Where’s my train heading?
Nowhere.
I examine the outfits I’ve pulled out,
lying on my bed in silent competition.
I’m not in the mood for high school.
I’m not in the mood for anything.
ORIGINS OF LIFE
Now a sliver of moonlight hits
the paisley patterns
on the wallpaper in my room.
Amoeba-like shapes with colorful flourishes
remind me of biology, where we learn
about the origins of life.
When it all began.
A primitive period before time
that was microscopic and lively,
evolving over billions of years
into the world as we know it,
before there were humans
who yell and scream
over imaginary crimes.
This perception that I’m only one tiny,
unimportant nano-event
in human history comforts me.
I tell myself
we’re all the same, basically.
Connected, even when it doesn’t feel that way.
The wallpaper’s the last thing
I see at night.
Mornings, I stare at it again
as my mother reads the charges
accumulated against me
while I was asleep.
(I’m always guilty of something.)
This family has taught me
to live high on adrenaline,
the way people do in a conflict zone.
That’s how life is
inside a totalitarian system.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
In his bedroom, Davy, awake again,
knocks his head against his wall.
I have to admit, he’s too distraught
for someone who still doesn’t have
one single hair growing out
of his baby face.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
He’s a human metronome.
Once he said, “I do it to escape the chaos
of this place.”
“Why don’t you just play some Gershwin?”
I asked.
He didn’t bother to answer.
Judith made him pick out his carpet.
I remember how insistent she was
that he choose it for himself.
As if that could make him feel
that he belongs in a family of people
who have olive skin, greenish eyes
in common but mainly are falling apart.
Not falling, no. Ripping.
I wonder,
can you exchange one sort of hurt
for another?
THUMP, THUMP, THUMP
Mother marches into his room,
says: “Stop this!
It can’t be good for you, David!
I worry about you.”
She never speaks in a soft, concerned voice,
Why are you doing this, honey?
What’s the matter?
Davy has an entire repertoire
for this habit.
He quits just long enough
for her to leave.
Then bang. Bang. Bang again.
It stops. I can’t make out anything else.
Did she go back in?
Is she hugging him?
Straightening out his blankets?
Her few moments of maternal instinct
for the entire week are spent now.
And as soon as she leaves again,
thump, thump, thump:
a perfect rhythm.
It’s distracting.
I can forget about it for a little while,
but then I can’t doze off,
thump, thump.
He’s not a boy,
he’s a machine.
I tap the wall between us.
“Davy, stop it!”
He misses a thump.
Then another.
“Thank you! Go to sleep!”
But he begins again.
“That’s bad for you, Davy!”
I hear those words as if I didn’t say them.
It is bad for him, really bad.
SAYING “SISTER”
I get up, trot to his door, knock softly.
“Davy, please listen to your sister.”
Saying “sister” somehow makes me
well up with tears.
And then I’m begging:
“Hey, Davy, open the door!”
It does open, slowly.
I notice his glassy eyes,
as if he’s in a trance.
He goes back to bed.
He lets me take his warm, toasty hand.
It hits me:
Davy’s hurting and fragile.
I wait while his eyes drift close.
I hear his soft breathing.
I can’t believe
I never thought about this.
My brother is another me.
GARGOYLE
In my room again
I grab some socks for my cold toes,
crawl farther under the covers.
Sleep begins to brush my eyes.
But Judith barges through my door,
toppling the chair I’d leaned against it,
and flips on the overhead light.
She might as well be snorting fire.
“Where are my glasses, Maisie?”
I get up, stumble around, stub my toe,
don’t see her glasses,
because they’re never
in my room.
Meanwhile, on my small desk,
she spots my latest sketchbook.
She knows I’m always drawing,
knows my eyes are greedy
to see and to learn.
“These pathetic scratches
make you think you have enough talent
to become an artist?”
She laughs.
I answer, “Grandmother knits.
You, Mother, sew.
Creativity runs in the family.”
She flips it to my newest pages, snorts.
“Creativity? That’s what you call this?
What’s it supposed to be?”
“A sock,” I mumble.
“A sock? A sock?”
She tears up my sketch into small
newsprint flakes that float over my carpet.
“There’s your creativity!”
Now I only feel rage at her.
This feeling is uncomplicated.
Uncomfortable, but uncomplicated.
It’s like poison.
What did I ever do to her?
THE QUEEN OF SOMETHING
“These fights between
me and your dad are your fault!
You know that, right?”
I should keep my big mouth shut;
nothing good will come out of it.
But it opens:
“I do know that, Mother.
Everything’s always my fault.
Including that Davy bangs his head
every night.
He’d rather do that
than think about our family.
And that’s because of me?”
She snorts, leaves to go,
probably to her sewing machine,
even at this late hour.
There’s always some stupid evening gown
she’s designing like she’s the queen
of something in her mind.
WHACKED
Heart racing, I gather up my sketch fragments,
dump them, then return to bed,
thinking how, like most babies,
I must have been born ready,
yearning for life.
Until I was whacked
on my newborn behind.
I must have obliged
with a terrifying shriek,
because at that moment,
things fell apart between us.
I’m trouble for my mother;