I spend a lot of time in doctor’s offices,
classrooms,
coffee shops, sometimes,
where the brew smells so strongly I can almost taste it, bitter
on the roof of my mouth.
I like to trace the walls with my fingers as I walk down hallways,
try to figure out what they’re made of, what they’ve been through.
It keeps me horizontal.
Years ago, I used to make tiny cuts in my skin to let the bad out,
drop by drop. It worked,
but I’m not supposed
to do that anymore.
They said it made me sick.
My father and I do crosswords together
while he slurps and coughs his morning coffee.
He’ll make me fried eggs spitting
on the wrought-iron pan
and flip them like a trapeze artist,
fast and slow all at once.
He always breaks the yolk,
but never on purpose.
At home I have a glass pipe the color of a deep, salty sea
and a room I painted red in the third grade.
I keep my secrets in two shoe boxes wrapped in white tissue paper
Above my dresses in the closet.
My sisters and I used to do the dishes every night,
music blaring.
We’d reach into the sink and fill our arms with soap and suds,
bubbles to our elbows,
and dance on the hardwood floor,
wrists shaking, feet in the air.
Mom said, “get to work,”
but she laughed.
I see a therapist
who diagnosed me with an illness that almost took my life.
I’m on meds to fix the broken netting in my kidneys
and the broken train stations in my mind.
At seven I wanted to be a ballerina,
at twelve, a masseuse,
at fifteen, a doctor.
At eighteen I wanted to be a high school graduate
with a robe that skimmed against my legs as I marched,
and then, shortly,
a college student with a tapestry on my wall.
A doctor with a blue glass eye once
cut out my uvula and snipped my tongue,
then sutured everything back together
and called me whole.
They said the surgery and the sleep
I’d gain each night
would turn me into a genius.
It didn’t,
but I don’t fall asleep in the car anymore,
or on motorboats
or at roller rinks, my feet still tied into the skates.
The doctor tells me this is progress.
To Marvelous Light 