Set it Off
our faces knot into gruesome orgiastic scenes above our sopapillas, and it's better than any drug, when we're licking our fingers, tonguing our palms, sighing soft contented moans. our little "church of food" with cinnamon sprinkles on our lips and sticky honey haired choirs. i tell her during one such mass that i believe we can will ourselves to death. the human mind has a great power, and it isn't beyond the scope. i've come close; relishing in the power, but never focused or sharp enough to go through with it. i remember the times i've slept for days, months, and years, and i remember pushing myself further and further down into sleep, like holding down rubber balls in water. contemplating going a bit further, and i believed i could do it, and never awaken again. then i'd shy away, and i'd rush back to the top, breaking the surface with a satisfactory "pop" and dizzy because of how close i'd been. we are really nothing alike, she and i, and sometimes i take it personally, as if the heavens had turned their backs on two eyes on the same face. instead, we are appled halves, seeing only with one eye and sometimes uniting over queen latifah movies and seashell earrings.
she took me to her boyfriend's band's practice one night, when i was going through a time i like to refer to as the "cedar death years" (after i had moved out of a wooden roofed house, and still smelled strongly of the leftover sawdust under my fingernails). my bones where cellophaned and my eyes, greasy. i was pulled in tight as foxes in dens, and i brought a book as i was sure that their band would be less than spectacular and i'd like to have something dependable to guarantee a worthwhile evening. i was quite right about the band. made up of three members, a slouching bass player that leaned against the wall, and two of the arrogants who spent the evening fighting over the lyrics of a song which was shit anyway. i stepped outside to smoke a cigarette and contemplate what the hell i was doing, when the bass player came out. "what the hell am i doing," he said, and i sucked an acknowledging drag and perfunctorily exhaled. "you've got your book, right," he asked. i nodded back, and he pointed at a beat up blue aries, "ready?" it was the start of two eyes and one voice. fighting with him was like trying to claw your own skin off. i couldn't figure out if it was safer to be nothing alike or better to be one in the same.
after him, i distanced myself from anyone but bubblegum boys who are sweet and dress better than i do. they were safe, only loving girls who were a certain size and dimwitted, throwing them away if they gained more then ten pounds. i was safe there because they wouldn't badger me. they loved me "as a sister", they'd say after they were redfaced and drunk, and they laughed at all my jokes and laid their heads in my laps when they wanted to cry. even though i hated most of them, it was calming and reassuring like being in an empty room after the party is gone. besides, it was a haven where no one thought of cockroaches as anything worthy.