that was the year...

that was the year we thanked people for cutting us off in cars. we looked through
windows that looked through windows while eating scrambled eggs. we fucked
like models and a strange rotten egg smell came out of the sewers and followed
us everywhere. I myself lived everyone else’s life for ten minutes at a time. yes,
it was a very long year.

that was the year I saw no point in going home. a year of static tuesdays and everyone
knows that tuesday is an empty bed. beds, well I use them as tracing paper even
when I’m a little shakey. then I hit back, laid the paper along the curves of your
hips, those two lines in your skin that no one else seems to have. when you
turned over new sheets I scratched out new scars you didn’t know you had. at the
hospital we kept drawing, you for me and me for you. people tried to look over
our shoulders, but we wouldn’t let them. we gulped gasoline and blew blazes at
them. we wristed originals but the rags refused. it threw looks at us that appeared
harsher than intended, said you’ll have to wait until you do. we smiled lingering
smiles and kept at it. we drew fish that looked like the tendons in our legs. you
tried a doodle that shaded into the indentation of my missing rib. people left
town, we tried to cool down, stick figures with gaping holes in them. circles
rounded into asses, we protruded and clawed and pretended, but that was the year
none of us were allowed to forget who we were. I still have everything we
sketched, the old college try of after all pieced together and wrapped in wire.
you hang there now in my kitchen like a potted plant, an exit, a ring left by a glass
on a table. you’re there in my hands, trustworthy, and miles from home.