sillyfacealice-blog

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Origin

The girl is a distant planet framed by an open window.

They say she was caught in a fire once,

became possessed by the boy who set it,

watched him comb through her eyelashes

with broken glass until she cried rubies.

Red bricks,

house with no door,

door with no lock.

She buried every key she owned

until she couldn't recognize the cage she hid in

as even a cage at all. 

We found her in a scarlet dress

serving tea to her neighbors.

Everyone mistook hospitality for recovery.

No one questioned why she laughed more than she spoke.

She doesn't speak anymore.

There are no more visitors.

Only a trail of rubies leading back to the place

where he first lit the match.  

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To love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it and everything you’ve held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled with the silt of it. When grief sits with you, its tropical heat thickening the air, heavy as water more fit for gills than lungs;…

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For Arya. 

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This Morning the Small Bird Brought a Message from the Other Side        

I would not call it fear or the absence of fear that I woke with, but worry, this morning when I rose up from the bed, & saw, with clear seeing, for the first time, that my chest was a small, red cup, or bird in my hand, somehow thirsty, its injury made me panic for it & I carried it with me not knowing what to do with its small speech, the way it said your name.

I want to know what to do with the dead things we carry.

If I were to wake another morning, maybe tomorrow, with the red thing in my chest or hand, what would I do? Will I?

& the bird, would it attempt, to cross over, would it come again from the body’s realm of animals & claws? Would it risk its life again to give me the message of your name? Would I trust my mouth to resuscitate the messenger, small bird, knowing I could kill it with my teeth?

Aracelis Girmay

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For the one with the brightest smile

Grief is a stomach expanding when there’s no food left in the house. You scrub dishes until there is nothing left to clean, until there is no more nail to chew down, until you are sitting inside a whale’s mouth surrounded by the sound of water. You contemplate the filling and refilling of the chest, how the hand that feeds can just as easily let you go hungry, if the child remembered to wish before he blew out the candle. You wave your hand like an open window, see snow in the middle of spring, consume every almond the shade of her skin as if there is meaning to be found. We found her hair clogging the drain on a Thursday night. On Friday, we kept our eyes open in the shower and pulled away fist fulls of black string from our scalps, not recognizing any of it as our own. Next Thursday you woke up in the house you grew up in. Your mother asked you if it was suicide. Your sister hugged you like she always does. You left the bed unmade like you always do.   After the phone call, you ate cookies with your best friends and cried into tea cups. When there was no more water left in your body, you went home and nursed your swollen eyes. And when you felt yourself being dragged through the streets, you smashed your fingers into the pavement only to watch them turn to chalk, only to cough out apologies like a line of ants, following you home, swarming around your prayers, reminding you there is no rest to be found. And when everything has shattered, you will wish for lightning to split the truth, you will wish the sky to peel back like tide and pull you in. Maybe then you’ll find yourself in a room filled with answers. Yesterday, my mother asked me again if I ever found out what really happened. For the first time I realized I’m okay with not knowing. I do not know each name of loss, how to forgive the men who kiss without permission, how to heal with so many sharp things in sight. But a splinter growing into our heels, will find a home in our steps, in the way we begin to notice the slip of space between fabric and skin, in how we find ourselves looking less into mirrors and more into the faces of ones we love.  

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That's my girl!

“Read This” by Victoria Ford The Excelano Project Fall 2012 Show: Mother Tongue

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Wolverine

The last time we went grocery shopping together, I picked my way through thirteen cartons of cracked egg shells and tried to hold back tears. You assured me that someday, somewhere we would buy eggs together again, but I wasn’t ready to miss you. I thought about the night you diagnosed my fear of being broken. You captured where it hurts most and catalogued me an undiscovered species of  beauty. You have a way of making me want to be opened. Yet I alternated between my two pairs of granny-panties, postponed shaving for as long as I could, and told myself that if I wore a nun-suit then you would never become another set of greasy fingerprints on my atlas. Five days after I arrived in London, I wrote in my journal: “I want to marry him. I know I am a complete lunatic, but first, let me think about what our children will look like...” I was never a girl who believed in soul mates. When I met you I had given up on bathing regularly. I saw my body as a dish rag. There were too many stains in places I couldn’t reach. You kept the lights on. I put my hands over my stomach and held my breath. It wasn’t until later that I finally stopped sucking it in for you. I remember the nights when I would watch you get ready for bed. You stood in front of the mirror in your boxer briefs, and sprayed on deodorant in the same pattern every time: first your underarms and then a big X across your chest. And sometimes you would refer to yourself as wolverine. It is this small moment that reminds me of how I still get nervous touching you, as if I am eight again and afraid of breaking everything I hold. I hold too many apologies to my mother and to myself. They are as useless and cumbersome as Encyclopedia Britannicas. You took volumes off my shelves and reduced them to pebbles. I watched them skip away and prayed that you would never turn to stone. On our wedding day, my mouth will mimic the moon. The corners of your eyes will crinkle like paper fans. I will walk into them and forget how to look back. We will think of this time apart like a game of hide and go seek. I promise to never stay hidden for long if you promise to always find me. When we finally close the distance, we will live in a city somewhere and eat way too much McDonald’s. We’ll steal hot sauce from burger joints and create the strangest sandwich combinations. We will force our friends to like Marmite and eat canned beans at least once a day. We will spend way too much time in bed and as much time as possible naked. We will fart loudly and sweat profusely and tweeze each other’s eyebrows. We will be in a love that is exactly like every romantic cliche tap dancing to christmas music. Don't tell me this sounds like a love poem. Don’t remind me I only ever write about love when I lose a shoe. Don’t mention how sharp my bones are and how you like to sleep with your hands behind your head. When I walked away from you at the airport, I double-knotted my shoelaces, smeared palms of salt across my eyes, and tried to wring out a smile for my sister. Lately, I have made a habit of stuffing chili powder in my tear ducts. I pretend the burning is the steam coming off your body. I keep my eyes open and dream about making love to you when I am falling asleep in class. I suck in my cheeks and feel small between my constant pacing. I sink my teeth into our memories and wait for you to bite back.  

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I have calculated the total number of hours we spend sleeping beside each other in a week and I wanted to tell you it could be considered a full-time job. We could be eligible for healthcare benefits, could probably even pay for a mortgage by now. I remind myself of this, in daylight, when I...

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The Cartography of Distance

She is told often she looks like a man, but never out loud. She glides the sparkly gold paint across her lash line. Each line a little thicker...each a heavier veil to keep them guessing. They'll notice her blackened skin and yellowed teeth long before they get close enough to flinch at her nicotine breath. This is why she keeps her words to herself. Saves the truth for her mirror: "Look at how white your teeth are getting," she says to her reflection. "Look at how new your skin feels...Look at how your wrinkles have faded...Look." She aims a finger between her eyes. "Look at how far you've come."

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Potbelly's

I am eating potbelly's by a fountain. I am on your turf. My mouth is tingling from those hot peppers. Chimes on my tongue. A good feeling. The last place we ate as a couple was potbelly's. The last place we had sex as a couple was in my basement. We were quiet, because my parents were unpacking upstairs. It has been 2 years. Now, I am on your turf. I will be here for the summer. On most days I like being alone. I wish you would leave my thoughts and lock the door behind you. Part of me wishes. Only part of me.

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The Shape of Absence

A man in the shape of a monster. A monster disguised as a father. The houses are full of them. A man caught exposing his bad teeth in a photograph next to three women who grit their hurt into smiles. It has always taken effort to be a family. A man driving his slumbering daughter to her first swim meet. his breath curled in the clavicle of her snores. I used to trust my father to lead me in the right direction. A man drunkenly cursing at his wife. a wife biting his words and spitting them back. the stars collapsing one by one outside my window. The easiest hiding spot for fear has always been behind a closed door. A man watching the birth of his second child, promising to break his bad habits, promising that his habits are breakable, but he is too selfish to break himself for the sake of anyone else’s happiness.   A man letting his plate go cold on the dinner table. A man chain smoking in the garage. A man taking off every weekend to play golf with his boys. A man who loves to cook for his daughters, but prefers to simmer his time in someone else’s kitchen. A man who hasn’t been home since last May. A man sleeping soundly next to a woman and a 2 year old boy I will never call brother.  I see this image every night I wake up crying. I can never remember my dreams. I can never remember if the woman looks beautiful with her eyes closed, or if the man and the boy resemble each other.   maybe this is a good thing. I was taught to honor both my mother and my father, but I am attempting to be honest with myself so I won’t say I miss you. You, too shrunken to fill the jacket of man, undeserving of being sung father by anyone’s voice, rotting under the spotlight of your conscience. Do you even have a conscience? Do you ever listen to it when you think of the three women an ocean away? Does it take three sets of locks to bolt your smile to your face, Do you check three times every morning to make sure they have no way in. I have no desire to come knocking. I will never drive the wilting car in the garage, and no matter how many times you dive into dumpsters to chase the sound of the first time I called you baba, you will never find the diamonds I once spit out so freely for the man who defended me against the blows of my mother. The last time we spoke on the phone, you said you would see me soon. It has been soon everyday for the past six years. Soon is just another fallen tree in a forest of unkept promises I don’t believe in anymore. Even when we sleep inside the same walls, I know your spirit is wandering another continent too far away to ever return to a family that would still bleed itself dry from loving you empty-handed. But you are simply A man melting into the afterthought of his daughters among the paralyzed pieces of his wife’s heart.  There are new cracks in the walls every time I come home. A man shaved down to a postcard bookmarking our distance. a silence I have grown comfortable in. but please don’t let my ten year old sister forget she has a father. I don’t need one anymore, but she does.

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come to my show!

The Excelano Project Presents: The Miseducation

Friday, April 6th and Saturday, April 7th at 8:00PM

University of Pennsylvania

Harrison Auditorium, Penn Museum (3260 South St.)

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After the Crying Child Ordeal at Buffalo Exchange

Baby wails in the sale aisle begging to be held. She craves a mother's love, but Mama's face is an empty plate, and Baby is too naive to know that there is nothing cooking in the kitchen.

Baby tugs harder on the tablecloth. Mama is a punctured balloon. She has nothing valuable to offer to another's hunger.  They say she swallowed her boyfriends' punches. They say she's bloated with their fists. They say she deflated when every single one left her unplugged.   They left so many times she named her toes after their shadows.  Each a wispy reminder that she walks just like them: away.  

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“Unrequited Love Poem” by Sierra DeMulder

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“Unrequited Love Poem” by Sierra DeMulder