It stings.
I can't tell you what
because you wouldn't understand.
My hands
guilty
in their helplessness
do whatever I tell them to do.
I am calling home.
Because I've run out of money
food
the tangible things
I am crying
I am looking for a place to sit down.
I've heard sitting
is the new smoking.
Squatting is how
our primal ancestors
"sat" my friend says
dropping down into a squat
question-eyes half-smile mouth open
the facial shorthand for, "Yeah?"
She is a teacher
and squatting is her new cause.
I am squatting now
to please her.
I feel ridiculous.
My rear end suspended an inch
above the ground I feel
the way a dog's ears and eyes
look when it stops to shit.
I am squatting
and it stings
my quads
my unnatural body
so used
to being unnatural
programmed to do the wrong
things eat wrong foods
drink wrong quantities
say wrong words
think wrong thoughts
think that I am somehow
a better person
then realizing that I'm not
tear myself open
while I close my
self layer after layer
door after
door
I am in too many rooms
I am walking
into the back of
the painting now
they say that the painters
deliberately make the background
blurry make the bristles
make the soft fuzz around
the outlines of trees
make all the colors
a little less brilliant
because that's what being far
away feels like in real life
a little less brilliant
and I am in my house
in the deepest recesses of it
stinging
singing
I am laughing I am crying
I am inching along all the borders
cotton blotting my body
with peroxide I am not
forgiving myself
but I am wondering,
if this is my home,
where are all the
dishes
tables
chairs
where are all the people
where am I
and why is it so hard
to find a door?