your appointment]]how many times can a body [[begin again|START HERE]]?the life you want is probably the life you have.
↶↷you need to be honest. decide how much space your life will take up. you're high octane no past/all future, no record, no wreckage, you were raised by a sort with all four feet on the ground. this could be a metaphor. it's all on you.
where would you like to be? how many times can you begin again?
go home
go to the convenience store
go to your appointment