The Year Of The Doctors

27 November, 2006

these fucking doctors in their lab somewhere, i don't know where,
it could be in cambodia or the marshall islands or finland,
i hate them, they are so bad,
putting their cameras in the spider plants and thinking i would not know about them.
they are easy to hide in the baby ones with root nubbins.
the lenses are so goddammed tiny these days
that even the pistils inside flowers could be watching you,
but i am smarter than they think.
they think i am not, but i am very intelligent.
i am, because i know that everyone knows about them and thinks that i do not,
and i know enough to walk around the house with my back pressed to the walls.
that way, they cannot watch me when i am not looking.
the only problem is in the bathroom, because the toilet means my back is exposed,
but if i stack up towels on the toilet tank to lean against,
and then if i remember to put them away so my mother does not ask about them, it is fine.
as long as i am facing their cameras, they cannot say that i am hiding anything.

when i was five, my mother took me to a doctor to look at my back,
because i said it was sore when it was not, just to get sympathy,
and he wanted me to take off my scratchy sailor dress, but i would not do it,
because i knew exactly what he wanted.
he wanted to see my bum. it was obvious, because he was old and wanted my clothes off.
i cried so they would leave me alone for a while, and they did,
but then they came back and told me i had to and that they would make me,
so i let them do what they wanted, because that is how it worked for kids, especially little girls.
the rules were easy: say no, struggle, give in, forget.
that doctor looked at my back and told my mother that there was nothing wrong with it,
and even though i knew i had lied, i thought doctors just confirmed whatever you said,
so i thought to myself that he was really old and probably didn't care,
especially since he already got to see my bum,
and we left, and i did not see him again, which i never stopped being thankful for.

these new doctors, though, they make me crazier than crazy,
because i can never be alone, ever, no matter where i am
or how many blankets i hide under or even when i squeeze behind the furnace. fuck.
i wish i could go to the woods, because i bet it is too hard for even them to wire up a whole forest,
and you would need a lot of cameras because of all the trees getting in the way every few feet,
but i cannot go there, because people would want to know why, and i cannot tell them why,
because then they would know that i know about the doctors,
and if i lied, they would know, and that would be worse for me in the end.
so, i tell the truth or say nothing at all,
because the end will be bad anyway, excrutiating,
but it will probably be less awful if i always tell the truth when i speak and stay silent otherwise.
if they know i am telling a lie, they will say that that is another symptom of being crazy, which i am not,
but they want it to look that way, and they will twist everything i do like that,
so no one will believe me when i finally remember the knowledge that is hibernating inside me,
because they don't want anyone else to know the truth.
they want to be the only ones.

it is weird knowing that i know all this stuff but also that i do not know it at the same time,
because it is boxed away inside me somewhere until such a time as i will need it, and i do not know when that is,
and neither do those doctors watching me,
but we all know that i will wake up to it sooner or later,
and when that happens, big things are going to go down.
i do not know what their purposes are, but they think whatever is inside me will wreck their plans,
and the truth inside me tells me that they are right.
this whole thing makes me wish that i did not have anything special about me at all.
i wish i was normal like everyone else
and could just go to work and the movies and my house and worry about what I wear and what books i should read,
because that would be far easier than knowing so much all the time
and slaving to look like the sanest person in the room so that they do not haul me away for a "vacation",
because i will not go there to their hospital, fuck no, because then i would be on their turf,
and whatever power i do have would be gone, drowned in tranquilizers or some such shit,
and even though i hate being this way with so much information inside me and the doctors watching me every second,
their drugs would kill me, not literally, but they would kill the part inside me that scares them,
and then i would be just like anyone,
because that part i do not even know is what makes me,
and my thoughts would feel like distant signals compared to how acutely aware my insides are right now with everything i am.

How I Won

22 November, 2006

On the beach in mid-afternoon
the pines threw their thick roots out wide over the sand,
thrusting thin shadows across my bare legs.
Let's make this our house, I said to her,
indicating the high bare roots with my index finger.
That part can be the living room.
I don't see it, she said. Where?
I got up and traced the roots with my hands to outline the house.
There was a perfect tangled chair for sitting,
and in the bedroom was a hollow to curl inside.
Her lips flattened together, stoic: I don't see it.
I offered, Well, how about this is a desert island?
You know. We're the last people standing?
No dice.
She indicated signs of life.
So we spent the afternoon shuffling through sand along the water,
south to the town and north to the rented cabins,
until we found a fish
torn into broad strips by a boat propeller.
It glistened in the sun. It was fresh.
Her brother dared her to touch it,
knowing she would never touch its shining hide
but loving the the way her lip curled at the thought.
Before he could even turn to dare me,
I dropped down on all fours at the fish's tail end,
and wrapping my mouth around its tail,
I jumped up, arms held wide to say Ta-da!
and grinned, peeling my lips back from the dusky green fin.

11 November, 2006

the second
in which you break with place
and snap a little left or right
with the body inside your body,
that moment
is the one you must take note of,
not the one in which
your mother asks if you take sugar
or the one in which
you drop your pencil and chase it
under the desk with irritation,
but the one in which
the body inside your body
suddenly moves of its own accord
and says "notice this place
that you believe in so much
that you would be irritated by that pencil
or care whether there was sugar;
notice this place,
because all of you is not in it
and you are beyond the boundary",
the moment in which you break with place
and snap a little left or right
with the body inside your body
that breathes without lungs
and waits for you unbound
at the end of days.