Shame

There are times where I mean to do one thing and end up doing something else entirely. I intend to fold clothes and end up sitting on my bed, legs crossed in the air, reading poems about suicide by Anne Sexton. I mean to think smartly, to wash my face, to clean up and be sensible, and instead find myself searching over ear-marked pages, whispering to myself from "Wanting to Die": But suicides have a special language./Like carpenters they want to know which tools./They never ask why build.

Perhaps "Suicide Note," prefaced by two quotes (the one, attributed to anonymous, unfalteringly beautiful) is the most significant, and I would write the whole thing down, would reproduce it faithfully, but I don't think I quite have it in me.

I love to hear poetry, but can't afford expensive box sets of poets reading their work. Instead, I read aloud, my mouth hovering near my computer's internal microphone, hating that this act might be perceived as an exercise in vanity, as a moment of wanting to hear myself. I force these thoughts out of my head and push myself forward, make myself read, thinking the whole time of my parade of counseling sessions -- Arshia leaning forward and telling me, confidentially, "You know, I think this campus would be a better place if they built booths that people could go cry in, privately." I think of the bathrooms on the second floor of the library and the bathrooms described in Middlesex. I think of that poem Alex wrote. The one where she said that scars are just proof we never heal right.

The other day I thought I saw Britt and so I asked to stop the car, wandered through the back alleys in downtown Willoughby, pointing out old lives: Where Kate used to live, Bob's old apartment, and (silently, to myself) the restaurant where he kissed me, 6'5", drunk and confused, said "Hey, shy girl." For a minute I confused space and time, expected to hear the sounds of instruments and skateboard wheels, smell cigarette smoke and sweat. It wasn't her. I don't know what I'm doing.