One Step to the Side

What if I don’t go there with you, just this once?

Seven years ago, I sat in a dim Normal Heights apartment and listened to hazelnut coffee brew in the drip machine. Light poured out of the small, thrift store TV as a VHS played. From the kitchen, C asked me if I believed beauty and truth could exist together.

What did I say back then? I know I did not say a flat “no.” Did I pause and look thoughtfully at the popcorn ceiling? Did I pour myself a cup of coffee at 6 pm, sip it, and try to unravel the two words? What did I know back then? Will I ever know it with that amount of certainty again?

These days, my screen is filled with eighteen month old babies being lifted out of rubble, and cops in riot gear rushing in to student protests. Celebrities with their arms bent and lips pursed are added to the mix sometimes. At my new job, I listen to people describe their brutal run-ins with the police. I read legal briefs of terrible violence inflicted by cops. I direct strangers to resources which may help them, and scribble notes down in a yellow legal pad.

I chew on the word “justice.” Consider 10 million dollars. Consider it is awarded to you, but your father is gone. Consider that you are one of the few to win your sort of case. Consider you receiving money, and still, having no father, is considered lucky. “I’m sorry that happened to you. I hope these resources can be helpful,” I say before hanging up the phone. 

After work, I eat a meal with the word Enough. I let it speak to me. I chew my food and listen to it. What is enough?

From the zine Here But Not Here, made as part of the duo show by Cecilia Mignon and I.

These days, I’m completely struck by words I’ve seen tattooed on many backs. “Only God can judge me,” I think. Ten years ago I would have rolled my eyes. I would have thought I knew better, and that I was smarter than that. Now, I keep sitting with the words. Only God can judge me, as in, who am I to believe I could know the entirety of anyone else? As in, if I must answer to anyone, I must answer to the entirety of who I am. As in: I am here fighting for my own heart. Every day, I am fighting for my own heart.

On the phone with strangers, I speak in the gentlest voice I can manage. “I wish you well,” I say before hanging up. Is it enough? Are words enough? No. Still I say what I can to offer some candle in the dark.

From the zine Here but Not Here, made as part of the duo show of the same name by Cecilia Mignon and I. The image is my painting “Ladder to Heaven.”

Another morning, staring at my phone before sleep has fully been wiped off my eyes, I read the email: You only bring negativity to my life. I hate you. I don’t love any of you and I never have.

Years ago, I sat in a plastic seat in a Marriage and Intimate Relationships Sociology class while a professor addressed the community college classroom. “People never exit the roles they are given in their families,” she said. I knew then what I have only begun to feel more deeply in my body: Caretaker. Scapegoat. The deeper I stick someone else in the role of the one to be worried about, the more I am stuck in the role of worrier.

Studying the water in Vaudreuil months before, I imagined us outside of our bodies. (How do you speak about what you know so deeply that there are no words to articulate it?) I imagined myself there with you, somewhere outside of language, and still the words came: I don’t know if we’re going to exit this loop in this lifetime. I don’t know if we’re going to do it.

Months later, I read the email and freeze. I hand the phone to my boyfriend when he comes in, so that I do not have to try to find words to explain. I read the words again. I imagine myself yelling, digging out insults, and hurling them through a Gmail inbox. I imagine myself saying what I can to show how upsetting this message is. I too want to injure those who have hurt me, and run into a corner with my fists up.

But I can feel the weight of the words as a threaded loop strung between us. I see the loop coursing back and forth. There it is: the continuing cycle of anger, the pain, the desire to hurt because I am hurt, the fear, the inclination to jump into the cycle and feed it, the desire to change another.

I too want to exit my role. What if I simply took a step to the side of this loop? What if trying another way was that quiet? “Alright. I wish you the best,” I send.

From the zine Here But Not Here, made for the duo show of the same name by Cecilia Mignon and I.

Years ago, I believed that if I wrote the perfect book, it would end the pain in my family. If only I got the words right. If only I found a way to solve it all. If only I could offer the right words, so we could all finally look at the pain while standing outside of it.

But I don’t press send, and the day continues. I don’t write the perfect book. I don’t try to heal everybody, or believe that somehow I could. Still, the day continues. I look at my own actions and see, over and over, how much I can lie to myself. Look, I thought I could change people again. Look, I did it again, this time with a quieter and more unassuming package.

I too am tired of screaming in parking lots, crying in public bathroom stalls, sending angry emails and letting anger bury itself into my day. I am tired of theatrics, self-punishment, pain cycles. I am tired of trying to prove myself, over and over. The pain has been like a dense mud. It kept falling off my legs. I tracked it over every room I walked into.

I don’t want to pretend like it has not taken me years to read an email saying “I never loved you,” and not want let it swallow my entire day. It has taken me years to not reply furiously, and as quickly as I can. It has taken me years to not dive, headfirst into the mud, every chance I get.

“I wish you well,” I say, over and over to strangers on the phone, and mean it. “I wish you well,” I type into my email, and mean it.

There’s no perfect book I’ve written, and nothing neatly tying up all this mass of pain. But what if I don’t go there with you, just this once? What if you don’t go there with me? What if we take one, tiny step to the side of this loop?

I just want to see what life looks like from one degree outside of it.

From the zine Here But Not Here, for the duo show of the same name by Cecilia Mignon and I.

---

MORE

1. A list of some Campus Bail Funds for students protesting genocide right now

2. My friend Terra’s press, Recenter Press, is open for submissions. They are looking for poetry until July 5.

   

3. Pictures in this essay are from the zine Here But Not Here. It is a book length poem, written back and forth between Cecilia Mignon and I. They sent me the last line of their poem, and I began a poem with it. Then I sent them the last line of mine, and on.
   
   I have a few copies available for $30/each. If you’d like to buy one, feel free to reply to this email.