Hi

REMEMBER

old road

All these men sit around

in the concrete courtyard

smoking their fat cigars

and looking at me like

its worth it

stinking up

my only route

to the grocery store

I wash my grapes

in the water fountain

at the grocery store

like a homeless person

or a cherub

they were $1.95 off

red and seedless

I could only fit 5

in my hand to

wash in the fountain

so on my walk back

to school

I eat the dirty ones

chips

I am driving up the road to banana chip mountain because I live at the very top of it but I can’t see a thing. Everything is thick black but the small and changing patches of dirt lit by my headlights. Occasionally there is another set of headlights. I get short of breath because I can’t tell if my heart beats or if my voice works. I find it hard to breath when I focus on the oily smell coming from the air vent.  Am I bloated or is it just the fog or is it just the drive or just my lungs?

Ty told me that when he was in 6^th grade his math teacher gave the class banana chips when they would solve a problem correctly. The mute little things, all pale. Ty wouldn’t eat them because he thought the chips would make him go deaf.

Once I got to the top I didn’t know how I would get back down or at least thinking about it made it hard to breath. That oily smell was haunting my every drive and every dream. My sleep was all coyotes and wind chimes and sometimes even: do I have anymore bananas? There is always school in the morning but at least I never have to take math again as far as I know. The front door was barely visible through the fog it was like a thick tunnel like maybe someone would have thought fire.

My roommate’s alarm clock keeps going off when I am trying to sleep in the early hours of the morning when I am trying to wonder has the air cleared? Maybe he is dead? Like a plague overnight? Am I pregnant?

The banana fog was still so hush-hush, so I went to check if I was pregnant and the bathroom felt like a hospital. I tried to breathe the way people have told me to in the past. Slow, deep.  Am I?

I thought of the women I don’t know who talk about the concept of spotting. How a bit of blood between cycles is telltale sign of pregnancy. The second time I went to check if I was pregnant, the alarm stopped. I hate spotting. All pale and watery it could be almost anything or nothing at all or just a hallucination no problem. Like at Passover when you dip your pinky in your wine 10 times and let it drop on your plate.

“Da-am.”

You do this to release some joy for those who have suffered.

Amen.

March is the month that gets hushed like the mountain, lost in some cycle. A colorless month with a capital M lightly devoted to women, girl-scout cookies, St. Patrick, Red Cross, pi, and ash.  The warm tones of California March are anonymous, but warm nonetheless. So I walk to walk, to listen for my heart. I thought about how in New York I could hear my heart all day. Deep sigh. I desperately try to appreciate my only route, which looks completely tan. The huge grocery store guarded by the girl scouts and their mothers.  

 “Excuse me do you want to buy some Girl Scout cookies?” They shrieked in unison.

“No thank you, but good luck.”

“Ok.”  

:(

I walk by the vitamin store with the wind chimes and the wind seems to be blowing but nothing? No tinkle?  Is there anything watery around here? Ladies?