Fire & Ice
ADHD is a nightmare. I meant to call you today but I took apart the vacuum. I meant to say I was sorry but I realized that weird smell was that weird thing that was in my purse since I said that weird thing and now I’m on the red line to Takoma Park and I can’t remember what I needed at the store. The list says three tomatoes, one shallot, and to tell you I miss you but I find a used copy of War & Peace and sit for a while pretending to be able to read again.
Therapist asked if I had a follow-up for last week’s question: what do I want from myself, from others. Say that Black Garlic has a syrupy, molasses taste. Delivers within the umami palate which is Japanese for “savory” but pretty sure it’s Chef-talk for “tastes like pussy.” I want to feel good in my body. This is the see you, yes, I will see you soon and soon will be when the leaves come back and your hair is shorter and maybe mine is longer. Don’t worry, darling—I know we meant it when we said we’d get together. I want more people to do Teena Marie at Karaoke and for marriage proposals to be updating your emergency contacts.
In 11th grade I took Japanese and to remember how to say “dōitashimashite” we said “don’t touch my mustache” and we howled and howled but a man stared at my unwaxed lip this morning and I thought the same. Do I have a good ass? I want to know if it’s okay or if it’s at least surviving the struggle but I fear the Google reviews. I fearfully looked back at my ass while walking down the hill but the moon, a single slice of tangerine, looked juicy. I think it's juicy.
We should demolish Mt. Rushmore. Replace it with three sets of hands: wringing, clutched and open and delivering a nation. No, No, I don’t mean all the death bed kinda contact. Emergency is one of those old school Latin words that used to mean to bring something to light, to arise. Love can be umami and love can be an emergency and I just want a witness. Tell me what I was going to do next. Light me on fire. Tell me to call you soon.
100 Dried Roses
X texts me at midnight Sunday morning to say they’ve got “kiss from a rose” and the shriller mirth of my laugh stuck in their head. I am screaming at Phil at Ang’s birthday party, “what the fuck, dude.” I hear the words and cringe. I say hella and I’ve never been to the Bay. I re-learned English by watching MTV and reading encyclopedias after having the shit kicked out of me on a football field for sounding ghetto. Got my ears clapped for sounding dumb. I sounded like mambo sauce and I was asking questions. There’s a cleat in my gut and I’m trying to find the r’s in marble, is it curry out or carry out; if it’s the jerk spot, it might be both. It’s ask and not axe. With bruised ribs as I whisper “ask, ask, axe, ask, axe, inquire.” In an airport the flight attendant says I should consider a job in flying because I’ve got a voice you can’t pin anywhere. She says, it makes people think you’re pleasant. I think I’m hella de-toothed but oh, boy, I’m Midwest nice.
I am on the quiet Amtrak just outside of New York City. I left a bag of dried roses for Mitchell on the desk he shares with Adam. My Uber driver was perky and said, good morning, Kelly, can I call you Kelly, the sun’s rising and we are alive right now. I am Hasan and for you, I would make this trip a magic car ride. I laugh. Dawn in Times Square is a moment of surrender and silence and I feel this has to be rapture. An older woman compliments my brown eyes saying she had a cow as a child with eyes like mine and asks where I’m from on the train ride to Philadelphia. I tell her I’m from the best of intentions, born in a hospital that is now a jail. I say that I’m from all over, nowhere, around. I want to tell her the most important thing is where I am going, that we are both hurtling towards the past tense together. Where am I from! I am from the moment I left dried roses on a table because it was too early to say goodbye and I wanted Mitchell to remember me. Thank you, I said, this is tender, not softness, but a new currency from my new hometown. 100 dried roses as a new gold standard, an invaluable Grace.
Rode trains and buses and cars and left my earphones in New York and shoes in Baltimore.
At Quaker circle on Saturday morning, my uncle is sitting next to me and I can hear him scratch his beard and I want to lose myself, not permanently, but in a secret pocket I easily overlook my favorite coat. I’m squeezing my eyes shut and I’m tired and I’m awake and yes, I want a whole new world. A dead president is said to have said that comparison is theft, the killer of joy. I want to believe that something good could come from comparing our lives, our struggles, our suffering but all I ever get is an infected abscess. I try to stay every day. I am trying to think of which form of querer to send you and about infinitives rolling desire on tongues for an infinity of longing and how I wish I could conjugate myself in the past tense if only it meant I changed. I am trying to unravel the meaning of wanting on the Amtrak quiet car.
If I still wrote poems about being in love it would be about how I want someone to be so earnest like Tracy Chapman in Fast Car; I want someone to want to get promoted at their dead-end job so that we can take my little rust bucket into the sun. Kissing your double cheeked horizon at sunrise inside of a Safeway parking lot and you'll get worried someone will see your buttock cleavage through the dashboard.
You make me promise never to refer to your ass as cleavage. When I say “booty bosom” you threaten to leave me for the safety of the Rice & Pasta aisle. I promise to be different in my best Tracy voice. I promise things will be different; no one will hurt us ever again, we won't hurt us ever again. I will never sleep again for fear you'll sneeze in your sleep and no one will be able to bless you.
By noon we are in the next state and you are re-telling the mythology of every scar on your body, the keloid on your neck is like your broke girl’s North Star. It tells you where you're going and how far you came and sometimes I forget it's there when my head’s on your knees but I just have to look up.
I don't write love poems anymore. I leave it to those who can imagine tenderly touching someone else in the thick of Mid-Atlantic summer. I cling selfishly to the cool side of the pillow. I leave love poems to people who can drive a stick. The ones with the gut biome and healthy flora. I leave the poems to the people who don’t mind a little hurt, hell, welcome it with bent knees. No more love poems for me, but maybe for thee.
11:11
Sometimes life really has that gorilla grip and you’re sucked back in screaming, “yes, I care so much, yes I need you so much, yes I want it all, thank you.” Every meal I say grace I hope I’m forgiven and if it’s 11:11 and I’m making a wish. I’m wishing for something easy, I’m hoping each swallow is a sure thing. I send a slurry of sticky texts apologizing for my cup spilling over and the contents splashing around and staining my new shoes. Here the cup is a metaphor for life and to be more specific it’s a red Solo cup full of bitters and 7UP.
How can I aspire to be carefree when there’s so much I regret? I look back on my twenties and wish I hadn’t been such a fuck.
Enjoy the refrain with me: I love fucking bitches and by fucking, I mean, I carry shame and by bitches, I mean, yes, it’s me. I want to move forward but what if my body never forgets the score, in trauma and in tennis, sometimes love can mean nothing. In a mixed sports metaphor I want to shout at a referee to shout and I want him to blow his whistle in my face as I rip up his red card. I am screaming, “add time to the clock, you’ve done it for others, give me more time,” and I forget I am not a hot jock, God is the referee, and we can’t add time to make up for past mistakes.
Star 69
Cold-calling all my heavenly representatives. The old Gods of JavaScript have to hear my request for a new plugin so I can feel infinite with my friends. I’m tugging on the string that connects us all and trying to *67 God and then three-way you in and ask—Do you have a purpose for me? Which side is my best angle? Does the DJ take requests? What does it mean to be carefree? Is it a concert of dirt bikes popping wheelies on Aliceanna, the chorus of motors stretching and echoing into the night? Is it looking forward to nothing and being at peace that one day that means we are free?
One More Day on Earth Together
Thinking about guns, loss, and humidity—exhausting and the pain permeates and takes up space. The police ask me if I saw anything or anyone that seemed unfamiliar and I say “you.” There were seven gunshots and the kids said, “wait is that real” before they all began to run and scream. My legs don’t stop moving until I’m in the 7-Eleven and a man says to Keith, “yeah, you heard it too?” I saw it. The slurpee machine has a sign on it that says “will work soon.” A broken machine. Used to be a once-great king and now just an obsolete machine. I used to be in your Top 8 on MySpace and now I’m aging irrelevant and hoping the state-run hospice has a good bingo night. Thinking about how people you thought would be here forever aren’t anymore. Nothing is forever. I save this word document as “forever” knowing one day I’ll never open it again. Knowing full well that the apocalypse will delete the Earth’s search history and cache but for now cyberspace is an attempt at immortality. Keith holds the door open and says, “Kelly, I ain’t seen you in a while” and I say, “I got COVID” and he says, “Just glad you ain’t die. One more day on Earth together.”
Marquez
How come we don’t talk anymore? Let’s catch up. Are you the same, am I the same? Will we be okay ever again? I’m gonna hold your face and say, “the plague in me sees the plague in you.” I must admit that I don’t know how to kiss anymore and I have worked the entirety of the pandemic. I want love in the time of cholera, in the time of COVID, but magical realism is wasted on Americans. I’ve done odd things and my hands aren’t soft anymore. I don’t know how to touch these pianos keys just right, I can hear every click, the rip of dry skin but I do want to reach out to you. I’ve been dreaming of deleting all the photos on my phone.
Let me tell you about a dream: Been dreaming of adding you to my Top 8 on MySpace, I’ve been hoping to write a lyric only you’ll know in my AIM away message. I dream of a metropolis, of a time of forgotten humanity and I’m an old android and you have thumbs and can turn me on. In my dream I delete every photo and there’s fireworks and Mollie’s smiles and weddings and the purple Cannondale I called Appollonia and a photo of RL in my room and slowly the 410s eat the 443s and turn into 202 and each of them disappear. In my dream I chase after them and hoping to touch an elbow, the soft nape, anything–I regret deleting everything. Did I live? Was I here? If only I had proof of the last time we talked. If only I could remember it.
Loretta
When I was hit by a car the number one thing I could think about was what I couldn’t afford—I couldn’t afford to have not just died, much less the impending costs of repair, the days off of work to recover, couldn’t afford to have more bad news. An exact week before my accident there was a shooting in my complex—two men shot, one fatal and one struggling to survive. Watching his feet kick, everyone gathered around and many people whispered the same thing—they couldn’t afford the violence. I can’t afford to move. Everyone’s been reading that calamity in neighborhoods like ours close to good interstate exits and airports drives the property price down and makes it a good investment for developers.
A man walked away from the scene ranting that this will be ideal for developers—he said I don’t want to move, he said our community can’t afford this kinda pain, it just brings the vultures. The cops asked a family if they’d seen anything and they said, “We aren’t a bad place.” Efficiently the bodies were cleaned up, my car pieces were collected and I was lifted up and the next day it was as if it almost never happened. There was a chalk drawing of a sunny day where rust-stained concrete sat. I found my hub cap in the grass near flowers.
My neighbor Sheila and her dog Loretta are out this morning and she said “I decorate my door and change my dog’s sweater because I can control these things. I want you to know that someone lives here in this shitty building and I want them to know that I am old enough to still get excited for the change in seasons because I’ve lived long through bad ones. I keep my dog safer than life, let me keep my sons and the city pushed me out of my family home. I stay here because it’s as close as I’ll get to being in the place I grew up in and I think about leaving but where would I go? I’m here now—when I leave it’ll be to see my boys and then my Maker.”
The thought of where we are going, who gets to choose to leave is heavy on my thoughts tonight. How come petty grievances feel like major betrayals? Why don’t we have control over our expectations? Do I have anything that I can control? I want to leave. Maybe I should get a wreath for my door. Maybe I’ve lived here long enough—maybe a welcome mat. I am curious now about welcoming anything to lighten suffering, to beckon change. I have kept my plants safer than I ever kept myself. This is all I can control. The small, quiet and mundane that uses my rage like slow-releasing fertilizer. There’s a garden I must maintain and I await its blooming; I am asking an orchid to make a trade. Let me be sunshine to the harvest—is that my hope? Is that my prayer? The yoke of life—steel clapping against the flesh of my neck. When will I be free?
Universe becomes.
The universe is given a body; the body is born, squatting over a black hole, a primordial gesture: taking a shit or giving birth to stars, aching for something to keep it full. Universe becomes an echo, an earache: Are we created or just named?
I’m named after the brother my mom didn’t like, and the woman she loved, and the woman my father kissed before deadbolting the door and saying, “Go back to bed.” Universe becomes unexpected, like my first bleed; sudden and sore, like my first tit. Can I call God Dad? Sister Mary Catherine says I can marry God, but I can’t kill my dead dad.
Universe becomes like “Fuck”: all slick darkness, a pregnant pause before there are manners, before text-message breakups. My dad told me to have a handshake like a right hook, then kissed me on the mouth in the house I grew up in. There is no consent in the Big Bang theory.
Universe becomes all hot mess and stardust. Expanding from nothing came a will to exist, a desire to regret and transform. Universe becomes. A sakura tree grows in Washington, D.C. There was a time when we used to give gifts in the form of people, metal, and trees, asking them to grow where they did not belong. My creator is a blushing teardrop, petals in springtime. I shout at tourists at L’Enfant station: “Stand on the right, walk on the left.” The blossoms are beautiful. I only wish to become a springtime spectacle.
Universe becomes. Long before there was a male or female stall, there was a cry for help in the dark. Long before “i before e,” light came before sound. In two-minute contractions, the universe is born in the middle of childbirth, giving life to its siblings. My hand breaks on my father’s nose. It hurts to be born.
Creator in the shape of a flower, but never a rose.
When I die, I will never become tulips, just acid rain. Flowers prove we’re best right before death, there’s something to aspire to, and that with good weather we’ll come back next year.
Universe becomes deaf, wet, screaming, bearing down, learning their name in the middle of a cesarean. My doctor told me when I was eight I didn’t have a hymen. Oh, Universe, how thou art in heaven, Our Lady of Everlasting Darkness, oh, Dolores: a vision in the void.
It hurts to be born.
Kelly Xio lives in Maryland.
Note: “One More Day On Earth Together” first appeared in the Bruiser Zine One More Day On Earth Together. “Fire & Ice” was published as a broadside created by Kelly Xio.