i don't know

So I turned to Ozawa and asked him, had he ever punched out a guy in an argument?

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once i asked you your favourite
colour, and you said, "the brown
of your eyes," so i put in one green
contact and told everyone that i
came out of the womb as a factory
defect, half-priced, damaged goods.


-


sometimes i am from canada and
sometimes i am from england and
sometimes i am from spain.

i've carefully tempered my accents
and plotted out my stories with
yellow and purple coloured pencils
on index cards. my origin changes
like the seasons.

"why do you lie to everyone?" you
ask.

"why not?" i reply.


-


i wear nametags that read "alicia"
and "liana" and "samantha," because
i want to know how it feels to be
someone else for a day.

you make me a nametag with my
real name on it, and i just laugh.

(later i slip it beneath my mattress
and spend the night staring at the ceiling.
see, i've tried myself on one too many
times, and the fit is never right.)


-


you call me your little compulsive
liar, and i guess that is supposed
to be somewhat affectionate.
or something.


-


i spin before the mirror wearing
my mother's wedding dress and
a purple wig, admiring the way
the train billows out behind me
like wings.

"where is the girl i fell in love with?"
you ask quietly, watching me
slow to a halt.

"she's gone," i say decisively,
and closing my eyes i begin to spin
once more.

i'm giving myself ten minutes to grow up,
and with every minute that passes i am remembering
balloons and party hats and streamers
and the second star to the right,
straight on 'til morning.

every year i write myself a poem for my birthday,
but this year i think i'll write a poem about
peter pan and he'll die in the end and everyone
will be sad. i'll be the saddest though,
because there comes a point in your life
when you realize that you're not peter pan,
or wendy, or even a lost boy.

(how sad, i think, to be lost but not a lost boy.
it doesn't matter though, because neverland isn't
real and now look, i'm another year older, and what
have i even done with my life?)

today i'm twenty-three and peter pan is dead.
my ten minutes have passed and i still haven't
grown up. people around me forget how to talk
to mermaids, and no one claps because no one
believes in fairies, or flying, or themselves.

today every birthday candle looks like a bone
and i still have so many wishes left to make.
maybe i should know who i am and what i am
doing by now, but i don't know. i don't care.
i'm twenty-three and this is all i have, it's all i
will ever have. you can keep your careers and cars
and aspirations. i will be waiting by my window
for a little boy with stars for eyes who can
never grow older because he is dead.

4:512 -- The dream of sex without pain. I
dreamt four nights ago of clock hands de-
scending from the universe like rain, of
the moon as a green eye, of mirrors and
insects, of a love that never withdrew. It
was not the feeling of completeness that I
so needed, but the feeling of not being
empty. This dream ended when I felt
my husband enter me. 4:513 -- The dream of
angels dreaming of men. It was during an
afternoon nap that I dreamt of a ladder.
Angels were sleepwalking up and down
the runs their eyes closed, their breath
heavy and dull, their wings hanging limp
at the sides. I bumped into an old angel as
I passed him, waking and startling him.
He looked like my grandfather did before
he passed away last year, when he would
pray each night to die in his sleep. Oh,
the angel said to me, I was just dreaming
of you. 4:514 -- The dream of, as silly as it
sounds, flight. 4:515 -- The dream of the
waltz of feast, famine and feast. 4:516 -- The
dream of disembodied birds (46). I'm not
sure if you would consider this a dream or
a memory, because it actually happened,
but when I fall asleep I see the room
in which I mounred the death of my son.
For those of you who were there, you will
remember how we sat without speaking,
eating only as much as we had to. you will
remember when a bird crashed through
the window and fell to the floor. You will
remember, those of you who were there,
how it jerked its wings before dying, and
left a spot of blood on the floor after it
was removed. But who among you was
first to notice the negative bird it left in
the window? Who first saw the shadow
that the bird left behind, the shadow that
drew blood from any finger that dared to
trace it, the shadow that was better proof
of the bird's existence than the bird ever
was? Who was with me when I mourned
the death of my son, when I excused my-
self to bury that bird with my own hands?
4:517 -- The dream of falling in love, mar-
riage, death, love. This dream seems as if it
lasts for hours, although it always takes
place in the five minutes between my re-
turning from the field and being woken
for dinner. I dream of when I met my
wife, fifty years ago, and it's exactly as it
happened. I dream of our marriage, and I
can even see my father's tears of pride. It's
all there just as it was. But then I dream
of my own death, which I have heard is
impossible to do, but you must believe
me. I dream of my wife telling me on my
deathbed that she loves me, and even
though she thinks I can't hear her, I can,
and she says she wouldn't have changed
anything. It feels like a moment I've
lived a thousand times before, as if everything
is familiar, right up to the moment of my
death, that it will happen again an infinite
number of times, that we will meet,
marry, have our children, succeed in the
ways we have, fail in the ways we have, all
exactly the same, always unable to change
a thing. I am again at the bottom of an
unstoppable wheel, and when I feel my
eyes close for death, as they have and will
a thousand times, I awake. 4:518 -- The
dream of perpetual motion. 4:519 -- The
dream of low windows. 4:520 -- The dream of
safety and peace. I dreamt that I was born
from a stranger's body. She gave birth to
me in a secret dwelling, far away from ev-
erything that I would grow to know. Im-
mediately after I was born, she handed
me to my mother, for the sake of appear-
ances, and my mother said, Thank you.
You have given me a son, the gift of life.
And for this reason, because I was of a
stranger's body, I did not fear the body of
my mother, and I could embrace it with-
out shame, with only love. Because I was
not from my mother's body, my desire to
go home never led back to her, and I was
free to say Mother, and mean only
Mother. 4:521 -- The dream of disembodied
birds (47). It's dusk in this dream that I
have every night, and I'm making love to
my wife, my real wife, I mean, to whom
I've been married for thirty years, and
you all know how I love her, I love her so
much. I massage her thighs in my hands,
and I move my hands up her waist and
belly, and touch her breasts. My wife is
such a beautiful woman, you all know
that, and in the dream she's the same, just
as beautiful. I look down at my hands on
her breasts--callused, worn things, a
man's hands, veiny, shaky, fluttering--
and I remember, I don't know why, but
it's this way every night, I remember two
white birds that my mother brought back
for me from Warsaw when I was only a
child. We let them fly around the house
and perch wherever they wanted to. I re-
member seeing my mother's back as she
cooked eggs for me, and I remember the
birds perching on her shoulders, with
their beaks up next to her ears, as if they
were about to tell her a secret. She
reached her right hand up into the cup-
board, searching without looking for
some spice on a high shelf, grasping at
something elusive, fluttering, not letting
my food burn. 4:522 -- The dream of meet-
ing your younger self. 4:523 -- The dream of
animals, two by two. 4:524 -- The dream of I
won't be ashamed. 4:525 -- The dream that
we are our fathers. I walked to the Brod,
without knowing why, and looked into
my reflection in the water. I couldn't look
away. What was the image that pulled me
in after it? What was it that I loved? And
then I recognized it. so simple. In the
water I saw my father's face, and that face
saw the face of its father, and so on, and so
on, reflecting backward to the beginning
of time, to the face of God, in whose
image we were created. We burned with
love for ourselves, all of us, starters of
the fire we suffered--our love was the af-
fliction for which only our love was the cure...

By the time she caught up, Michael was stalking the star with soft steps, both arms out to catch it. Sophie could see him outlined against the star's light. The start was drifting level with Michael's hands and only a step or so beyond. It was looking back at him nervously. How odd! Sophie thought. It was made of light, it lit up a white ring of grass, and reeds and black pools around Michael, and yet it had big, anxious eyes peering backward at Michael, and a small, pointed face.

Sophie's arrival frightened it. It gave an erratic swoop and cried out in a shrill, crackling voice, "What is it? What do you want?"

Sophie tried to say to Michael, Do stop--it's terrified! But she had no breath left to speak with.

"I only want to catch you," Michael explained. "I won't hurt you."

"No! No!" The star crackled desperately. "That's wrong! I'm supposed to die!"

"But I could save you if you'd let me catch you," Michael told it gently.

"No!" cried the star. "I'd rather die!" It dived away from Michael's fingers. Michael plunged for it, but it was too quick for him. It swooped for the nearest marsh pool, and the black water leaped into a blaze of whiteness for just an instant. Then there was a small, dying sizzle. When Sophie hobbled over, Michael was standing watching the last light fade out of a little round lump under the dark water.

"That was sad," Sophie said.

Michael sighed. "Yes. My heart sort of went out to it. Let's go home. I'm sick of this spell."

"It's so hard to express yourself."
"I understand this."
"I want to express myself."
"The same is true for me."
"I'm looking for my voice."
"It's in your mouth."
"I want to do something I'm not ashamed of."
"Something you are proud of, yes?"
"Not even. I just don't want to be ashamed."

During the war, a soldier faithfully wrote his mother every week so she would know he was all right. One week, she didn't get a letter and immediately began to worry. Within a couple of weeks she got a letter from the Army saying that her son had been captured and was being held in a camp, but they assured her that they had no reason to believe the American prisoners were being mistreated in any way. A few weeks later the woman finally received another letter from her son: "Dear Mom, try not to worry about me, they are treating us well and I'll be released as soon as the war is over. Make sure that little Teddy gets the stamp for his collection. Love you, Joe." The woman was overjoyed to hear the news, but was confused because she had no idea who 'little Teddy' was. She decided to steam the stamp from the envelope and have a look. Written on the back of the stamp were the words: "They've cut off my legs."