Twelve expressions

 

 

 

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I made myself a piece of bread and I took it to myself and fed myself in the dark.

When I found myself I was sitting in the shadows at the foot of the bed pressing my hand against an imaginary seagull. I stepped into the room and left the door open behind me so I could see myself in the yellow lamplight from the kitchen. I did not look happy. I looked hungry. I looked the way I remember looking a few days ago a few minutes ago I looked like I was fresh-born and red from afterbirth. I looked up at myself with twelve expressions shambling across my face. one  by one I saw my face surge up and new features spun across the front of my head and tugged knife hot at my cheeks.

1. the cloud. I wore the expression of a cloud.

2. my face was a pair of scissors.

3. my face was a memory of my face.

4. tongues. my face was a cluster of earnestly licking teenage tongues.

5. my face was an oily black ringtone seeping from a broken mobile phone.

6. my face was a corrupt government. my face was ‘Blowtorch Bob’ Padilla running an execution squad through the dry fields.

7. smiley. I had a smiley expression.

10. my face furred and flickered and my teeth sparked against the thick electric air. my teeth held hands with one another and my mouth was a big friendly cave and my jaw was clamped closed so tightly and my bad news was caught and trapped in the hot dark and my breath like old coffee and claustrophobia

11. my face was four hundred and five paper cranes. my face was less than 50%. my face was not enough and I saw my face and it didn’t change my mind.

I knelt down beside me and I put my hand over my hand which was stroking the imaginary seagull and I pressed downwards and we both imagined the seagull choking and cracking and I helped myself crush the seagull into the carpet. my dad will strangle me for getting dead bird on the carpet and my sister will ask why. I ask myself why but I don’t answer. my face flutters and jerks as nine terrible expressions and three indescribable ones shudder in and out of my eyes.

I see them all and I watch as I turn to face me and press my face into my cheek, push my cheek into my cheek and I feel the emotion running wild and barking over my skin but it’s not enough and it doesn’t change my mind. I put my plate down in front of me. there is bread and cheese microwaved until the cheese has floated away and the bread is too hot to touch. these things sit quietly on the plate and they only flinch a little when I reach down to touch them.

I look myself seriously in the eyes and I whisper encouragement. this room is very dark and hanging from the walls are old dinosaur skins and the old skinned breasts taken from my father’s father’s mother. we’ve been here in this room together for a long time, haven’t we? do you remember when we were first born, one hand and one finger pressed together against the wall of the womb? how the vagina opened up the first dawn, a single point of light opening and opening into a horizon, an enormous horizon

how much in awe of the world
how grateful for the world
and how much the world took us in its grip, sent us glories and broke apart human society so there was room for us?

do you remember when we struck open the gorgon’s head? do you remember swimming for eight nights through a sea storm? do you remember learning to drive and catching beetles and crying into a teacher’s lap and how the MC5 played loud and wild when we made out with a girl and told her the sweet truths? you remember these things because we shared them, we together, I and I, our tongues turned around the same words, our fingers closed on the same hands, our minds wept under the same confusions.