I must’ve looked small, brown and full of joy; a pink mouth coughing up river water.
Driving through farm fields I imagine living in Apricots bought from a man in a straw hat Joking that could be you, You when you’re older, Not you now, in your ribbed tank, vaping lightly next to me
My mental projection of the future changed. Where once was ambition, now a river flows.
After it was over she said “it’s not your fault but I’m, like, going to hell.”
With them, I sat silent and small. I felt ugly, the mirror reflected round-faced gluttony. I sit on a ledge and stare at the opposite shore. Towering walls of red rock cradle me as I recall my miserable life in Los Angeles. I come from a town where “daily bread” is a saying, not a practice.
I’m friends with the poor and soon to be famous. Rich beat nicks. At a party in my tuxedo top, I waste time. A Philadelphia soul new to the scene suggests I tattoo my wrist. His eyes skitter and fly as I tell him I only ink words on my skin. He does not listen, showing me arms branded with etchings of nature. I wonder if they remind him of home. I tell him we are wasting time here. I note the gaps in our conversation.
Being no one, going nowhere, star fucker.
There is more weight on my frame, my arms no longer resemble winter branches. I avoid mirrors, and laughs come quicker, dark thoughts don’t linger. My appearance is irrelevant, tied to me by a string, but I am sexy and alluring as I swing my substance down Ventura Blvd.
It’s hard believing you don’t need to be beautiful. I’m an LA native, lily of this place, child of this city, sister to its successful.
To be honest, I couldn’t see his face. I mostly kissed him in the dark. Sometimes I caught a glimpse and forgot why I was there. But then he kissed me, and I was reminded. And just like the river, I’ve been running ever since. I fear being just another girl, just another body next to his. Another face he saw, taken stock of only to forget.
Music rises, culminates in a too-loud wave as the doctor tells me my tumor’s gotten larger. This tumor in my throat...I don’t know what to make of it. I think I caused it by not speaking up. A vision of myself in his passenger seat, weak but tan, with a scar running down the length of my neck. On the red carpet, smiling amidst the flashing, with a scar crawling down my neck. In bed with him, head turned the other way, and he notices the scar weaving down my neck. Washing my hands, glancing in the mirror at the scar dripping down my neck. “I was gonna die young,” Sylvan Esso shut the fuck up.
I won’t recall my beauty, but I will smile remembering how I once laughed in lamplight, choking on peaches because of something my brother said.
Not a timepiece in sight, time doesn’t matter, not on the river with long-limbed men rowing you shore to shore. Miles fall away like hours in this sun-burn pause. I look into the eyes of the stranger next to me, she is my only way of knowing I am here. Rules lose weight here. It’s so easy to breathe in water, let out air. Deflated, I sit on the edge of our raft. My toes tease the river. The wind is a hair dryer, a cruel dry warm, it tickles my skin. The guides tell us not to believe a word they say. How do you know if a raft guide is lying? His lips are moving. My father sits, unshaven and calm, singing next to me. Music is the only thing he misses. We sing songs we remember from life above, and I pretend the world ended and we have only these echoes to remind us of what was.
When I was little, my favorite place in the world was my father’s arms. My father would lie in the sun, and I, small and unknowing, would bundle my limbs around him. Sleeping on his belly or curled into his side, I heard the gurgling and bubbling of his aliveness. The ultimate lullaby is the sound of my father’s digestive system. I don’t remember when I got older and stopped taking refuge in him; at some point in a girl’s life, her father’s body no longer feels like an option. Despite wanting to rest there always, I sought new places to lay my head. The only time I get close to the peace I felt on my father’s belly is when I wrap myself in the arms of lovers. I contort my now grown frame into tiny configurations and rest on top of their sometimes soft, sometimes taut, bodies. I listen to their hearts and stomachs and smile at the sounds I discover. Boy sounds. I usually rise unsatisfied, disentangling myself from them and the subconscious knowing that their sounds were not, and never can be again, the sounds of my father.
He will kiss me in a teepee built while I hide crying over my ugliness. Before his lips touch mine I say I’ll never figure it out.
Smiling, sunburned faces shine at me. I can’t stomach how they juxtapose against the stark, white, sunken faces filling my sunny Los Angeles memory.
Your job is to facilitate people’s undoing, unraveling everything they have ever known. It hurt when you pulled me into the boat after I jumped. I’m sorry I didn’t sleep beside you our last night. There wasn’t room for me in the dirt. I’ll never figure it out.
I don’t know what I’m passionate about but does good taste in music count? I know how to dress myself and write a sentence. I know how to tell someone they are worth more than they think, and how to talk to adults at parties. I know what kind of playlist is needed for a drive through Bakersfield, and how to hug my dad goodbye. I don’t know how to care about things that don’t matter to me, or how to keep this in. I don’t know everything the world has to offer, or what my life holds in store. I’m learning how to trust in something bigger than myself, to trust my gut. It’s that little calm voice making me feel nothing.
And what if you were taken to a beach and a man thirteen years older than you proposed skinny dipping as a first date, and your laugh echoed off canyon walls as you said only cuz I’m on vacation (love always a vacation, hence why it’s a drug), and so you stripped off the white nightgown you hate and swam in river water, naked, with someone you imagined licking sweat off of? And what if you stared at the stars as he hurriedly asked if you were on birth control and you asked if he had a condom, but both ended up gasping, raw in the sand anyway? And what if you spent the rest of the night alert and bare, as he called you “river nymph,” running your finger over his nose? And what if when he kissed you, you remembered something you didn’t know you forgot? He’ll walk you back, quietly now, and the red glow from his flashlight shows you exactly where you belong. The other campers are prone, meaningless forms as you stumble into your family’s campsite and brush your teeth using your little brother’s water bottle. You accidentally wake him but say only “good night.” You offer no explanations on this family vacation.
Opposites collided on that water-starved front lawn, and I watched myself romanticize strong men from small places.
And she might be a writer, or a girl. And she might be yours, or his, or her own. And she might be looking at you, or looking away, her eyes invisible behind Arizona gas station shades.
“I come from a town where “daily bread” is a saying, not a practice.” and so many words after that that i would write on my skin. you’re amazing riley.