by Sarah Kay
be sure your mind lands on the beauty of this funny place called life.
And yes, on a scale from one to over-trusting, I am pretty damn
naive. But I want her to know that this world is made out of sugar:
it can crumble so easily, but don’t be afraid
to stick your tongue out and taste it.
Baby, I’ll tell her, remember your mama is a worrier,
and your papa is a warrior, and you are the girl
with small hands and big eyes who never stops asking for more.
Remember that good things come in three’s. And so do bad things.
And always apologize when you’ve done something wrong.
But don’t you ever apologize for the way
your eyes refuse to stop shining;
your voice is small, but don’t ever stop singing.
And when they finally hand you heartache,
when they slip war and hatred under your door,
and offer you handouts on street corners of cynicism and defeat,
you tell them that they really ought to meet your mother.
AND FOUND
I am a god
of drawers left open.
It is easy to catch me in the act
of searching—
my keys
my self.
Careful.
Don’t sit there.
You might knock over the pile of
confidence I took all day to stack.
I promise to tidy up before company arrives,
wouldn’t want my socks and daydreams all over the carpet.
Sure, I know where most things are but
give me enough time and I can lose anything.
I have had enough practice
at sliding things under the bed when no one is watching.
And I know
you are always in the last place I look.
WINTER WITHOUT YOU
Tonight, Brooklyn was so cold,
it pulled itself a little closer to Manhattan
just to have something warm to lie next to.
Earlier this week, I stacked a pile of laundry
fresh from the drier and dove in it like it was
autumn leaves, like I thought I could stop the fading,
could keep the colors if I held them in my hands.
Winter has arrived like the stray cat
who patrols my neighborhood—
annoyed by my foolish surprise
at its sudden appearance.
My building’s Super rang my doorbell
this afternoon and came in to change
the knob on my heater. I greeted him
in flannel pajama pants and a sweatshirt.
Oh, thank goodness, I laughed. The heat
has been clanking all night, and it keeps
me awake. He considered the pile of
unfolded laundry and 1 PM pajamas.
Just you? He asked. Just me.
It is December, and nobody asked if I was ready.
COREY’S TURN
In retrospect
squeezing my knees shut
does not seem like the most effective move
and certainly not the bravest
but at the time
it was as fast as I could think
I knew that Corey
was tall and strong but that
was not the concern at the moment
because he had stayed on his side
of the table facing me
watching my face
whereas Mark was the one
whose turn it was to be dared
in truth
I think it might have even been
his idea
or both of them together
laughing as they whispered
the word between them
loud enough for anyone in
third-grade art class to hear
except the teacher who was busy
at someone else’s watercolor station
so it was Mark who was supposed
to kiss me
there
below the table
Mark whose red hair curled as perfect
as a children’s rhyme on his
freckled forehead
Mark
the shortest boy in class
who would have been teased for it
if he wasn’t so funny
Mark who made me laugh in math
whose breath I could now feel
on my shins
and I don’t remember if I wore a skirt
or pants
but I do know that Corey watched
me the entire time
even as I continued to watercolor
pretending that I did not see Mark
on his hands and knees below me
instead of calling for the teacher
instead of tattletaleing
instead of kicking him in the jaw
I held my knees together
and eventually he gave up waiting
kissed my knees instead and
emerged from below the table
claiming that technically he had completed
the dare since that was as close
as he could get
that surely that should still count
surely it was now Corey’s Turn.
WITNESS
I do not ignore bubble letters on the bathroom stall.
The pretty cursive, the delicate loop in the y.
When the words spell, help me. I hate my life,
I am here to witness your toilet paper autobiography.
No judgment. I have spent hours wondering
how many other people’s photographs I have wandered into.
Who takes the time to notice I was here?
What remains to be seen?
That couple from Minnesota in Times Square at Christmas.
The bottom left-hand corner.
There I am wearing my blue coat.
Trying to turn away from the camera, blurry.
YOLK
For the guy who threw an egg at me from his car window.
Hey. Thanks for coming. You know, I haven’t ever done one of these
before, and I didn’t know whether you’d show up, so I’m glad I
recognized you.
I mean, you were exactly like your description said you’d be—
Big black sports car,
muscular ego,
really good aim.
And I’m glad, because I hate when people advertise themselves as
something they’re not, and then you meet them in person and are
disappointed. It’s why I don’t wear makeup. So you always know that
what you see is pretty much what you get.
That’s why my description reads:
Skin—inclined towards bruising.
Hair for days—of face hiding.
Big, giant—self-consciousness that you can really just
grab with both hands.
I’m glad we’re both honest.
Look, I know it’s past my bedtime and a nice girl like me probably
shouldn’t be out on the street, but if you get to know me better, you’ll
find my eyelashes are the most stubborn part of me.
They love late night haunts, wouldn’t trade them for all the pillows in
the world. Plus, if I were at home right now, this street corner never
would have served its purpose: the perfect spot for this rendezvous.
You—tall, dark, and speeding.
Me—bottomless pit of bad reflexes.
What a perfect match.
I wish I’d had more time to prepare, could have gotten more dressed
up for the occasion. Now I’m embarrassed, really. That you put in
so much effort, and here I am wearing nothing but an easy target.
ACCIDENTS
One time, there was an X-ray accident
.
It left me with a transparent chest.
Sometimes this is inconvenient: like during job interviews
or first kisses. Sometimes it’s not so bad.
Like when the hummingbird orchestra is in town
and they need a substitute conductor.
Once there was a laundry accident.
Now everything I own looks like a Funfetti cake.
Once there was a microwave accident.
It melted my shoulders into old crayon tops.
Now I have stopped counting the accidents.
So they don’t count as accidents.
Now they are just decisions.
Like the mousetrap decision,
which scared me awake again.
Or the refrigerator decision, which left me
with melting ice cream and a chilly apartment.
Or the locked bathroom door decision,
which left me with an…accident. Listen.
There is a hummingbird inside my chest.
He is cranky with me. He has been waiting
to go to sleep for hours, and I have kept him
awake with my racket. Once there was a ceiling fan accident.
Now there is broken glass everywhere and I can’t turn off the lights.
Once there was a boyfriend accident. I mean decision.
An iceberg accident, a poison apple accident.
Sometimes I invite experts to help figure out what is going wrong.
They take a look inside and check the wiring,
they tell me someone has placed the panic button
awfully close to the ignition. There has been a motorcycle accident,
now nobody can stop staring. There was a domino accident,
and my days fall into each other faster than I can catch them.
There is a beach in Montauk where the rocks are piled
from the shoreline to the dunes. When the water pulls in
across the stones they knock together like broken bones
and you can feel the ground below you shift and move.
But when the sea rolls out, each pebble
knocks and tumbles down the shore.
The accidental orchestra plays between the rocks—
like loud applause—the ocean cries, Encore!
PEACOCKS
Lately? Lately I’ve been living with spiders.
But as roommates go, they haven’t been too bad.
The one in the bathroom keeps to his side of the tile,
and the one in the bedroom can get a little bit grabby,
but for the most part he keeps his hands to himself.
I guess all those car engines and hairsprays finally caught up to us
because the sky here is so polluted, it glows orange
from 5PM, through night, ‘til morning.
Some people think it’s disgusting
that you can shower off what you thought was a tan.
But me? I can’t help but fall in love with a city
that has fifteen hours of twilight.
Outside the city, the dark is so dark,
it is easy to forget which day is Tuesday.
But the night there was a dry lightning storm,
it was like strobe lights through the window.
I snuck outside and stood with my face up, smiling:
I thought God was taking photographs.
And even though I felt silly standing there in my underwear,
I figured I needn’t be embarrassed: he’s seen me in a whole lot less.
Some nights, I wake up with a black hole in my chest.
It echoes like a beatboxing hurricane
and burns like a grandmother’s memory.
I tried Pepcid AC. It didn’t help.
I gave a haircut with big sloppy scissors
and even made it look sort of nice.
Everybody knew it was just a courtesy cut anyway;
it probably wouldn’t do anything for the lice or the bedbugs.
I’ve been looking for my favorite constellations everywhere,
but I haven’t found any sign of them yet.
The distances between stars are all different here. Much wider.
I have always relied on the English of others and in this
Rickshaw Named Desire, it’s no exception.
On a cement rooftop somewhere off the highway,
it is creeping its way towards night, when nineteen-year-old Ravi
begs me to write a love letter for him.
It is for Neha, the girl he is in love with.
She speaks English. He does not.
So he cannot explain to me that this is forbidden.
That he is already set to marry—whomever his parents choose.
But certainly someone within the village,
and certainly someone within the caste,
and certainly not this someone, wrapped in yellow silk,
who smiles up at me from the photograph he shows me.
I write it for him anyway.
It has something about the moon, some stars in the sky,
the way her eyes sparkle and how he wishes they could be together always.
When I finish writing, Ravi takes the letter from my hands
and reads it carefully out loud. He does not understand a single word,
but reads diligently and slowly, looking up at me every so often
to see if he is pronouncing the words correctly.
When I hear what I have written out loud,
the clichés hang in the air between us like bad breath.
I wish that I could take it back and write it over.
I would write:
Dear Neha,
Be careful about rooftops. Not about how high they are, but about how quickly your heart beats the faster you climb. Ravi’s hands are good for climbing. I like the way he stands behind his mother when she is working: not so much to insist on helping her, but just to let her feel his presence, in case she needs him to reach for something on a top shelf. I like that he believes in love letters. His pants are a few inches too short. Have you come to visit him here? Probably not. The peacocks are enormous. They sound like cats. No one seems to pay them very much mind, but the males dance across all the rooftops of the village, begging for someone to notice their tails.
Good luck with your secret,
Sarah
Ravi gets to the end of his letter, and reads the words, I love you.
These are words he understands. He smiles an enormous smile and
bows his head. On my way back to the car, the translator tells me
Ravi wishes to say thank you. I tell him to tell Ravi good luck,
and he does so. Ravi puts both hands inside the car window
onto my own and says, Dhanyavad—over and over,
thanking me for the love letter—bahut bahut dhanyavad.
He will never marry her, the translator tells me,
after we have been driving in the dark for a few minutes.
Yes, I say, but he can love her.
It is monsoon season.
I watch as tall street corners become river banks and
potholes become death traps; not even the rickshaws are safe.
The cobra that I met in the orchard behind the lantern shed
was much smaller than I’d imagined,
but the mangoes were just as sweet.
That’s probably why when we cut one open,
a spider crawled its way out. It had made its home inside.
ON BEING PREPARED
I. Now.
Sometimes, when I am by myself,
I imagine my own murder.
The open window,
the three steps necessary to cross the room.
Blunt object to the skull,
red ribbon and the feel of the carpet against my cheek.
I fix my hair in the mirror,
change the song to one with cello.
When they find me,
>
someone will check the time of death.
Someone will do the math, count backwards
through the music.
Press the buttons, back, back, back.
They will figure out which song was playing
when it happened.
Even when nobody is home,
I am careful what I listen to.
II. Then.
I used to practice
what I would look like
when someone was falling in love with me.
I tilted my head, looked into the distance.
I don’t even notice you falling in love with me, I practiced to the mirror.
I am too preoccupied with what I am doing.
Nobody wants to be noticed when they are falling in love.
It is a private moment.
Whoever was falling in love with me, I reasoned,
deserved not to be disturbed.
III. Sometime.
I am working in my pajamas.
There is a knock at the door.
Teeth unbrushed, hair unwashed.
I leave everything to answer.
You kiss me and take off your coat.
Don’t have long to spare, you say.
Just came by to say hello.
In the other room, my music skips.
The carpet squishes between my toes.
I wasn’t expecting you.
ON THE DISCOMFORT OF BEING IN THE SAME ROOM AS THE BOY YOU LIKE
Everyone is looking at you looking at him.
Everyone can tell. He can tell. So you
spend most of your time not looking at him.
The wallpaper, the floor, there are cracks
in the ceiling. Someone has left a can of
iced tea in the corner, it is half-empty,
I mean half-full. There are four light bulbs
in the standing lamp, there is a fan. You
are counting things to keep from looking
at him. Five chairs, two laptops, someone’s
umbrella, a hat. People are talking so you
look at their faces. This is a good trick. They
will think you are listening to them and not
thinking about him. Now he is talking. So
you look away. The cracks in the ceiling are
in the shape of a whale or maybe an elephant
with a fat trunk. If he ever falls in love with
you, you will lie on your backs in a field
somewhere and look up at the sky and he will
say, Baby, look at that silly cloud, it is a whale!
and you will say, Baby, that is an elephant
