which one could look down through the earth, see the shells and shelves it held encrusted, owned—we own you—all of you are all of ours—rooms each forever spun in spirals and injecting you with speech beyond a skin—walls all old and stuffed with screaming, a cold reminder of who’d they’d held, what could have been inside them—would be—was—each instant held forever in awaiting for the next to press against it, push it down into the black catalog of the cells of the unseen.
I could go on at what these days were but the truth is I am tired. Would you even believe me if I did? I’ve spent enough years with my face arranged in books. I’ve read enough to crush my sternum. In each of the books are people talking, saying the same thing, their tongues slim and white and speckled with the words.
I don’t want to be here. I want to get older. I want to see my skin go folding over.
Someday I plan to die.
When I was 1, most nights the house would fill with teeth. They lined the walls and studded the ceiling fans. They would come down like rain and click around my bed. In my head they built a stutter. I couldn’t feel my hands yet but there was something then also in me—something gnawing, something come undone.
When I was 2, I licked the sun some. I could spread it open with my fingers. I could tell it what I wanted. I could float further than even that.
When I was 3, the world went flattened and we couldn’t find the streets. My arms felt made of tissue. Words woke up inside my head. I would speak them as if I meant to speak them—as if they’d always been all mine—sometimes their grain would cut my stomach—I felt I did not need the stomach—I felt OK.
When I was 4, I remember someone standing above me in the night.
When I was 5, each time I wore white I found myself slowed down. I could see the shapes run out of other’s mouths, and I could see their arms ahead of where they were. I could see their faces stretching white with wrinkle and the degrading hue stuck in their eyes.
When I was 6, I found the ground got softer if I rubbed it with my shin. There was a certain part of the backyard where I went straight through into a den. In the den there was a man seated upright in a chair and the man told me exactly what would happen.
When I was 7, I dreamt the names of every child I’d ever have. In the dark I scratched them on my forearms, all fifty thousand. When I woke up my skin was clean, though there were new bruises on my knees.
When I was 8, I ate a tree. It coming back out was the hard part. That year I saw only the turning weather burn through other people’s eyes. By now my knees had still not healed, and my blood behind them had turned purple.
When I was 9, I’d buy a new school notebook and get home to find it filled. Often with drawings of myself inside my mother, and often with someone else in me. When I would try to show my mother the pages all became one page.
When I was 10, I don’t remember.
When I was 11, I don’t remember.
When I was 12, I changed my name. I went by blather. I wouldn’t wink unless you knew. My hair went curled. My eyes changed shape. It was only in the dark that I could think.
When I was 13, I don’t remember.
When I was 14, I’d hide in bed so many days my skin would stick tight to the sheets—in the end it was the sleep that tore me open. It was soft sleep ate my brain. I met so many men in folds of nowhere—ones I’d found or fucked or scratched the skin on or ate or was ate by or swam with through the ground.
When I was 15, I found a ring and wore it on my thumb. Each day it got a little tighter. I lost one finger, then another. I didn’t want to quit the ring. It had my real name writ inside the band. I swallowed it with sugar.
When I was 16, I squirted my first baby as a cuff of creamy cud behind the house. I swear the child had eyes. I worked his girth over with my fingers in the gummy earth, already bubbling, and no matter how hard I packed and patted, I could hear the breathing in my teeth. I hid the patch with nettle. In the morning, the yard was swarmed.
When I was 17, my parents were carried off into the antbed on the hill. I clawed the dirt for hours and all I came back with was this rash. At night the rash would rise up off me and hang above my body. I could hear it speaking in my sleep. I can hear it even now—and now—and now.
When I was 18, the house’s caulking swelled. The sky would disattach. It would come to curl around my throat. A little lake welled in my belly. Holes opened up inside the ground. I managed not to have them eat me, even when I went and threw myself on in—as if there were a magic sleeve of cellophane around me—as if I needed to go on. I did not need to go on.
When I was 19, the tone began.
When I was 20, I didn’t sleep at all—such hours—soon I learned to see the men hid in the eaves—the doors lodged in the séance—the stink.
When I was 21, I met the father—another man who swore he knew—knew what I had in me—knew what I would need. This is what he said. In the night his forehead hid the sky. I woke to blood spots on my pillow, in our oat bran, in the sink drain, but still I stood beside that man—I touched his hands and said the words—we were one then.
When I was 22, I don’t remember.
The mother now had given birth twenty-two times since the father’s exit five days prior. Each time the span between the births decreased. The pregnancies were swift and brutal. She expelled her paste in gush and crumbs. The warblings of her and the babies’ bodies both boomed through the empty rooms around them. Sometimes the mother felt she could have named the ancient human names of all the men that made her bigger, despite the blindfolds, the ice and biting—she could taste them in the branding of her flesh—a permanence mostly lost on the ejections.
Person 2030 had been 811’s, who like the mother had descended from two bodies rendered during DELETED ERA. This child—the only one of hers that had thus far survived behind its eyes, held in its cruddy back and black saliva—had been the reason the father left, she knew. Though he’d not expressed this so directly—he’d said nothing really, just been gone—she could tell he’d despised the baby for shucking off his image, for already beginning to grow old. The air had seemed to buzz between them.
The other births after 2030’s were a different matter, following a similar structure to the system of her aging, if reversed—one for each year, young and coming, if all crammed into such a short amount of time—the same spiral cut procession seen in all things, of all things one after another—new infants bloating in her as if in instants, spooling ropes on ropes of breathing cells. She tried to hold them in but they came out.
The 2nd child had burst unfurling as a smudge of scum on the black summer pavement tile while the first child crawled through the whole house calling the father’s forgotten name, already gone. The stench had been horrendous, like endless fire. 1180 had washed with bleach and light for days and still could not forget. The curd left rashes on her face.
The 3rd child had been a trembling wash of chunks that would not stop running, squashed and ransacked in the eyes. It did have eyes, at least that. 1180 took to wearing diapers or standing over buckets until she stopped caring about the carpet.
The 4th child sluiced out while 1180 stood ironing a work shirt she knew 811 would never need to wear. Even if he returned there’d be no reason. Person 811’s place of employment had been converted into
