lotus roadkill
"Find the drugs," Bobbi thought. "Find the drugs and stop looking." Mr. Laddyac was the school's geek enforcer, this cat with thick glasses and polyester pants hiked up tight around his dick. He was always a breath away from screaming. His job was to punish the damned. At the time, no one thought the task redundant.
At the moment, he was rifling through Bobbi's bag like a ferret. "Find the drugs and punish me. Expel me, whip me, do whatever you're going to do. Just find the drugs."
She started whispering it, as if to sneak it into his subconscious, just loud enough where he thought he heard her say something. Nah, just another girl prayin to God to help her out of a bad situation she shouldn'ta gotten her ass into anyways. In fact, it had come to that. In a last act of desperation, she did what everyone else does. Bobbi, our little misanthrope atheist turned her command to God, "Give him the drugs and make him stop there, just don't let him find the knife."
The drugs in question were negligible. A sandwhich bag too small for a sandwhich, with Pac Men running across it. A few bucks of shake and seeds. Then there was the pipe. It was her mother's. It was her mother's crack pipe. She took it every morning so her mom would have a better chance of getting to work. She took it because if she hid it, her mother would look for it, tear apart the house like some scared, caged squirrel.
The knife was hers. It had blood on it. The blood was also hers, maybe the seventh layer since she'd last cleaned the blade. She didn't like to clean it, she liked the blood. It was hers, and had dried the shade of an old plum. He found the blade, aghast, thinking it the product of a fight that had gone unnoticed on school grounds. A potential million-dollar lawsuit. The music teacher and maybe a couple aide's jobs. Questions about security. Reform. The local news. Skippy Jacobson. The chain was broken when he found her arm.
She was left handed like me. Under her wrist a criss had just been crossed. It hadn't yet scabbed and settled into a soft ivory. When it did, her arm would give the impression that it was laced up. Delicately. She was as delicate as a surgeon with the switchblade her boyfriend bought her.
She spilled. Tears and words and that was it. Bobbi, our little anarchist Bobbi, in black dresses and secretary specs, who wrote poetry that sounded like everyone else's but was a good degree better, was gone. We don't know if DCFS actually got her. She was 16 and had run away from tougher guards before. Someone picked open her locker and her things were treated like holy relics. Her boyfriend took her notebooks with him wherever he went. Just in case.
.
There was a pair of twins I grew up with at art camp; the only way you could tell them apart was the one who was born first had tiger stripes up and down her left arm. At 19 she got em filled in at a tattoo shack on the Indiana border, and her sister says it was the only time she'd ever seen her cry, which was a lie. Dramatic effect. There was a time when every other night she'd drain a bottle of vodka and cry it all out.
There was another girl who did her own tattoos the way she cut her own hair. They were good enough and she got bored of em quickly. She sat in the back of the bus, jabbing at her leg with a Bic slathered in India ink.She laughed at pain. At least she said so. Often. She laughed a lot and a lot of the time you couldn't tell why. She carved tic-tac-toe boards all up her arms and legs. She played wityh older boys, from the high school. Big dumb punks with nice clothes, thick jaws and blackheads around their lips. Some of the games were permanent, immortalized, initialed even; the wall of fame. The others were in marker. Sometimes she'd win and sometimes she'd lose. She was always exes, they were always squares.
I dated a girl who treated pain like the ascetics, like warrior priests and flagellists. She was Catholic and carved into her feet as she cried. Her father drank a lot and yelled a lot and some days she could hardly walk from the pain. I'd prop her arm over me and lead her around. It wasn't a cry for help. At least I hope not. I helped her keep her secret from everybody else. As far as I knew, it was meditation.
Me? I have lines. Simple lines across my legs, because my arms attracted too much attention. Each of the lines has a name, the name of some person I no longer talk to, of the persons who inspired them. An odd proportion of the names are Jewish, none of them are Black. This doesn't mean anything. It's just facts. Figures. There's a Ben, a Joshua, Robert, Krystal, Manuel, a Zack, a Dave...Laura. There are two long ones that run parallel, crossing the rest. The first shares my name, because in the end, it all comes from me. The second one I call God, because I really can't take it all on myself. I've thought of dating them, so that you can use them to age me like the rings of a tree. Either way, it seems morbid.
Meghan never cut herself. She had one white circle, a perfect circle between her breasts. Its name is Ibrahim, for the son she couldn't carry to term. She took one of her fathers cigars and held it against her chest as close as she could get to her heart. The blister stood an inch and a half from the skin, an inch and a half in diameter. She says it's the same size as her son's head. She covers it with the tips of her fingers during foreplay, and rarely smiles, flinches when a freak breeze flows through it, and her face wrinkles around the eyes.
I saw Bobbi once, reading a paper downtown. She had a shaved head and a checkered dress. It was white and red. She had a round face the color of a saddle. She was smoking. Winstons. Still. The wheels didn't linger long enough for my stare to reach her. She read undisturbed, and ate an apple. I thought it was her but maybe not, a ghost maybe, a spectre, her to the next power even. I still don't know, I never saw her again. At least I never thought I did.
There's one thing of hers I have. A harmonica. I was standing around when they were going through her locker. I was always standing around when shit was happening. I saw it fall onto the floor and I snatched it up. I sit on my roof and play it while I look into other people's apartments. I imagine that the moon is Bobbi, a very adorable and terribly ugly, awkward adolescent I had a crush on and never really spoke to. I play to make her leave and come back again. Sometimes she laughs, like the girl on the bus with the chelsea cut jabbing exes into her arm, sometimes she smiles and exhales another puff of smoke. I'm still learning. I don't get onto my roof much, and often I just hum at a window, only to find her out there already, waiting for me. I wonder which one of us will quit first.
Tomorrow, perhaps, the sky will be black. A million stars like diamond gnats, but no Bobbi, and I will wait at my window like Estragon and Charlie Brown, blowing into an instrument I've no clue how to play, hoping that the sound drives her further, to some place she won't have to run from when the sun is near.
At the moment, he was rifling through Bobbi's bag like a ferret. "Find the drugs and punish me. Expel me, whip me, do whatever you're going to do. Just find the drugs."
She started whispering it, as if to sneak it into his subconscious, just loud enough where he thought he heard her say something. Nah, just another girl prayin to God to help her out of a bad situation she shouldn'ta gotten her ass into anyways. In fact, it had come to that. In a last act of desperation, she did what everyone else does. Bobbi, our little misanthrope atheist turned her command to God, "Give him the drugs and make him stop there, just don't let him find the knife."
The drugs in question were negligible. A sandwhich bag too small for a sandwhich, with Pac Men running across it. A few bucks of shake and seeds. Then there was the pipe. It was her mother's. It was her mother's crack pipe. She took it every morning so her mom would have a better chance of getting to work. She took it because if she hid it, her mother would look for it, tear apart the house like some scared, caged squirrel.
The knife was hers. It had blood on it. The blood was also hers, maybe the seventh layer since she'd last cleaned the blade. She didn't like to clean it, she liked the blood. It was hers, and had dried the shade of an old plum. He found the blade, aghast, thinking it the product of a fight that had gone unnoticed on school grounds. A potential million-dollar lawsuit. The music teacher and maybe a couple aide's jobs. Questions about security. Reform. The local news. Skippy Jacobson. The chain was broken when he found her arm.
She was left handed like me. Under her wrist a criss had just been crossed. It hadn't yet scabbed and settled into a soft ivory. When it did, her arm would give the impression that it was laced up. Delicately. She was as delicate as a surgeon with the switchblade her boyfriend bought her.
She spilled. Tears and words and that was it. Bobbi, our little anarchist Bobbi, in black dresses and secretary specs, who wrote poetry that sounded like everyone else's but was a good degree better, was gone. We don't know if DCFS actually got her. She was 16 and had run away from tougher guards before. Someone picked open her locker and her things were treated like holy relics. Her boyfriend took her notebooks with him wherever he went. Just in case.
.
There was a pair of twins I grew up with at art camp; the only way you could tell them apart was the one who was born first had tiger stripes up and down her left arm. At 19 she got em filled in at a tattoo shack on the Indiana border, and her sister says it was the only time she'd ever seen her cry, which was a lie. Dramatic effect. There was a time when every other night she'd drain a bottle of vodka and cry it all out.
There was another girl who did her own tattoos the way she cut her own hair. They were good enough and she got bored of em quickly. She sat in the back of the bus, jabbing at her leg with a Bic slathered in India ink.She laughed at pain. At least she said so. Often. She laughed a lot and a lot of the time you couldn't tell why. She carved tic-tac-toe boards all up her arms and legs. She played wityh older boys, from the high school. Big dumb punks with nice clothes, thick jaws and blackheads around their lips. Some of the games were permanent, immortalized, initialed even; the wall of fame. The others were in marker. Sometimes she'd win and sometimes she'd lose. She was always exes, they were always squares.
I dated a girl who treated pain like the ascetics, like warrior priests and flagellists. She was Catholic and carved into her feet as she cried. Her father drank a lot and yelled a lot and some days she could hardly walk from the pain. I'd prop her arm over me and lead her around. It wasn't a cry for help. At least I hope not. I helped her keep her secret from everybody else. As far as I knew, it was meditation.
Me? I have lines. Simple lines across my legs, because my arms attracted too much attention. Each of the lines has a name, the name of some person I no longer talk to, of the persons who inspired them. An odd proportion of the names are Jewish, none of them are Black. This doesn't mean anything. It's just facts. Figures. There's a Ben, a Joshua, Robert, Krystal, Manuel, a Zack, a Dave...Laura. There are two long ones that run parallel, crossing the rest. The first shares my name, because in the end, it all comes from me. The second one I call God, because I really can't take it all on myself. I've thought of dating them, so that you can use them to age me like the rings of a tree. Either way, it seems morbid.
Meghan never cut herself. She had one white circle, a perfect circle between her breasts. Its name is Ibrahim, for the son she couldn't carry to term. She took one of her fathers cigars and held it against her chest as close as she could get to her heart. The blister stood an inch and a half from the skin, an inch and a half in diameter. She says it's the same size as her son's head. She covers it with the tips of her fingers during foreplay, and rarely smiles, flinches when a freak breeze flows through it, and her face wrinkles around the eyes.
I saw Bobbi once, reading a paper downtown. She had a shaved head and a checkered dress. It was white and red. She had a round face the color of a saddle. She was smoking. Winstons. Still. The wheels didn't linger long enough for my stare to reach her. She read undisturbed, and ate an apple. I thought it was her but maybe not, a ghost maybe, a spectre, her to the next power even. I still don't know, I never saw her again. At least I never thought I did.
There's one thing of hers I have. A harmonica. I was standing around when they were going through her locker. I was always standing around when shit was happening. I saw it fall onto the floor and I snatched it up. I sit on my roof and play it while I look into other people's apartments. I imagine that the moon is Bobbi, a very adorable and terribly ugly, awkward adolescent I had a crush on and never really spoke to. I play to make her leave and come back again. Sometimes she laughs, like the girl on the bus with the chelsea cut jabbing exes into her arm, sometimes she smiles and exhales another puff of smoke. I'm still learning. I don't get onto my roof much, and often I just hum at a window, only to find her out there already, waiting for me. I wonder which one of us will quit first.
Tomorrow, perhaps, the sky will be black. A million stars like diamond gnats, but no Bobbi, and I will wait at my window like Estragon and Charlie Brown, blowing into an instrument I've no clue how to play, hoping that the sound drives her further, to some place she won't have to run from when the sun is near.
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