dear mrfuckyou(verb).
Do I feel a pivotal moment like that in my life? There was a shooting at my school, rumored. Freshman dorms. This is not the pivotal moment. In order to attract or simply move the opposite sex, or anyone, to write about events & thoughts as they occur, with a little bit of panache, elegance, mystery, honesty, grit. Loud R&B plays as Dominican ex-housemates use Latina sorority pledges to move furniture down a flight of stairs & into a waiting white van. “Negative!” the pledges say. “Sorry!” They do not make eye contact. They are lectured for apologizing. In class, a girl with Tourette's. An awkward boy who cannot see. A half-hearing boy, more smooth, signed to. To fail again, on my own money, but not on my own time, which is the crucial thing, I think.
Pivotal moment. Pivotal moment. There's one I can't forget that burns a little, always. Sorry, I always write in the style of someone I've just been reading. Not my fault. Go reprimand the star alignment at my birth. My mom screaming when she hangs up the phone, inhuman. Her mother, the shattered arm held together with endless pins, the damn boat cabin door and the trayful of lemonade in tropical fish glasses, the scan showing something incomprehensibly more serious. The gradual spreading up from the lungs to the brain. The grandfather quitting the cigars, the granddaughter remembering the time she didn't throw out the pack in the dark red leather purse when the grandmother went to the bathroom, too scared, too little time? There was so much time.
It has occurred to me that you might have been addressing your mother. This verb & pronoun leave little ways to identify, when so many people fall under the title. (So that's why you left for so long. You would do things for her).
The grandfather 'slipping' in the shower after the unanticipated quadruple bypass, how much fits here & how much is squeezing it out like icing on a too-sweet-already cake. This after the grandmother's lurching to one side, crooked smile, all blasted away by chemo to leave the drool, vacancy. Sometimes, “Fuck you, Fred! Asshole.” All she said, ever after. -- Don't remember her like this, girls, remember her like she was before. Remember her like she was when she was your Bubby. This isn't her. Don't remember this part. Life support? Not again. The call, the scream.
I remember Aladdin on her lap, that big, goodsmelling book mostly illustrated. I remember sea diamonds. I remember I got to steer once; we have a photograph. Once out of gas near enough to the marina to float to safety. Once. Once is a time ago. Once is a never again kind of thing. Once is a drag. Once is a killer. Once is a death with the eyes open.
Pivotal moment. Pivotal moment. There's one I can't forget that burns a little, always. Sorry, I always write in the style of someone I've just been reading. Not my fault. Go reprimand the star alignment at my birth. My mom screaming when she hangs up the phone, inhuman. Her mother, the shattered arm held together with endless pins, the damn boat cabin door and the trayful of lemonade in tropical fish glasses, the scan showing something incomprehensibly more serious. The gradual spreading up from the lungs to the brain. The grandfather quitting the cigars, the granddaughter remembering the time she didn't throw out the pack in the dark red leather purse when the grandmother went to the bathroom, too scared, too little time? There was so much time.
It has occurred to me that you might have been addressing your mother. This verb & pronoun leave little ways to identify, when so many people fall under the title. (So that's why you left for so long. You would do things for her).
The grandfather 'slipping' in the shower after the unanticipated quadruple bypass, how much fits here & how much is squeezing it out like icing on a too-sweet-already cake. This after the grandmother's lurching to one side, crooked smile, all blasted away by chemo to leave the drool, vacancy. Sometimes, “Fuck you, Fred! Asshole.” All she said, ever after. -- Don't remember her like this, girls, remember her like she was before. Remember her like she was when she was your Bubby. This isn't her. Don't remember this part. Life support? Not again. The call, the scream.
I remember Aladdin on her lap, that big, goodsmelling book mostly illustrated. I remember sea diamonds. I remember I got to steer once; we have a photograph. Once out of gas near enough to the marina to float to safety. Once. Once is a time ago. Once is a never again kind of thing. Once is a drag. Once is a killer. Once is a death with the eyes open.