Britney

Anne Carson talks about the gender of sound: I am blahblahblah and WOULD YOU BE QUIET ALREADY and banshee wailing in the fifth floor girls’ bathroom. I limit myself to the second and third floors for today, and already I am relieved of the sin of small talk. No one can ignore me now. I’ve all but perfected the art of not being trampled.

I leave Spanish class to cry about my mom and write about her beloved tulips and St. Michael necklace and the plant of mine she watered for almost a decade. I can’t feel her presence in the 79 degree weather but I know that she is not cold wind but fresh air. This is all her. I have to learn to recognize her without the car crash scar and the baby lotion scent.

In my family, we don’t die. My mother has no headstone. Sometimes I think that I’ll open up her ashes and see nothing because this has all been a hoax and she is somewhere in San Fernando becoming one with her mother’s country dirt. I don’t know what I’ll do if I can’t meet her family this summer. It is my last one before I am an adult. I can’t be, I can’t be an adult already. The movement of years makes no sense to me. She would have been 50 when I was 18. My favorite of the soiled milestones.

I am saving up to see them but I haven’t told my father’s side (my caretakers) yet because I hate when logic ruins my plans. I believe in the wildest. If I didn’t I would drop too quickly—the weight of reality would be too much. I know I can do it. She’s watching me. ♦