sleepspeech

[sleepspeech]

you go far away. bring little.

sometimes the steps you take feel like away from.

you bring little so you leave summer clothes in chile and winter clothes in bolivia and you hope the woman who finds them smiles or is cold.

the salkantay feels like a pilgrimage to a holy place. it is cold, and wet, and at night your closest friend sleeps beside you and her snores rattle the tent and you remember the snores rattling the walls of her childhood bedroom, with its inuyasha photo walls and warm carpet. you do not feel away from anything.

machu picchu is a holy place. there’s garbage everywhere there’s so many people it’s not worth it said your friend in a kitchen.

they are wrong, you think, and you climb steps to find a stone-walled nook. you take your shirt off. you sit, sort of naked, in a shady spot in this holy place and the sun splits the clouds into kind phantoms.

you do not feel away from anything. you feel much closer.

when you are twenty-one you meet, for the first time, a girl who lives on the street. she calls you sister. you realize the world will never make sense again, and give her a lollipop, and stay awake all night.

in cusco you eat jello with an old spanish man and a young dutch man. you talk about the first time each of you saw a child on the street. three voices little more than a whisper.

far away, you see this little girl again, maybe she is grown up and has pigs or she is a man with a beige hat and thin limbs. in puno she lets you feed one of her pigs. there are mounds of garbage and the street dogs get so close but her smile curves like lake titicaca, an impossible crescent.

you make a map in your head of the people in the world who are allowed to go far away. there is so much violence on the map. the violence on the map is marked in thin slices of red. the humanity, connectivity, and joy are marked in bright yellow, but when they interlace you cannot read the map anymore.

in the elqui valley there is a night sky that is hardly night. you are camping in the elqui valley with ten people that you met the night before and you are drinking chilean wine that cost 2,000P. you have a german’s head in your lap, and arch your neck back to see our sky, which tells one hundred stories about what is distant and what is close.

[sleepspeech]

where is home if not pulled from  the underside of a warm ear? today the woman you loved behind my back told me you hit her i recall now running my lips over scab on your knuckle, its taste: iron, winter, a stranger 

[sleepspeech]

I do not wish to be strong

I wish to be folded into an old mahogany nook and left to rot and to run my tongue along the walls of my antique corner collecting spiders  When I rise years later     stomach half-chewed by little teeth You can name me strong I will likely not respond on my slow drawl to the window

[sleepspeech]

all longing is born equally

(I have drawn a map to longing It is North of the Solar Plexus No    not the front-body You can hear a heart from the spine, too Now East of your third rib and slight left when you feel the indigo tinge of loss   press on There are no wise men hunting for stars in your ribs Bending their noses to peer up a throat When you find it   and it will be gold Do not forget to tear it out)

[sleepspeech]

There’s a TV show I watch now it’s called Alone it’s about people who are Alone, except in the wilderness, that sort. I also watch The Bachelorette. I think I would like to be The Bachelorette, but in the wild of North Vancouver Island, and all of my suitors would have to build shelter and eat slugs and use pitch to seal tight their wounds.  It rains a lot in North Vancouver Island, I would probably get a yeast infection. Can the Bachelorette have a yeast infection? Maybe two months in I would slice my leg open while skinning a small rabbit, and then a bear would find me, and I would give the bear The Final Rose.

[sleepspeech]

Some dark places. The crook of your neck at night, bicycles and gin on Queen, time spent in eyes. Some bright places. A forest in Montréal, morning longing, sunlight on the corners of your mouth. In the south of Bolivia there is an all-white land made of salt. There I placed some on my tongue, considered where love goes, if it is white. 

[sleepspeech]

Mario

Mario was in his fifties, Spanish, a burnt tan. He chain-smoked rolled tobacco for the entire lurch up the side of the Salkantay glacier.

On the second day, on the warm cusp of the Amazon, he caught up to my pace. We exchanged pleasantries about the sun.

“What do you do?”  Mario asked me.  I immediately began oscillating between potential answers, eventually settling on honesty. A rarity.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I studied literature and politics in school. I don’t know what I want and I like to write.”

“What do you write?” Mario asked.

“Everything, I guess,” I said. “Research papers, poetry.”

We ambled on. Bright butterflies flicked in front of us.

“I am a writer too,” Mario smiled, “but not for three years.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, adding, “I did not write anything for a year after a friend of mine died.”

He nodded.

-

On the second night Mario stayed awake drinking rum and discussing Harry Potter with Simon. It is about England’s feelings post world war two, he argued.

-

On the third night we lit a fire. I lay my aching legs over the boy to my right and ate marshmallows. Under the light of the near-full moon Mario was scribbling long lines into his journal.

-

After the trek Mario and I went to the market. I bought Q-tips, mint leaves, pyrite, and some Inca tobacco. Mario bought a strange fruit and offered me half. It was sweet and filled with seeds. “I’ve never tried that in my whole life!” Mario laughed.

.

We spent two days together in the rain: Simon, Douwe, Mario and I, drinking beer and telling jokes.

-

Today we went to get some soup. When he was finished Mario paid for Simon and I. “My stomach is rumbling so I will go now. I wish you both very well.” He kissed my cheek, stood up, and disappeared into the swirling yellow and pink of the market. I caught my eyes beginning to water.

[sleepspeech]

La Serena

Jungian – sunset, half.

Palm trees are like spiders we’re warm bubbles

White vino, curry, laughing -

Monkier

He’s old. Small. Teeth yellow from alcohol. He drinks vodka and orange juice from ten o’clock a.m. to p.m. Reads tattered books about American wars. I worked in Alaska. I made snow.

You made snow? One night I was driving home at four in the morning. From making snow. I looked up and the whole sky was green, incandescent, flickering. I noticed this house had their lights on so I pulled over. It was an old couple. They told me their seven year old grandson loved the Northern Lights and asked me if they should wake him up.

Did they? Yes. And blue, there was blue too. He was elated. He was happy they woke him up.

[sleepspeech]

bad girl I get lots of scholarships and I drink wine at noon –I’ve tasted the nectar of real happiness but mechanistic replications are Fine By Me I’m a bad friend with a Bad Friend Trophy, it’s gold, in the light it glitters Selfhood will drain you dry as a husk, dismantling selfhood is your only hope My distant relatives think I am the Bees Knees and old male professors want to adopt me, they smell Dad-less like a disease on my skin I will attend 5 genocide museums this month I want to be lithe and purged I want to be a fragment of the Universe Not a woman anymore Being a woman has given me too much

[sleepspeech]

Zarathustra at 9:07 He was sick, you know, you said. I know, I said, he had syphilis he went mad Maybe. He spent most of his life suffering. But the Dionysian-- I know, like dreams, you said. Then quiet. Pixelated wine-drunk versions of the old dead man paying rent in our heads. I couldn’t sleep without my medication so I listened to the fire splinter outside, and your breathing, soft, thinking about endings.

[sleepspeech]

Memories make me feel better, I eat them up like cake, feed on the tiny sugar particles in the batter my digestive system can find nutrition in, let the rest of it soak to my thighs and legs, today I ate memories about 5:00 am at Lake Alderson, freezing, I was freezing, soaking wet from the storm, watching smoke rise from the lake, it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, I started to cry, I cried and ran through the bushes to heat my body up, but the bushes were so wet they stung my legs, I was a split girl half wanting to be warm in bed and half never wanting to leave, I was a fog-watching-animal, a soaking dawn-runner, I was hardly even me—I ate up this memory just now lying in bed with groggy eyes from my laptop light avoiding reading any old poetry because it’s all about you and what a joke you are to me now, do you even remember a single Roman numeral? When I was thirteen I used to cut them into the tops of my hands, woah, you’d never come back if you knew that, what a mouthful, I eventually came back to my warm dormitory bed that day and passed out in the lazy afternoon daylight until 4pm licked about and I looked down at my bruised legs and my blistered feet and my own comfort repulsed me, felt unnatural to me, I ate that memory just now.

Swallow.

[sleepspeech]

stillness

i wore you like a diadem - thus, my scalp is cut with blood. the bus and humidity work together to create memory vats. i am headless in them, sometimes. i want to kiss store windows in the winter time. i want to wriggle and wean with my new elation. september’s binary: 1. i am so happy to no longer miss you. i feel new.

2. share this happiness with me. crawl back.

[sleepspeech]

dawn appeared, the rosy-fingered

   6:00 am red sun peers along the Volkswagen’s leather interior. In the front seat, a baby-faced man with cherub curls sits with tinfoil in his lap. With the precision of a carpenter he slices at a small yellow pill with a razor, the shavings falling in sand-streams.

“Can you hurry up?” a groggy voice from the backseat snaps, emitted from peach-fuzz lips. The speaker could be any age between sixteen and thirty. His face is a puzzle. “It’s 6 in the fucking morning, we’re going to be dry by noon,” baby-face pipes up. “We can pick up in Lethbridge,” the other replies. All four windows of the car are open, and cool morning air whips in alongside the sun’s blood. It’s been long since they’ve seen any other traffic. The boy in the passenger seat rolls up his window and fingers a small straw from his pocket. With his free hand, he lights a flame underneath the tinfoil and follows the melting pill’s smoke with the straw, sucking in desperately. A few moments pass and he exhales the fumes into the car, immediately crouching over to snort up the shavings, and hands the paraphernalia to the boy in the back.

“Whew, that was a big one,” he laughs. His voice sounds like straw. The driver has not said a word, instead he fixes his gaze coolly on the speeding pavement ahead, his pupils already pinpricks. The boy in the backseat repeats the process with delicate ease, exhausting a harsh chemical smell into the car and sinking into his seat. On the horizon, mountains come into view; black blisters on the prairie expanse, and the three boys watch them silently. White-noise ridden rap blurs in and out of the radio, crackling. The high sets into their bones in its liquid fashion. Each boy pulses with oxycodone delight. “Yo, what’s that? Slow down,” says the passenger, placing a hand on the driver’s elbow. In the distance three silhouettes come into view. They are tall and slender, (triangular to the boy’s squinted eyes, for their long sundresses billow out widely at the bottoms.) One holds a guitar, another a sign. The sign reads:                                                                    ‘CALGARY?’ “Are they singing?” “Shh, shut up.” The guitarist plucks delicate major chords, singing a deep soprano, while the two other harmonize. Coalescing, their voices seem to take up space. The boys sit, dumbfounded, and the driver absent-mindedly releases the wheel, sending their car into a whirlwind—swiveling in grassland debris. Their bodies slam into the sides of the car.

  The girls could, perhaps, be sisters. They share sinewy bodies and ashy skin, and their hair ripples down their sides to their waists, loose.

Groaning, though quite far from pain, the driver turns around to survey his friends. The passenger has a split lip. This seems to be the only injury. Minutes pass, the boys make no attempt to move, sitting content where the wreckage left them, soaking in the girl’s singing. “I’m going to go say hi,” announces the passenger, opening the car door. Upon doing so, the piece of tinfoil blows out of the car and is immediately caught up in a swift breeze. “NO, don’t!” cries the boy in the back, grabbing his friend’s neck from behind and pulling him into the seat. “We don’t even know them,” he adds, voice dripping and peaking senselessly in tone. “They’re girls,” comes the response. “Hippie girls.” “Don’t be a fucking idiot,” adds the driver. Across the road, the girls sway back and forth, methodic, long hair making wings against their shadows. “Come over here,” one calls. Her honey voice sends barrels of delight up the boy’s spines. Their car has begun to smoke. Black clouds billow out of the exhaust valve, but none of them take any notice.

 Behind the girls a collection of large stones rest, forgotten by whoever’s hands molded the awesome mountains a fingernail to the west. A stale, sharp smell lingers from them.

  The girls do not halt their song as the boys approach, instead grow louder, steely eyes widening with delight. Cherub-curls feels his pulse in every extremity, as if it has molded to the dull strum of the girl’s occasional slap of the guitar’s face. He’s higher than he remembers being in a long time, notably odd, because the pill they smoked was only a 60. He flexes his toes against his sandals to ensure they are still there.

  “And what brings you creatures to this forlorn place?” asks Peach-fuzz, snaggletooth peering from his smile. “We’ve lost our car,” responds the middle singer, eyes fixated on the ground. “Well, I’m sure we could arr—“ the driver begins, but the sentence dissolves between his teeth as the woman drops her guitar and approaches him, halting only inches away. She presses her lips against his. The other two boys stand slack-jawed while the remaining girls giggle, continuing their song. “Will you take us with you?” they ask. The driver emits a low groan, muted by the girl’s lips, and the boys snap their heads, mortified, his direction. They burst into laughter. Their deep, guttural chortling fills up the expanse with the girl’s song--they shake deliriously and drip from their eyes, hysterical.

  When their eyes dry and their stomachs settle, the guitarist has bitten a large chunk from the driver’s face. Blood dribbles down his chin and he falls backwards, tripping on his shoes. Peach-fuzz, dumbfounded, pivots on his foot to run, but a freezing hand grabs hold of his wrist and crushes it with disturbing velocity. The boy’s screaming mauls and dampens the morning’s sweet song. Cherub-curls falls to the pavement and the smallest girl hops on top of him, her lithe body weighing tonnes.

“Did you like our song?” she asks. Her eyes are cerulean, flecked with deep green; they carry thousands of years of obligatorily drowned Captains, rotting flesh, maggot-ridden meat, pale skin, salt-water. “Y-yes,” he stutters, and the small girl leans into him, dragging her lips listlessly over his neck. The road on his back liquefies. “You think I’m beautiful, don’t you?” she asks. Cherub-curls nods. Snot drips down his philtrum, sprinkled with yellow shards. His skin burns as her dress slips slightly off her shoulder, flume of opiated lust nullifying the other boy’s hysterical screaming.

“What would you do to have me?” she sings, “What would you do?” Peach-fuzz focuses to formulate a response, but the course of his high has met its peak, and his thoughts gargle and convolute into ecstasy. “You would do anything, wouldn’t you?” “Yes,” he manages.

The young girl laughs, knowingly, and unhinges her jaw. She bites into his throat, ripping out his carotid artery, and blood explodes in spurts from his seizing frame. She consumes him entirely—every extremity, hair, child-hood memory, every blackened lung and sickly, failing organ.

[sleepspeech]

plans

Alfred rests his back against his cabin wall. The room is a hot dark, everything dark wood. It is small and each wall--except the one he rests against--is packed floor to ceiling with novels. Light splinters in from one window, slipping between too tight curtains, and sneaks a line separating Alfred’s eyes from his mouth. All surfaces are messy with maps and lists. If one were to spill three drops of coffee anywhere in the cabin, it would undoubtedly ruin something, and there would be an 80.5% chance that it would be something important. All men need some silly things, no? Alfred’s daughter has been banging on his door for fifteen minutes. Her knocks are sharp and mean. They bring certain hostility to the quiet of Alfred’s cabin.

  Bianca is on the cusp of thirty. Crow’s feet are beginning to tip toe on the corners of her eyes. They are more prominent when she is stressed, which at the present time she is, because her father is not opening the door to his cabin. But Bianca has patience like a nun. She will bang and clank on the goddamn door all goddamn day, and her goddamn Dad will eventually answer. He always does. “Bianca dear!” shouts Alfred, “Not today. I am not ready.” But Alfred’s daughter does not care for this argument. She has heard it many times before. “I have a key,” Bianca threatens, “I am going to use it.” Bianca uses her key.

  ‘Careless’ is a word Bianca would use to describe the distribution of Alfred’s belongings. To her, they are strewn without organization, and often when she watches Hoarders on TLC with her husband she anxiously tries to guess the direction of his thoughts, wondering if they have landed anywhere around associating her father, Alfred, with hoarding. Contrarily, Alfred sees his cabin as the runway to a happy life. He has charted and denoted the psychological, deontological, environmental, sociological, scientific, philosophical, economic, and ecological pathways to happiness. It is all here, separated by pans and loaves of bread and chairs. Crazy, thinks Bianca’s husband (while watching TLC), my wives’ dads a nut.

  “Darling,” grumbles Alfred, “I told you I am not ready today.” When Alfred speaks he is very still. You could easily assume his mouth does not move at all--though you would be wrong--because it does, only very slightly. December 29 is scrawled neatly along a blackboard opposite the door. Bianca’s silhouette is thin and pretty against the harsh light that has exploded in, illuminating typewriters and papyrus and textbooks and rotting carrots. “Dad,” she says, “How long has it been since you’ve been outside?” Dull snowflakes from the open door tip and tap the wood floor. When Bianca doesn’t speak, you can hear them.

  Eleven years ago Alfred bore a grandson. His hair was bowl shaped and tickled the underneaths of his ears, and his name was Franco. Every time Franco came to visit he would cry horribly at the mess of his grandfather’s house. It unnerved him deeply.  Great, heaving sobs would rattle his small chest. This rattling would remind Alfred of a parrot inside a cage, which would upset him, and then the mutual upset would fog up the windows of the cabin and leak out underneath the door. Everything is so very fragile, Alfred would understand. Franco would know this someday too, but he was only eleven, and he had his own maps to collect or ignore.

  “For God’s sake, Dad, it’s a mess in here,” Bianca says. Fleetingly, Alfred rises from his chair and stands opposite her, taking in his daughter’s inchoate form. He notices that she seems to have two sets of hips, and despite being thin her body looks like a chalice. Fearing anyone seeing his daughter as a prize, Alfred shuts the door, hurriedly. “Franco says hello,” Bianca says. Silence surrounds them in warm haze. Alfred nods and motions for her to sit on several centimeters of available couch space. Far to the left of the room stands a mahogany Grandfather clock. Its deep gold hand clangs respectively to each number, perfectly in time.

  Grazing the dust off of the couches’ arm with a lithe finger, Bianca looks up at her father.  “You look unwell,” she says. His face has become the dark wood of his cabin, and his voice sounds strained: “Tengo que ver el mundo antes de morir,” he says. Gloom pools in Bianca’s eyes. When her father is ill, he forgets she does not understand Spanish anymore. “Ya casi estoy lista, en dies noches me voy, mi maleta pesada con mapas,” he says. Grief splits Bianca in half. She stands from the chair and holds her father’s cheeks in her palms.

  “How long have you been inside, Dad?” She whispers, “How have you been feeling?” He says nothing. “Have you been taking the vitamins I’ve brought you? That Franco brought? Have you been eating anything at all? It doesn’t look…” she trails off, voice cracking, helpless. Alfred’s eyes close in her palms and his hands fall listlessly to his side. Holding him like a child, Bianca begins to weep. Her sobs are rhythmic, and with their heartbeat the cabin appears to come alive.

  In Alfred’s Cabin you would perhaps assume there to be no more than what is visible. You would be wrong, again. If you were to take a hammer to the eastern wall and had a good day’s time, you would be privy to a collection of over five hundred train, plane, and bus tickets. If you were to look even harder you may come across Alfred’s passport. It has not been stamped.

  “Just a few more days and I will be ready, Mi Todo. And you can come with me, maybe, you can bring Franco and we will climb all of the walls…”

  Suddenly, a tremor rips through Alfred’s chest

Everything goes very cold The hot dark of the dark room freezes into a white light

  Trembling, sweats, cold sweats                             When his eyes roll back he is trekking in Peru, feet blistered and worn, sun eating up the entire     skY! But then The northern lights (aurora borealis, Alfred notes, formed due to different amounts of magnetization and nitrogen in the atmosphere, depending on which colour, if you wanted to know each colour he has several books   and pamphlets)                                FLEX and fix all around him! They are the teal light of the ocean in Colombia, the deep green of his mother’s gardening gloves pulling out orchids                 Alfred begins to laugh heartily, salt-water leaking down his face Blending with his daughter’s  (where is Bianca?) (Where is Franco?) the Northern lights squeeze together and burst Into a billion stars, dead stars, bright from his left peripheral all the way to his right, “Finally,” he cries, finally finally “What?” asks Bianca, she is shouting something, the stars sound like sirens

                                                Alfred knows every

                                          constellation