I am here.

Whenever I read, I don’t pay attention
to the writer’s architecture. To Kill
a Mockingbird, for instance, takes
place at my great aunt’s house.

Every Sunday, we brought doughnuts.
Her fridge always held a liter of Moxie,
and I guzzled its bittersweet for hours;
sugar high and free, nothing could stop me.

I haven’t entered the house in a decade,
I think, and I can’t remember if, three feet
from the end of the kitchen table, an opening
leads to a sitting room. I imagine Atticus, Aunt
Alexandra, and Scout entering and exiting this
room through a door-shaped hole in the wall and
I wonder if my own aunt ever did the same.
I believe I remember the doorway, but
I do not remember beyond it.

I was a seventh grader when my great aunt died
in a fire. My mother, always one to supply unneeded
information in relation to my age, hinted that the fire
had been started by my great aunt. I sat and wondered
if the combination of her brother’s death and the dearth
of doughnuts to pair with Moxie urged her to light
Atticus’s house on fire. Did matches find their way into
Auntie Mary’s hands because we chose other things
over Moxie and doughnuts and
her?

***

The mural springs out from the corner,
where the two walls meet. White and gray,
the pseudo-people depicted, are cartoonish
and beautiful. Their depictions, flat and simple,
their actions, daring and three-dimensional.

One jumps, his hands shaped like pointed mittens
and attached to the ends of thin arms that reach
high over his head. His head hold horns like a crown.
In my mind, I make his white tutu and ballet shoes
pink as he leaps, knees leading
the way for pointed toes and a wide smile.

Beneath him, a man, traditionally dressed, stretches
his arms. His face reveals a negative emotion, somewhere
between upset and worried.

I peer through the darkness and wonder if the man’s
arms reach to stop the ballet dancer from falling, or from
leaping.

***

Focusing
on the waves of reflected light
jumping from the disco ball
and landing lightly on the wall
gives me a headache.

It’s easier to focus instead on
swell of the crowd—how it moves.
Intricately swaying and knottily
shuffling, the crowd says,
“I am here.”

If this were literature,
the women putting her palm
over the top of her drink might
have received a phone call from
her mother, reminding her to be careful.

Literature gives way to life and
the woman doesn’t want her drunk—
drink—to spill.

Even this focus, this interpretation of the crowd’s
darkened, defining undulation,
is too much.

The music, at once pulsing and static,
lifts my fingers up, weightless, and away
from my body, like the first person to pair
I love you with
I’ll leave you.

***

This I wrote last year for my freshmen seminar, but I'd like to commend my 4-year-old self for attempting to describe the cycle of abuse. 

I sit on the bottom of the wooden staircase of my house. I pick at the Velcro on my light-up Power Ranger Sneakers and cry uncontrollably because of some insignificant injustice. Little kids’ tears are always messy and this was no exception; my nose makes disgusting noises as I suck back in the flowing boogers. My mother kneels in front of me.

“What’s wrong?” she asks. “Why are you crying, Sammi-wham?”

Tripping over words and trying to explain emotions my vocabulary was too limited to convey, I say, “It’s just that Daddy. He is so mean. He’s so mean and I’m going to run away.”

“What do you mean he’s mean? We have this house, you have your clothes, your own room, and all of these things that you wouldn’t have without Dad. Dad loves you and me very much.”

“I know. I mean, I just… Sometimes he’s really, really nice. But it’s because he wants me to stay.”

“Wait, I thought he was mean?” At this point, my mother is laughing at me, which only makes me more insistent.

“No. He’s mean and he’s nice and he’s mean so he can torture me and he’s nice because he wants me to stay—”

“So he’s nice and mean?” My four-year-old fists ball and I cry harder; I know I'm being made fun of.

“Mom, listen. He’s nice because he wants me to stay so that he can torture me more and then he’s mean so that I hate him, but then he’s nice again so I won’t run away.”

My mother laughs a little more before the front door slammed. The subject of our conversation walks through the door and my disproportionate, four-year-old legs carry me quickly to my room. I slam the door and continue a paused conversation with my stuffed animals.

***

I wrote poetry, and it was shitty, but I did it. 

Seventeen

I wrote something here and then I deleted it.

***

I could be, should be, watching T.V. right now. I don't really know why or what I'm writing. All the writable things have to be censored; they must be written, but they cannot be read. 

***

The letter I wrote to myself during the spring of my senior year is sitting in the top drawer of my desk, surrounded by miscellany. I want to tell myself, to assure myself, that quote everything will be okay unquote. But really I will live with the guilt of existing for my entire existence. This summer, I crashed and totaled my car. With the insurance money, I bought the same make, model, and year vehicle, the effect of which has only granted me grief whenever I drive. Existing is like buying the same car every time you crash it and feeling the same debilitating waves of shame and humiliation whenever you find yourself with your foot on the clutch and your hand on the key. 

***

I read, analyze, memorize, and regurgitate. Not necessarily in that order and not necessarily completing the same amount of each task. We're reading Feed by M.T. Anderson in my media class and my copy from high school contains all the annotations I wrote two years ago. Senior year me and the me of the present have similar ideas. Senior year me used to cry in the shower though, and that was kind of lame, so I'm glad that's done. She also had a lot more things to say, but I'm not glad that's done. I'm surrounded by like-minded people with no one to rail against. I used to write upwards of three posts a month. Now, if I'm committed, I write one a month. The world and everything I see is just nice. It's just pretty. It's just okay. There is no high; there is no low, only silence.

Shhh. There is nothing to hear.

***

I tried to write a poem, but it was shitty, so it's gone now. 

***

Everything's already been written, so what's the point of writing? Everything's been said, so why speak? People have already lived and died, so why do we keep existing? There's nothing left undone. We are the things we do and somehow, I'm always nothing.

***

Yesterday, I left my water bottle in a store in Burlington, which was stupid. But a friend retrieved it for me today. Then on the bus, I lost my water bottle again. My life is most likely a string of mistakes. I can recall a me with a more solidified identity. A me who was certain: yes, please, that's exactly what I want and here's why. But mistake after mistake and a shift in reality has created a me who could not tell you who she is. At 17, I was a writer and a student and a ski racer and a softball player and the best friend I could be. Now, a multitude of mistakes later, I am no longer an athlete, which was one of the only things that wasn't a mistake. Decisions have never been easy for me, and now it seems I've made too many to make myself a person again. Each error grows larger in my mind, taking over my consciousness.

Question: which one of my mistakes will make me I hate myself forever? 

Answer: all of them.

Question: Who am I? Where am I? What am I doing? Where am I going? Why aren't I going anywhere?

Answer:

***

REDO REDO REDO

UNDO UNDO UNDO

DELETE ME

***

I'm so tired and I don't care about the rest of my life.