How did I get here?

How did I find this pattern of the moon to be so desired?

How did I wake up warm?

How did I break that ice against that rock?

How did I sign up for things like Net Flix and McSweeney?

How did pack the teeth that the BoyGirls knocked out?

How did I get to the place where I thought it was actually a good idea to entertain the questions I usually find great satisfaction in mocking.

It's dry in here.

At least it's not cold.

I can't be cold.

I also can't open with it.

But, I will seep it in.

I was born in February.

I'm sure it was cold.

I'm sure it was biting.

I'm sure there were lungs falling from the sky.

Hot beating lungs swaddled in rice patties and turnips.

Pure pockets of air.

Blanched and boiled in angel gas and titian robes.

Golden chords of type O blood tied around suction cups like leashes on greyhounds.

I wonder.

I stand very still on the bed in the cold and try to go back as far as I can.

Usually stop at twelve for a glass of strawberry quick and a fluffernutter on white.

I am a white girl.

Connan cracker white.

I am lower lower class with thousands and thousands of quarters in a Delia's shoe box.

That once contained the platform shoes I was going to wear to prom.

But, ended up borrowing some brick red clog looking things from the girl in the dorm next to me.

I can't believe I went to prom.

I rode in a limo with two girls I barely knew.

They offered.

I needed a ride.

Picked me up on the corner of Dearborn and Goethe.

Sat outside with the smokers and the jokers.

Exceedingly uneventful and ugly was I in my banded head and above the knee silk.

Angela looked at her thinnest.

Michelle paints apples on walls.

I would have latched on to that harder then a Spanish test in the spring

Awakening.

I'm not on a diet, I'm just cutting out sodium. That would have bought me a good two months. Easy.

Good thing it's cold. If you know what I mean.

Audrey Hepburn is a whoar. Those girls in their dorms, they nail her Tiffany ass to their ceilings and their lunch pales. And forget about the impossible body standards that tone deaf ballerina immigrates down to her Twiggy Moss row. ----She's leaning out of that car window perspiring what? Sweetness and light? That's all I get. All I see is an eye lash batting waif. A chicken waffle material fad.

It's possible I'm ignorant. Or a little gay. Or just plain raw and irritated in my winter eczema.

But, I'll blast my Ani Difranco, read my KATHERINE Hepburn biographies, fold my flannel shirts, donate my clogs, wash off my mascara, and hang my Julie Andrew posters with pride.

Like Mondo, she was robbed.

Emily Dickinson was short. Everybody was back then. I'd fit right in. I'd take her to prom and hold her tight. And later that night we'd confess to each other that we're actually not gay. We're just writing letters to someone far away who has no idea. And then we'll cry a little and kiss each other's eye lids, and sniff each other's necks. Like dinosaurs. We'll fall asleep shivering on the sand.

I hope where ever she is she's waking up to him.

Like me,

Skin and Toast