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 6th
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.
“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?
