Julia Story



from "Post Moxie"

We look at a statue and feel uncomfortable. I am backwards light, which isn't as cool as it sounds. Later, after I watch him eat his fake meat, he decides that he already knows everything there is to know about me based on a conversation we had about third grade. Because I'm afraid of change, I wear the quilted pants emblazoned with pale peach skulls and crossbones. From a distance they look like geometry. From up close, well, you can see what they look like up close.
Time is a series of pellets. The gerbil that sniffs them reacts by scratching his neck ferociously. It's my own fault I'm anywhere. When the rain in my mind begins, I don't run for cover. The pellets get wet and form a death paste. I stand there holding a cardboard box over my head. Or, more specifically, I have been standing there for weeks. Since after it rained.
I said a marsh of words a swamp which brings me back to the pants arranging knick knacks on a sideboard while I defend my rebound relationship with a sex addict from Tucson do you know that there are caverns in here tunnels trap doors labyrinths I won't make a porn with you won't discuss a thing by candlelight
Do they not have those dogs anymore? The neighbors with the toy dogs. The new season meant they'd yip when I walked by, exploding out their tiny door like cannoned rats. The green mattress of spring with its calling trees, its antidote to heartbreak. But I refer rather than believe. I have faith that I'll keep thinking the same things. Spring tries to sweep my shadow into its maw. The good people of earth want to help me but I don't believe in this anymore.
People I can't stand get drunk in sport sandals or make old-timey photographs of themselves in costume as if anyone cares about who they want to be. I leash and coddle baby rabbits for a living, feed stranded earthworms with a bottle I make myself from a hollow needle. Curl up each night with the world's favorite books, lead the talentless on a covert crying mission across the Midwest. Coming to a mediocre city near you. Every fucking thing about me is designed to melt your heart.
You stretch your arms out to crucify yourself but then change your mind. There is little to no weeping. I've made a pact with myself to not be crazy, but then there is that tree in the distance, clinging to itself and solid as a leg. Small dogs creep around the periphery of foliage. The nun in my head is of little to no use. The sounds of her lilies are like paper hands. When I wake up, it is to the white new air, no curtains, pedals outside spinning a cathedral.
Acne forms a delicate design, like pins in a map. It's important to know where stuff happened. My Nissan is broken. My dog won't stop barking. Everything would be ok if I could just rig up some paper lanterns and find a long extension cord and had the right kind of birthmark: a map of where to find you since the day I was born.