The Weight of Drowned Calla Lilies

Katherine Elizabeth Seltzer

Amy Seltzer, you are leaking.

Snap. Filter. Delete. Make yourself new.

You can see it all from your screen.

Last night Mom texted, “Take down those nudes.” And you beamed and beamed.

You want someone to impact you. To impact you hard. Harder. And harder and harder and harder, harder.

You bled for days.

The world looks white. Swivel your state in and out of view.

Born Amelia Salazar. Snap. Filter. Delete. Make yourself new again.

That freckle between David’s middle and index finger shaped like a scythe. His fingers smell like you.

Imagine you look ethereal instead of drowned when you rub your clit.

A woman said you look lovely.

Born Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón, July 6, 1907. Don’t focus on the fact that Frida was a Gemini.

In eighth grade, you asked Mom about the tape of A Clockwork Orange in the VHS cabinet. Could you watch? She said, first read the book. You watched the movie in your bedroom. What you saw didn’t seem so bad. She said, maybe later you’ll understand. Every Halloween in high school, you wore a bowler hat, a white button-down, braces, white pants, a codpiece, combat boots, and a cane. You wore false eyelashes on one eye and called yourself Alex Delarge.

A mistake made by both of you, but you bore the blame.

When Dave left your apartment, you belly-flopped onto that giant stuffed dog supine on your bed. You took out your iPhone and pretended to smile. If you tried hard enough, could that stuffed dog suicide you?

Tonight, stake yourself on your fingers and say, “You are lovely.”

This is art?

“El Vendedor de Alcatraces” by Diego Rivera hung on the walls of your childhood kitchen. A woman collapsed from the weight of white calla lilies. A man behind helps her up or drowns her down.

What does Fuckboy want?

Fuckboy called Frida unibrow, thinks he’s charming and hilarious. How like him to reduce a woman to her greatest beauty, to think it her biggest flaw.

Diego, you swine.

A bright red lip exudes confidence and instills a little bit of fear.

Exude the kind of chaos astrology can explain.

When you met, Dave’s eye contact was endearing, or creepy, or both. Why did he stare? Were you attractive or the brightest object in the room enclosed by the rule of thirds?

D walks away. You watch.

Hey, Fuckboy. Fuck boy. Fuck, boy.

You want “bedroom” eyes and hair without engaging in bedroom activities. Apply eye primer, smoky shadow, and winged eyeliner. Fake smile for mirror. Smush face against pillow or giant stuffed dog. Smush until you smudge. Weep. Look into mirror. Know you are beautiful.

Mom said you were a beautiful child. She wonders where the child went.

Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Married, 1929.

D liked to watch you rub your clit.

Snap snap. Save for later.

Take your cunt back

Call Mom. Tell her you love her. Apologize for breaking her heart.

You are being childish.

When you bought birth control pills.

All the articles say dudes don’t like a red lip. Red lips remind them of your sloppy, bleeding vagina.

Mom is the clean version of you.

Hey, when are you going to do the laundry?

In a minute.

I hope that’s paint on your panties.

You are the authentic self of her.

Amy Kahlo. Amy Kahlo fair and sallow.

Sometimes, you scratch the crust from your memories and weep.

Amy and Dave meet, 2013. Dave stares. Amy feels like a caged flower expected to perform. She looks away. She looks back. She looks away and back.

Dear Cindy,

Dudes think about sex as opportunity and conquest. When I think of the dudes I’ve fucked, I never want to think again.

Mom asked if you slept with him. “Just slept,” you admitted. She smiled, then called you a tease. Your guts fell to your echoey uterus. “There’s nothing I can do right.” She hugged you. His arms felt tight around your body.

Amelia was lovely.

Cunt

D baked a cake. White cake with fucked-up white frosting flowers. Sugar and smug dust his apartment. Pink letters spell: Thanks for the hand job! Look to him. He smiles.

You blink. Smile back. Kiss him hard. Think of eviscerating his bowels through a wilting scrotum behind a left-curving penis hung like a useless scythe. He can have your vagina. Take your cunt back.

This will be fun.

Did you bleed?

No.

Was it bad?

Define bad.

Was it lovely?

Only if constant interruption, awkward dirty talk, and watching him jack off is lovely.

How do you feel?

Wilted.

Hey, how’s it going?

When you met, you looked at D and then looked away. Why did he stare? The rule of thirds? He slid into your line of vision until he was all you saw.

Look. Breathe again. Look.

Exude the kind of chaos astrology can’t explain.

Harder.

He left a hole in you the shape of a caterpillar. You watched the caterpillar crawl down your chest, torso, navel, and down. The caterpillar burrowed inside you. You called the hole “Frida” and felt like someone.

Anticipated Q & A with Audie Cornish:

Amy, you’re lovely

Thank you, Audie, so are you.

Hey, unibrow.

A scythe comes for you.

Seven filters. Seven edits to face, neck, collar bone, décolletage, torso, pelvis, thighs, calves, and feet. Scroll. Think, I will make myself new again and save for later.

Born Amelia Salazar, January 28 (Aquarius, decan one), 1989. Made new again with first camera phone.

Aquarius. The bearer of water. Instead of an echo in your uterus, you should hear a wave or a slosh.

Your parents met on campus. Your father asked out Mom. He wanted to see a movie called A Clockwork Orange directed by Stanley Kubrick after a book neither he nor she read. A strange feeling grew inside them during the opening scene set on a stage. Something like desire/repulsion/both, respectively. They married. You were born.

D asked her to marry him.

Twenty years is not so many, Matilde Calderón. Don’t worry, Frida can handle herself.

Your first pap smear elicited a greater reaction than the first time D entered you.

Dear Cindy,

A new definition of rape came into effect on the first day of 2013—86 years after the first review in 1927. That same decade “flapper,” a new term in American popular culture meant to stigmatize women, entered the zeitgeist. In 1927, Clara Bow became “The ‘It’ Girl” because of her starring role in the film “It.” Cindy, what was Clara “it” for?

A scythe comes for you.

Harder?

When you started birth control pills, Dave lifted you from the doorway, kicked the door shut, and threw you on his bed. You both seemed surprised by how light you are, how easily plucked. The pills take a month, and besides, I’m not ready to put them to use, you said. D kissed you anyway, but not as he had, not as slow, not as hard, or soft. Not as anything. Well, we can still fool around, Fuckboy said.

Six months? That’s fresh.

It’s not a big deal. He moved into my building after we broke up.

That means I can’t come up. Like he’s watching you, or something.

He’s moving out. It’s not a big deal.

Is he?

Make yourself new again.

Dad says that ring in your nose makes you look like a steer. That noise coming out of his mouth makes him sound like a horse’s ass.

Audie: Do you think selfies are a little vain?

Self: What’s wrong with a little vanity?

Connect your eyebrows as they should be connected.

The thing Fuckboy liked best about you: echoey uterus.

You wonder where the child went.

D’s bulbous face and paunch. His receding hairline and twin.

Don’t tell her, but she was the better painter.

She watched Diego from the rows of the lecture hall. She watched him paint “Creación.”

You told D you visited your doctor for a prescription for birth control pills, and D was elated.

When are you going to put on a bra?

Go back to the bedroom, pick up your bra from the floor, lock yourself in the bathroom to lace yourself up again and think of his arms pulled tight around you.

Dad told you not to wear certain things if you did not have the body.

New guy across the street plays in a band. Name: something Hindu or Serbian. Half Mexican. Half some kind of white. Height: so so so tall. So tall top of head might look like the Alps capped with snow or a scalp fungal, psoriasis or seborrheic dermatitis— something that sounds sexual and disgusting. He asks your sign. He’s a Libra (and a vegan satanist). He tells you how you act, how he acts, and how you’d act together. He breaks your life in decans. You are one and he is three. His hands and feet are too big for six foot two. He wants to make a vegan out of you. You want to shear off his hair with a scythe, rub your hands over his scalp and inspect him.

Put on a blue dress, recite the Hail Mary fifty times, ask a stranger to light a candle.

They agreed to be friends and it did not last a handshake.

Your uterus echoed upon impact. You struggled just to breathe.

Sext:You probably already know, but the water’s off in the building. Maintenance. Should take an hour.

The first time you had sex, Fuckboy’s elated dick kept slipping out. You wanted to stop, but kept letting D. You stared at the top of his head and thought of his dick not doing its one stupid job. After, you drove home, bought a venti Caramel Ribbon Crunch Frappuccino, felt gratified and light again.

All women said she was better than him.

Don’t tell her, but she was the better painter.

Dear Cindy,

Do we need a third revision?

Fuckboys.

The RN held out the largest speculum. She handed it to your doctor. The doctor looked at the plastic appendage of the same design used to rape enslaved women for examination. “Are you sexually active?” she asked. You shook your head. “We’re going to need the smaller one.” When she shoved the speculum inside and opened the blades to scrape your cervix, the speculum did not feel small, so you thought about the fingers of a person you didn’t know yet that would enter next, the tongue, the penis, and then the weight of the baby that could rip you and crawl out. When you squirmed in the examination chair, your doctor apologized. You did not say it was okay. At twenty-three, you did not realize this was the last apology you might receive in such a situation.

The time Fuckboy wouldn’t speak to you because you didn’t give him a hand job, so you apologized.

You bled for days.

Leonardo, born September, 1925, at the Red Cross Hospital. Leonardo would never exist.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

A scythe comes at you.

Call Mom. Mom?

Amelia?

Amy.

Amy?

Frida.

The Gemini can be an ass. The Libra has big hands and feet.

Sometimes, he looks so old.

The way D looks at you makes you want to charge.

The quality you like best about yourself: bleeding cunt.

Before D’s penis penetrated, you warned him you may bleed. Are you sure? When I finger you, there’s no resistance.

Diego, you swine.

Sext: Did you say six months?

Put on a red dress.

The way D looks at you when you think you’re not talking enough.

Lord of the Universe said: I feel we have a lot of parallels. I feel it in the signs.

They agreed to be friends and she jumped D’s bones and he let her.

When you met D, you thought of pulling up your neckline. Later, you wanted to pull it down and down and down and down and down.

When you kissed the first time, Dave sank into you. He coiled his finger around the silver chain on your neck. He fingered your collarbone and cross. What’s this about? Not what you think, but then you explained, for other reasons, why you were not ready. He was glad it had nothing to do with the cross, then mocked the woman he claimed to love at eighteen because she would not do for him what you were thinking you may want.

A scythe comes.

Fuckboy reasoned others assumed you were having sex anyway. Did people also assume he asked you to shove your finger up his ass?

Sometimes, you want to swaddle his face.

Sit on your stoop to listen for bass from the rented house across the street. Think of large hands. Lord of the Universe looks like Rivers Cuomo trying to look like Buddy Holly. Why doesn’t he just look like himself?

Amy Kahlo fair and sallow.

Dear Cindy,

Mom grew up in the ‘60s. She looked up to Frida Kahlo, Gloria Steinem, Angela Davis, and you. In the ‘70s, she met my father, went on a first date because he wanted to, got married because she wanted to, conceived and bore me in the ‘80s, and things were never the same. My father left and Mom stayed. Now, she’s in her 60s. Can she take it all back? Is her fate my fate? Can I delete and make it new?

The phone call became a contest to see whose dad was the biggest jerk. Lord of the Universe won, but he missed him most. You felt like a winner.

A beloved.

David, you swine.

The quality you like best about yourself: red lips.

Dear Cindy,

You are lovely. I saw your stills before I saw you. A lady, a damsel, a whore, a victim. A woman. I saw them all and knew.

The time you had a thing for the bassist in that band, six months later, and gave him your number. You talked for hours. And he read into you and into you. And into you. And his hands were big, too big for his body, he said, and his name was Lord of the Universe, he said, and he told you exactly how you’d be together. And although you were ready, the universe was not ready for you. And nothing happened, and you didn’t mind.

David.

You wish Fuckboy came with an off button.

First name Hindu, last name Serbian. First name: Lord of the Universe.

Are you looking for a proposal?

Fuckboy texted you. He tells you things you know, or will when you check your email. Like when rent is due, or something a friend of a friend said that’s been said to you, or what color the sky is, or when it’s raining and water floods the streets, or the time of his last bowel movement. You want to slit his throat (or cut off his fingers) to stop the updates, but once you do, you will miss the pressure of wanting to slit his throat or cut off his fingers. Swallow your iPhone to carry him inside you and hush him until your next bowel movement and he will be right where he belongs.

You are looking for an impact.

Lord of the fucking Universe.

Sext: Do you like seitan?

When you bought the pills.

You bled for days.

D proposed. She said yes, twice.

“There have been two great accidents in my life. One was the trolley and the other was Diego. Diego was by far the worst.”

When you started the pills.

When the Ford Motor Company commissioned D to work on twenty-seven fresco panels, she sat by her husband’s side at an easel. He hid Coatlicue in the stamping press, and Frida painted “Self-Portrait on the Borderline Between Mexico and the United States.” She wears a pale, pink dress. She faces a Mexico struggling just to breathe—behind, the United States pumps industry. This partnership will create money for men and graves for women—Frida doesn’t know and Coatlicue watches. Frida covers her uterus with bandaged arms and dangles a Mexican flag toward red calla lilies rooted between soil and ribs no one can see.

When you started the pills, your copay was a monthly $10.

The fetus found no comfort inside a fractured pelvis. The fetus remained unnamed. D did not want children. She had an abortion and she did not give the fetus a name. 1930.

When you started the pills, your copay was a monthly $10 and then some.

Miscarriage. July 4, 1932. Thirteen days recovery period in Henry Ford Hospital while D paints for the Ford Motor Company. She lies in bed across from a table where her son floats and pickles in a jar. Dieguito’s mangled body reminds her of her mangled body. The night of July 4, you teared. D asked if he should stop. You nodded. He slipped out and rolled off of you. You tried to sleep. You wept in bed together July 5 and D wrapped his arms around you for the last time.

D, you swine.

1934. Infantilism of the ovaries. Appendectomy. Abortion. Leonardo never exists.

She jumped D’s bones.

You told D, after everything was already fine. You’d taken a test. And the test was fine.

Amy Seltzer, you are all smiles and bubbles inside—someone needs to shake you up and open you wide.

Tall dude who condescended as though you’re a lady and stared as though you’re a whore. You asked him out. After it happened, after the incident, he treats you no way, you glare at him, and he cannot speak or look at you.

You told D you weren’t sure how you’d feel about an abortion. And everything was fine, because nothing happened and you would not need that abortion.

Dear Cindy,

What is intention in someone’s eyes that makes you squirm? Should there be something about a penetrating gaze? Is it my own fault?

You asked that dude—the tall one, with hot-homeless-guy scruff, whose girlfriends never stick around—to walk you home from his neighbor’s party once your ex-boyfriend, David, left. This after D, blackout drunk, implied he’d walk you and you raised an eyebrow and declared, “I’m not leaving with you.”

Amy Seltzer, with your bright red lips, it looks like you’ve been trying all day long to tear off your face.

That dude asked if you wanted to go back to his place, and you mumbled, “Not really.” D left. What do you call a guy who proposes sex after his friend, your ex, leaves? What do you call a woman who’s interested, but not ready? You weren’t about to walk home alone in the dark, so he walked you. You were drunk, he was drunk. By the third block, he grabbed your hips and swung you around, and you were still surprised by how light you were after you’d come to feel so heavy. You patted his cheek twice in jest, felt his scruff on your palm, said he was moving a little fast and he disliked the “terms of a relationship” only you were curious to try. At the sixth block, he insisted on staying the night at your place. “We won’t do anything,” he said, “I swear.” And right then, you felt sorry for him.

You told D, had it come to that, you did not know how you’d feel about an abortion. And D was terrified, and he did not tell you, and you thought everything was fine.

You said no. He grabbed your face—gently—and you let him. And he was drunk and eager. Still, you kissed back. You’d never kiss him again. When things escalated and you objected, when his hands and face roamed and poked despite your objections, you were glad you wore jeans that night instead of a dress or a skirt like you wanted. You were so fucking glad.

He kissed your cheek, softly, before leaving.

You told D, had it come to that, you did not know how you’d feel about an abortion.

You told him to text you if he changed his mind. You wish you could say you were still drunk, but by then, you’d sobered. He laughed and that’s one thing you deserved.

You walked the rest of the way home, alone. You did not look back. You do not want to ever look at that again.

You told D.

The way D looks at you when you think you’re talking too much.

Dear Cindy,

I always wanted David to know, to understand, to feel he should put on “Come Together” by The Beatles when we fooled around so his neighbors wouldn’t hear the crash of petals roiling inside my uterus. He never did and I never asked.

Amy Seltzer, Aquarius, always too wet to handle.

You told him you bled, a sign you may be pregnant if on the pill and still he accused you of being irresponsible.

Amy Seltzer, you know who is looking at all of your Tweets.

Fuckboy told you he liked that you weren’t and didn’t look strumpety.

Your dad told Mom you looked like a slut when she came home with you from the doctors and there was a hole in both your ears. You were still in diapers, so you do not remember the pain of puncture. Those must have been some slutty ass diapers, whore.

He was surprised when you told him you hadn’t had sex just yet. You asked why (because you were 24?). He would not answer. You became accustomed to his silence.

What would Amelia think?

Do you think Fuckboy thinks of you when he looks at your leaks, or is it like when he’s watching porn? Does he even notice your face?

Sext: When did you say he was moving out?

Sext: I did not appreciate that last tweet.

Sext: Are you going to be at that opening tonight?

Sext: My Venus entered Libra.

The way alone drowns.

Look in the mirror and fuck yourself.

Amy Seltzer is leaking.

The rule of thirds is in play.

Split me open.

Because you were young. Because you were open. Because you were closed.

Rip me up.

Because you were closed.

That thing hanging where there should be cleavage.

That thing dangling between his legs like a molting caterpillar.

Because you were so easily opened.

Dear Frida,

David does not like The Mars Volta. But Frida, when he and I fucked, he would put on the band for me. He knew I liked something fast, manic, experimental, and dissonant. And so he fingered me and ate me out and fucked me while Deloused in the Comatorium or Frances the Mute or The Bedlam in Goliath hummed in my ear. And the Rodríguez-López brothers and I sweat up a storm. We soaked Fuckboy’s sheets and I wanted him to drown in me. I wanted him to drown. But he loomed, rapturous.

Amy Seltzer, leaking her own nude pics.

Because you were not so easily opened.

The blood stain is a device meant to draw your eye down and down and down.

Shit, maybe he doesn’t even look.

You cried on the drive to Target. You thought about a procedure you never thought you’d need.

Wear the red dress.

Lord of the Universe still lives with his mother, which might eliminate a lot of mistakes.

Full of grace. Exploding, fizzling grace.

Snap me open.

Full of grace.

Sext: I saw your art opening tonight.

Uterus full of fluid.

It’s better if you pee before and after.

Uterus full of flowers.

And you beamed and beamed as though, for the first time, someone took the care to plug you in.

A paparazzi in your hand.

Amy Seltzer, you are leaking.

When you were eight, your parents told you never to use the word “cunt.” You asked why. They said it was something unkind to call a woman.

Amy Seltzer, you are trending.

Mom, I’m trending.

I have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about.

Amelia was a beautiful child.

You could trim down your hair. You could button up your hips, torso and décolletage. You could hang a tie around your neck and wear a pair of slacks. Walk around in oxfords, a cigar between your fingers and lips. You could smear off your face, perform a wider gait for a wider berth, lean back and try to pee standing up. But you wear the red dress, put a flower in your hair and take your cunt back.

Amy Seltzer, you are lovely.

The day you finally looked Dave in the eye, you walked away as though you’d seen nothing.

Amelia grew up with the notion that “woman” was a euphemism for “cunt.”

When Amelia was thirteen, her cousin locked her in the laundry room. He yelled and laughed at her and called her a cunt. She thought her parents might scold him. She watched her family’s white laundry tumble and soak in bleach, water, and suds. She listened to the machine squelch and groan. She listened to her father and mother’s silence.

When Amelia first received cunnilingus, Fuckboy told her her clit moved around, keeping him away, keeping Amelia from positive reinforcement.

Fuckboy looked up expectantly behind her pubes and she just looked at him, not sure what to do, or how to feel.

When Amy Seltzer tried looking for her clitoris, she fizzled with positive reinforcement.

You wonder if D looks at your leaked nudes. You wonder if he recalls the pictures you took of him on your iPhone. The ones he lectured you about after.

Dave’s surprisingly immaculate asshole.

This city is so empty.

Apologize for breaking her heart.

I can always tell when I’ve lost it because you start to smile.

What possessed you to land in Detroit?

You told Mom you stopped wearing that around your neck.

It’s advertising something about me that hasn’t been true for years.

Romping around in blood-stained panties is what you’re advertising now?

Leaking seems more appropriate.

Nothing about that seems appropriate.

Welcome to Detroit: The Renaissance City Founded 1701

Today kinda sucked. Go to bed and know tomorrow may not suck, unless you fuck up that too.

Fuckboy texted you and said absolutely nothing.

Before you left for a gallery opening in New York, a friend told you he would pray for you to have a good flight and that he hoped you’d get laid. You smiled, stupidly.

The day you decide not to wear underwear, your period starts. Blood drips down your inner thighs. You think, it’s okay if people stare, but then realize what a missed opportunity when you chose to wear a midi skirt over a mini.

Sext: I’ve got an idea.

Amy Seltzer studied at NYU, where she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography and Imaging in 2011. She thought about getting an MFA, but, shit happens.

Sext: It’s been strange not talking to you for a week.

The two of you walked down Bagley Avenue. The sky sprung a leak. You stopped under the overhang of the United Artists Theatre Building when the rain came down heavier. You felt the building crumble and powder your cheeks, you saw the windows beam dim. You sang “Singin’ in the Rain,” Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange style, to fill the silence and played like you might whack D in the gut, or ribs. You could have sung “Umbrella” by Rihanna, but you didn’t really know the lyrics to “Umbrella,” and your voice sounds embarrassing. D laughed and grabbed your ankle when you kicked. You tripped and landed against a boarded-up door. You both laughed harder. The door gave.

When you stepped inside, D sighed and followed. You twirled around the abandoned halls to fill the space. You stared at windows and walls as though they were art installations and their taggers were artists. You did not take long to find the auditorium. D’s heavy footsteps echoed down the corridor. By the time he reached the auditorium, you were on stage. The gold curtains billowed and D sat in the balcony. You yelled for him to come. Your voice echoed. A kit of pigeons erupted from the ceiling. They flew away into a piece of sky leaking down onto the dust and rot. D laughed. He told you to hush and said he liked watching you from the rows. You said, Come down here, you jerk, and that got him coming.

He disappeared. You sang, danced, and traced the velvet curtain. You felt the crust of abandonment on your fingertips. You felt a weight in each and every crumbling pleat. You felt a pull on your wrist. D said, If you’re going to reenact A Clockwork Orange, then let’s reenact it right. He pulled you against him and you let him, though according to scene you should have struggled (should you have struggled?), and on you, you felt the weight of history.

The time you both saw each other in a crowded theater, you both looked away.

That day, it was month four on the pill. Your uterus did not feel so echoey. One week before, the two of you decided Dave would not use a condom, primarily because he didn’t have one and he really wanted to up on stage. You checked the side effects of the pill and the side effects were this: the same shit that happens when you’re pregnant can happen because of the pill. And you felt a weight on your uterus.

You wept on the drive to Target.

The abortion pill: useful and safe only between weeks four and weeks eight.

You told Dave, had it come to that, you were not sure what you would do.

D’s apology echoed.

You took the test twice and twice it was negative. You took the test twice and twice you took it alone to find it was negative and you breathed again.

The day you finally decided to tell D, you asked him if he could meet you at the Detroit Institute of Arts. He was busy, he said, but he told you to go on without him, that maybe he’d come if he could.

Mom never did like him. She told her not to marry D.

Fuckboy liked to watch you rub your clit. You asked if he should take notes.

Stake yourself on your fingers.

You wondered why his apology was so hollow.

Put on the red dress.

In eighth grade, Derrick Somebody asked your art teacher what she dressed as for Halloween. She said she and her husband won first place at a club for their A Clockwork Orange costumes. Her husband was Alex, she was one of the girls in the record store.

Your eighth-grade art teacher told you you had a real eye.

That one way your dad looked at you that one time that made you feel like smut.

In eighth grade, your art teacher told you you had a real eye, but she questioned the “aboutness” missing inside.

Each step up brought you closer to The Detroit Institute of Art. “The Thinker,” naked and heavy, greeted you. You walked to Rivera Court and stared up at the unborn baby rooted on the wall. You heard footsteps behind you.

Two years single. One year celibate. Your fingers smell like you.

You want someone to impact you. To impact you hard. Harder. And harder and harder and harder, harder.

There is an aboutness missing.

Lord of the Universe texts you. Hit delete.

D hasn’t texted you in ages.

Snap. Snap. Save for later.

You live in gentrified Hamtramck with gentrified friends. You can almost pretend nothing is abandoned and nothing bad happens in Hamtramck, Michigan. Almost. And maybe you are also gentrified.

You walk home alone.

His ironic gob.

The nice lady whose name you can never remember says, “Amelia, I’ve forgotten what you look like. You’re all bones and empty. I hope you’re here to buy,” when you enter her bakery. You buy a dozen paczki you intend to eat by yourself and apologize for being a stranger. She says, “Don’t worry. Just take care.” She hands you a flower from a vase on the counter. You tell her you’ll try.

You asked Dave if he could meet you at the DIA. He said no.

His ironic fucking gob.

You asked Dave if he could meet you at the DIA. You didn’t tell him you needed to discuss something important. He said no, he had other stuff, but if he could come, he’d be there, but how about they hang out later at his place. You said maybe, and then he responded, and you threw your iPhone on the couch without looking. You took a selfie and hated how you looked. You sank into the couch, wanting to drown between the cushions. Disappear, be forgotten the way people forget about loose change, dried-out pens, or used-up condoms. Gross and lonesome. You slipped your hands between the cushions, determined to find something. You took off the cap of a once lost, now found permanent marker and inhaled. You dotted the crevice between forefinger and middle.

Still wet. You looked at the picture you hated. So sad. Sad girl eyes, sad girl blue hair, sad girl red lips. Only the yellow wallpaper looked happy. You inhaled. Perfect red lips, blue hair, yellow walls. You’d pop. But your face was too pale and your eyebrows not bold enough, so you took the marker and scribbled a nice thin pencil ‘stache and filled the gap between your eyebrows. But the marker went dry between your brows. You hit edit on your iPhone and scribbled your face new. You tweeted, “should i go out?” knowing full well you would likely stay in and D wouldn’t come and you would not go together.

D said maybe you guys could meet at his place later. You said maybe and he said, You think it through, I’ll wait.

But then you left.

The last time you saw him you turned away.

You heard footsteps in Rivera Court and wanted to turn. You saw one-dimensional men at work on the walls. Sunshine refracted through windows. You heard footsteps, but the footsteps were light, and you knew it was not David. You did not turn around. If you turned, you would see a little girl walk through you as though you or anyone was not even there. She would walk the way little girls walk before they realize anyone is watching. And the girl drifted upstairs toward an unborn baby rooted away from you.

You felt your iPhone vibrate. His plans changed. He could come, after all, if you needed him.