auto-eulogy for the perfectly fine

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auto-eulogy for the perfectly fine

Content Warning: Please note that this piece contains some mature content, including mild language and some sexual references.

a blurred penumbra, sliver in an elevator

door opening to a window-high office;

the crush as post-cappuccino styrofoam

cups into hungry, gnawing trash cans;

my mother’s distant, camera-weary cradle

of an old mobile’s mass, exhaling my lullaby;

they all say this, that i am fine

fine like a four-digit-thread-count suit, resting on a hollow

mannequin-fine like conditions for sailing when even the ocean just can’t

split-fine like chalk ground beneath a perfectly stilettoed heel

i say i’m fine like carbon monoxide hisses from a car

          (suffocating, smokey, sweet, seductive silence),

but until some bible or physics textbook contradicts me,

           it’s just a lovely little nap

god and Feynman after all, have equal power to help me now — or so i assume, i’ve never asked

                                              (or alternatively: i read catechism, surah and veda until mandalas swam

into watchful eyes and my knees melted asphyxiation-blue)

either way, you all think it’s easy to pray as if it weren’t

             an “r” away from pay and the obol under my tongue?

surrender

goddamn did i claw at this life with acrylic nails until they snapped,

             (grasping, gleaming, glamorous, golden anti-gift)

inked it into A5 planners, swearing

              fountain-pen-bloody vengeance upon the page

don’t drip lies to me from your traffic-red lips; there is no deity you would give this up to

                                            (or alternatively: i’m just incompetent at cowardice)

so here’s the last hymn i’ll ever wrack: i am fine

this monotonous mantra, tranquilizing me into opium-drifting:

           a chinese takeout bag, thank you plastered all over the front

          cigarette smoke through stale bars that don’t check for id,

                                             (because why would i have identity in card form?)

it’s ironic as ordering a drink

                     on the rocks when i’m clearly off my rocker

and bitter as the amber whiskey and

                     twisted as the nice peel of lemon they place on top

                  so i can pretend i’m still civilized, all while i hope

that some stranger thinks damn girl, you’re fine

                   at least enough to

fuck me

                   (dry over a polyester couch, fuck me like deflowering, but not like peeling back petals)

fuck me as you would a rose:

                                                                a fistful of thorns, that sickening crunch

crushing, brutalizing salvation —

                                                                (mother would your veins leech dry if you saw me?)

and lord will there’ll be blood in the morning

but when i’m left Cinderella-past-Midnight on her barstool-throne,

                and can no longer bear my lookalike in the condensation of the glass

i’ll shatter it against the ground

broken shards tango with my reflection, deconstructing me into pieces:

an eye here,

                                                                                            half a gnawed-off lip there,

                                                           my perverse twin

and i’ll dance through these mirrors, Marie of Versailles, declaring triumphantly

              i am fine

and it doesn’t matter which one is the i,

                                                                        the breaking one or the broken one.