To Hold an Orange

All my feet step upon each other, all my toes get a little tangled. I hold an orange in one hand, and my pinky with the other. I grab hold of the star and pray (I don’t believe in the man in the sky) that I don’t let go. I dare myself to let go. I peak behind me. I feel the lump in my throat that has been there for quite some time now. I listen to music. I imagine that house; the empty one but the one that was once full. My leg rattles. I hold this orange and the moon and the stars shine down upon the world; the world is all we know. I yell! I YELL! For someone who does not like to yell, I yell. Exposing the rock that has embedded itself in my throat. Shedding light on the predicament that is lodged in my larynx. I drool. I spit. I believe in flowers. My leg rattles. My toes dangle off the edge. My fingers clickity clack moo. I’ll be there soon! All the dead birds I have seen once flew around my head. I squeeze my head between my legs and I hold an orange.

No troubles dispelled, I lay awake, and I will see you bright eyed and bushy-tailed in the morning where you’ll wonder why it took you so long to fall asleep. 

So long to come to quiet. 

So long to leave the self. 

I long to be 

     to be the faces that return my stare. To stare at things that do not see us. 

A glimpse of what may be 

   May be the gambit of the world

To turn inside out, to excavate, a grapefruit spoon scrapes  

To know prior, in rupture, to be dangled over the abyss by the strands of hair on my neck. 

If I pluck them one by one, little pins of red

To sit in the hollow of what was once the abdomen. 

You obscure that which harbors a knocking. The fist knocks. 

I trust it never happened.  

Through humid fog and sticky dusk, I recollect. I recollect big eyes in the dark, faces that know, bodies that turn.

How you would think, would you think I think you 

Today, I gave myself a black eye. 

Tell me what you would like to know

I want you to know nothing and all will be forgiven if you lie down here by the lake where it is cold and brisk and you are bitten and your inside is hollow. Never again will you sit beneath the teal blue and orange bark and suck a mango clean off the pit and savor its thick sweetness. Everything is a sign you have to start to savor Lily 

the spider crawls out from beneath your foot Lily 

the leaves are now yellow and they lay on the ground as you do by the lake Lily 

I wish you knew what it would be to jump in lightness Lily

I wish you knew what it meant to think beyond what you know. 

Lily I think you need to reconsider Lily 

where do you need to go Lily 

I see you in that room where you sit or pace in necessary trepidation

I am nauseous now 

Lily… the spider that crawled out from beneath the foot now crawls up your sleeve

If you take care. 

If you watch it, 

you grow accustomed to its breathing.

If you know it, 

you nurture it. 

It rises through the day

and hits its peak. 

Then it exhales, 

deflates. 

This room has not grown accustomed to us, 

nor we to it. 

To sit and write 

and be just fine 

in thinking that this room 

is all that is the case. 

We get to know the patterns and the movements facilitated in this room. We get to know these movements as familiar and comforting. Anything beyond is too much. Surrounded by the comfort of faces: of dad looking back at me, of mom the ballerina (both builders), of me hoping, of the black hole, of dad and nanny wearing the same shoes, of Anabel eating an ice cream cone, of Sonia lost in drift. The man doesn’t have a face and my Uncle Peter painted this. In the air is eucalyptus and something sour I have yet to find. 

I was sitting outside, where one is bound by no walls and you can run if you want, outside in the neutrality of today’s temperate weather. It was neither warm nor cold. My skin was neither pricked by the bite of frost or collecting the dampness of heat. The light of the sky was dimming and it danced upon me and I could have sworn that I had dreamt this scene. The beams were playing with the strands of my hair prompting me to remember when I had known this. I had envisaged this.  I remember waking up, not here, not here but elsewhere, and thinking it was very strange to have dreamt my afternoon body in space on a balcony. 

Before I was even here, before I had known this desk. Before I had known you 

and when I was not me. 

appeared a ladybug on the shirt, seeing them all over the room 

Seeing, seeing them through the sleepies, seeing them crawling upon what are mountains to them and to me my damp sheets

Seeing them dead aside the sliding glass door

The lights plateau along the line of vision, in the night when the fog, when the fog is hot, or your eyes in pools obscure what you appear

Where the tables are set with soft linen of the earth, baby’s breath and the delicate fall of the orange rose

Of dad, a bouquet of roses that has begun to drift, tie their legs together and hang them upside down and they will dry in color, die in color, and forever you will look up at the bouquet of roses

To must listen to music, I haven't heard these waves these impressions these sounds in more than a few, they sway me and place me in blue and in cold water, 

Tell me what you would like to know

To dance slowly in the floor the room is crowded you can touch those who surround you and the night is dark royally blue, everything is curious and is yellow and you cut the avocado in half because sonia taught you how to pick the perfect ones and you also must not waste so you slice it in half and you strike the pit with the knife. The avocado is green, creamy delicate, in time it will brown, and this is curious as you squeeze the lemon, the lemon will save it from turning. In lightness I hope to dance in green, to beam and make love to strangers, to open and be in the kitchen with the warmth and the red stools and Alejandro Sanz, with moms laugh that dad says anabel received 

The steps being guided by marks of sounds that flow in the air 

You move from the string that holds you through, the instinctual 

There is always more than one within 

The individual deceives and maybe we should begin to receive the we 

Slow your breathing, one day we’ll be again with the strangers whom we love

To hold an orange and sit misaligned at this desk.