Our Numbered Days Read online

  I won’t kiss you, it’s the wrong

  season. The nearest place you can buy a gun

  is only twenty minutes away. I’m not going

  to tell you how to live your life, but maybe you should

  listen to your feet when they tell you to run

  the fuck away. Maybe you should get out of here,

  then get out some more. I was trying

  to take apart a clock and put it back together

  before it noticed. I was trying to kiss you

  and blame someone else. Kissed the sidewalk

  instead of you. Kissed anyone I actually

  love. It’s so hard to love you

  because who the fuck are you? I feel

  like I’ve spent my whole life waiting

  for this moment and now this moment

  is terrible. This moment doesn’t even

  have any fireworks. This moment falls asleep

  with its keys in its hand. It’s not your fault,

  probably because you didn’t make me

  this way, stupid, no, I mean I’m stupid, I mean

  you might be stupid, who knows, who

  the fuck are you, but anyway, I thought

  cheating on my girlfriend would be so great, and now

  that I’ve kissed you, all that’s happened

  is I’ve kissed you. In the pile of snow

  over the pile of leaves, in your car, on the train,

  always slightly hoping someone would catch me.

  All Harvestmen Are Missing a Leg

  All drivers in St Paul must have

  broken ankles. I have a broken ankle

  and am driving like them, poorly,

  therefore I declare this to be true.

  The harvestman, in case you were

  wondering, is that spider with the tiny

  body and long legs, referred to

  by the unimaginative South as a Daddy

  Long Legs, though I admit it would be

  funnier to imagine all people who harvest

  hopping on one leg. Not funnier. Did I say

  funnier? I meant somber and embarrassing.

  I meant whatever doesn’t offend you.

  Don’t ask me questions if you don’t

  want to hear stupid answers. I’m not good

  at many things, but I have been called

  the Pierre Renoir of being privileged

  by absolutely no one ever. But let’s not

  forget about the terrible St Paul drivers.

  They’re so bad that I don’t go out

  when it’s raining. I don’t go out

  anyway, but that’s because of the anxiety.

  The anxiety comes out when it is

  and isn’t snowing. All snow is missing

  its drivers. All drivers are missing a leg.

  All legs aren’t working right today. All

  appointments today are being missed. All beds,

  all beds today are full.

  Memorial Day

  The old lesbian couple is sitting

  in the park overlooking St. Paul. They are

  holding hands as though one or both of them

  have cancer. Or maybe it is their anniversary

  but their car was just towed. Or maybe

  I should assume nothing about their genders

  or sexual orientations because from here

  they are indistinct and from here

  I cannot tell. But they are holding hands

  and they look like they have been crying

  and the flags are all waving and people

  are all walking uphill and night

  is coming on and I am sitting

  in this park watching an old couple almost cry

  together, and I want this to be

  the most important thing I do all year.

  Future Tense

  And when your fourth love leaves you,

  you will want to kill yourself but

  you won’t. You no longer think of suicide

  as a house you will build one day.

  Your fourth love, who is your first

  real love, who brought you peace

  when your whole body was a gun:

  when she leaves you, ask your roommate

  to hide the knives because you will carve

  her name into all of the food in your fridge.

  Stop showering. Warmth will remind you

  of her. Masturbate in public. Hope someone

  catches you. You need to feel vulnerable

  in front of anyone else. Try to burn her

  clothes. Try to fall in love with strangers.

  Try to fall asleep without her: open the windows:

  she would have wanted them closed;

  turn off the radio: she can’t sleep without

  noise—you can’t sleep without noise,

  but noise will sound like her whispering

  you into the world of lights and breakfast;

  make the rain sound like nothing, make

  the rain sound nothing like her voice.

  Don’t be alone. When you are alone,

  you won’t do anything you did with her,

  so you won’t do anything. Marvel at how she,

  the patient gardener, the bringer of sleep,

  she who draws the bath and lights the candles,

  she who made you someone who could make

  himself into someone, she made you want

  to live more than anything else, and now

  she makes you want to leave the world

  because you have seen it. In her

  you have seen the color and shape

  of your perfect life and now the children,

  the house, the arguments about tablecloths,

  they are all fading like things left in sunlight,

  like any dream left too long in the light.

  For months—years—every time you see her

  you will want to kiss her. When you do,

  you will expect pain to come like the old dog

  you could never bring yourself to put down,

  but there will be none. You will remind yourself,

  she will remind you, you will remind each other,

  that this is for the best, that you are physically

  incapable of loving one another, and in those

  moments you will be lying, your heart screaming

  I CAN I CAN I CAN. But you’ll stay silent.

  Because of her. Because she asked for this.

  Because she filled something in you

  that’s still full, even though

  she’s gone.

  April, 2013

  Crime rates rise with the temperature. Elsewhere

  in the country, a bomb has exploded

  at a marathon. A fertilizer plant has exploded

  in Waco. A coffee shop has exploded in Iraq.

  Many things have exploded in Syria. Where I come from,

  everyone is surprised no one has flown a plane

  into the refineries. I am no longer from

  where I come from. I live in Minnesota,

  and in Minnesota it has just snowed seven inches.

  Winter forever means I will be safe

  forever. We have all been stuck in our houses

  for so long that we are growing used to them.

  Who would build a bomb in this weather? Who

  would plot anything this morning? Who would want

  all our houses to be ash or hospitals or tombs

  or anything other than houses? It’s been so cold

  for so long that my fingers could not build anything

  other than a fire, but the robins, well, the robins arrived

  today. The forecast calls for rain.

  Our Numbered Days

  You never give away your heart; you lend it from time to time.

  If it were not so, how could we take it back without asking?

  Jeanette Winterson
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br />   You are always ticking inside me.

  Sierra DeMulder

  I loved the way she changed before the dark did,

  the woman inside of her stepping out of her jeans.

  Jason Shinder

  There are two beds in the room. Of course

  we make love in one, fall asleep in the other.

  Sherman Alexie

  I counted out my future children’s names like stars,

  I let him touch my back

  under my shirt.

  Éireann Lorsung

  She made you want

  to live more than anything else, and now she makes you

  want to leave the world because you have seen it.

  The author

  So maybe love is a form of crying.

  Catie Rosemurgy

  through the gate into dusk you’ve gone like the day.

  Paul Guest

  I have been wondering, mostly, if love

  and sanity are the same thing. When I say

  I am in love I am also saying the world

  makes sense to me right now.

  I know that love is not the same as knowing

  everything, but because she is gone, because

  about her there are unknowns that will now remain

  unknowable, it is important to list what is mine

  to list: she likes hazelnut in her coffee; she is a

  better driver when the transmission

  is manual; though she couldn’t name it, her favorite

  color is Bakelite seafoam green; she loved me once,

  though it wasn’t for very long, though it was

  distracted, though it shouldn’t have

  happened, once, she loved me.

  Chitin

  My ex-girlfriend, for the fifth time

  this morning (and when, I wonder,

  does she become just my friend?),

  swats my hand away

  from my mouth as I chew

  on my nails. She imagines my stomach

  as a bird’s nest of finger ends. She

  imagines the digestive system

  as it ought to be, karmically.

  She imagines me full of dead things,

  re-consuming that which

  I am trying to grow out of.

  She is not wrong, but I hate

  telling her she is not wrong,

  and really isn’t this a metaphor

  for shit, anyway? As in,

  I am holding onto some shit.

  Neil, you just have to let that

  shit go. Stop biting

  your nails. Let it go.

  The Sadness Factory

  is where I go when I run out of

  Missing You. Because the door

  is three feet high, you have to

  crawl into the Factory. Let me tell you

  about leaving: it’s either the drain

  or the window. The carpet

  at The Sadness Factory is all shag.

  The drapes? Also shag. The walls

  are supposed to change color with your mood,

  but they have been broken since the 80s,

  which I hear were a rough time for empathic

  architecture. The sadness factory is, no joke,

  shaped like a heart. Sadness is the corniest

  of emotions. The most popular time to visit

  the Factory is at night because, again,

  corniness, so they have hired the world’s most

  incompetent security guard. He is always

  weeping and saying something unintelligible

  about my wife, my wife. Sadness

  is much easier when you are reminded,

  by phone, by accident, of what makes

  you happy, so the Factory always smells

  like maple syrup and snowmelt. There’s no

  golden ticket. Iron, though. Cement. The lines

  for samples are prohibitively long: New Apartment

  Sadness; Everything Is Great but Something

  Feels Off Sadness; A Midsummer

  Night’s Sadness; The Sadness of Wanting

  To Break Something but Being Too Weak;

  The Sadness that Comes from Always Knowing

  Exactly Where You Are.

  Ekphrasis with Peeled Onions

  after Peeling Onions by Lilly Martin Spencer

  I am not convinced those are onions.

  Onions do not make you cry

  like an opera singer. I have to assume,

  therefore, that she is an opera singer and that

  therefore the plenty around her is about to

  disappear; you cannot be an artist

  and also know plenty. The jars, the somehow

  very ripe fruit, the gold earrings, gone.

  All that’s left is the knife and the onion.

  The knife, barely indistinguishable from the wall,

  barely for now. The way the blade stays

  out of focus until it’s called. The way

  your life is sharper once it’s gone.

  Phreaking

  is the act of stealing a phone call.

  1. In 1968, John Draper built a small blue box

  with parts so simple they might as well

  have been magic. He stepped into

  the California sunshine. He found two

  payphones, one next to the other, and launched

  his voice around the world to the payphone

  next to him. He answered “Hello?”

  and in the five seconds before the sound

  returned to his ears, his voice unhitched itself

  from his throat. “ .”

  2. My girlfriend moved to California

  and my cell phone is starting to replace her.

  When it rings, I feel like she’s touching me.

  I can feel it vibrate in my pocket

  even when I know it’s off.

  3. Still standing at the payphone, John Draper

  tried to speak. He was choking on nothing. His voice

  was locked somewhere out there. He sent it away

  and it could not come back. He opened his mouth

  and all that came out was static and the Pacific.

  4. I am driving to her and somewhere in the middle

  of America my car breaks down. My phone dies

  in my hand. This country is closing

  around me. There are so many

  stars. I call out her name but it’s

  swallowed by all that distance.

  5. In 1971, AT&T had John Draper arrested.

  The police released him without charge.

  How do you jail a man

  just for speaking? There are no words

  for the theft of time and distance.

  6. When we call each other halfway

  across the country, we are paying

  for the illusion that space does not exist.

  We are paying to pretend

  that one day, if we reach hard enough,

  we will touch each other.

  7. That night, John Draper heard his voice

  laughing at him. It was in the walls. It was

  in the phone lines. He took a pickaxe and started digging.

  With every swing all he could hear was HELLO HELLO HELLO.

  8. When she calls me, her laugh

  crackling over the Midwest,

  I feel farther from her than when we

  are not speaking. I reach and touch

  nothing. I hear phone lines in the wind

  they are calling my name.

  9. John Draper had the same dream every night:

  an endless field of robots with his voice; his voice

  watching him sleep; his voice digging

  its own grave; his voice building walls

  and a roof out of wire.

  10. I have not seen her in so long. To me,

  she is only a ghost in a machine. She is only

  a memory, like a broken flashlightr />
  or summer. For her,

  I sent away the best parts of me.

  I haven’t come back.

  The Talk Show Host Has a Nosebleed on National Television

  No, the talk show host becomes a moth. No,

  she enters wearing Klan robes. No, she

  interviews exclusively cartoon characters

  from now on. No, she tells Mickey Rourke

  to suck it. No. Bad plan. She sets

  the clock back. She’s a woman

  with that nosebleed. The talk show

  host opens the window and flies

  away, she flies away.

  The New Sheets

  after Ross Gay

  Because I love you, I shouldn’t tell you this, but

  I put a single red sock in with your sheets. Also,

  I used the detergent with the muscular arm

  and the tool instead of the bubbles and clouds. Also,

  I turned the temperature knob at random

  and darling, please don’t take this to mean

  that I think erratically of our love. Also, I tried

  to use bleach but found a bottle instead

  that somehow I cannot find again that somehow,

  somehow, made the pink a brighter pink and darling,

  I am telling you this not because you would find

  out—you are absentminded and would convince

  yourself you had done this to yourself,

  I am telling you this because I love you,

  and if anyone should hurt you, it should be me.

  Again

  also after Ross Gay

  Because I love you, I shouldn’t tell you this, but

  I put a single red sock in with your sheets. Also,

  I used the detergent with the muscular arm

  and the tool instead of the bubbles and clouds. Also,

  I turned the temperature knob at random

  and darling, please don’t take this to mean

  that I think erratically of our love. Also, I thought

  of using bleach but instead found your hair

  dye, your red, red hair dye, and I poured

  it in, all of it, because you were tired

  of our bed, because we needed a new

  washing machine anyway and darling,

  I am telling you this not because you would find

  out—you are absentminded and would convince

  yourself you had done this to yourself,

  I am telling you this because I love you,

  and if anyone should hurt you, it should be me.