stuffing my body into the mailbox limb by limb

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the only person to ever know me in full is my brother /who frequently confuses minutes with weeks/ and can’t say the word Oklahoma/ and has called me everything but my name since the day he was born./ I have been derivations of myself in his growing English language,/ his first curse word/ and his loudest sob./ that day, restrained in the doctor’s office, was ironically the closest he has gotten to full syllabic count/ I wonder what constraint broke loose in his chest/ how desperate he must have been to finally say it when he thought he was dying./ how I didn’t speak at all for days after/ just clutched onto him like a stuffed animal when I would say goodnight.

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I say he is the only person who knew me partly because only he and I can understand what is true/ what we wish would not be/ last year I wrote a poem where I finally admitted he would die before me/ I felt like I had given birth to a long-ago formed knowledge/ and had just remembered 16 years later to name it grief/ after its mother.

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when I read the title aloud/ I felt that vocal chord he must have severed tear just a bit/ I bit my tongue, built a bandage out of tissue/ and called it spring cleaning./ I have outpoured so much I am numb/ I have unpacked circles of youth that I had forgotten to unbind./ there has since been something floating in the air/ it smells like October in the middle of June/ it smells like you in the middle of spring/ I recognize a face in the mist of perfume/ and I believe that she in return recognized me.

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I missed his birthday/ and made him a video that was four minutes and thirty seconds long/ he refused to watch any of it/ I can’t blame him/ I have recently grown to realize that I would miss myself too/ that I have been for years/ I have scattered pieces of myself in every friendship I have had/ never comprehensive/ never even enough to be considered true/ people I once called my safe space never knew more than one season of who I was/ spent years living in stop motion/ in the freezeframes of head on collision/ I would take a head start/ run towards myself/ switch form mid-air/ and land in a new body; somehow it still felt like home.

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somehow I lost meaning of the word home/ I was quadri-headed and each had too niche of comfort zones to ever overlap/ I embody the gemini/ I am a set of fraternal twins each going through an identity crisis/ multiplying like cells when they come in contact with a virus/ I never programmed my body to protect myself from myself/ she had always seemed so sweet/ told me pretty things/ would end up dead on the counter next day/ regenerating./ I have lost count of the versions of myself I have killed off.

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I cut up my trauma into five equal pieces /and dispersed them into individual suitcases/ took these past lives and sent them on their way/ was terrified of the intersections/ each only knew as much as I told them/ little to no facts overlapping/ they were all me, but at the same time none of them were completely true/ K knew the most/ we both had our secrets/ most of them the same ones/ but the others we knew well enough./ we had spent years on the school bus continuously bumping our foreheads together /in attempts to mind-meld/ I wish I were kidding when I said it worked/ a lot of people don’t believe in clairsentience/ but I felt when she was lying on the bathroom floor/ she knew when I was near passed out in the shower./ after her attempt she came to me sobbing/ saying she was so sorry/ I think she thought if it worked it would have killed us both.

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that is a fraction of that story/ a part I am allowed to talk about/ a part I allow myself to talk about so that people have context for my catatonic episodes/ how I get used up like a battery for someone else’s pain/ nonresponsive/ over the years I have become cyclical/ memory is wiped/ muscle memory remains/ I know dance and how to drop to the ground/ how to walk fast/ and how to curl in/ how to jump out of a moving car and how to cry/ I think that may be the last thing left./ there are still water stains from 2015 in my lungs/ I am still heaving to make them slip away./ even when I was coasting I was in flooded territory/ everything I loved was coated in what I had lost/ and I was too poor to buy sufficient cleaning products/ too immobile to go to the store/ too afraid to get in the car/ too afraid to leave/ more afraid to come back home/ I don’t remember home/ her name rings a bell/ I think I loved her once.

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I know a boy who lives there/ he used to call me issy/ not so much anymore/ I remember her when I can make out a shape through the distance/ move the clouds out of the frame in photoshop/ drag a video to the timestamp and hit play/ while he looks away./ so I suppose he does not know me on this day of this year/ and it makes me want to bury myself in the carpet/ make a wish/ get higher than I’ve ever been/ so that I can pretend to fly back to his hospital bed/ go back to all of the different beds I’ve slept in/ the cold floors I’ve slept on/ in the houses of people in whom I housed parts of myself/ last time I was at the blue house I noticed the nerf dart had fallen from the skylight after eight years/ I had the urge to go to the store and buy a new one and a ladder/ put time back in its place with my own two hands but I didn’t/ I looked away and noticed the imprint left in dust.

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in quarantine we had spring cleaning/ I opened box after box/ uncovered self after self/ laid them all out side by side/ how many there were/ but this time I noticed the transitions/ the ways in which the threads matched color around the edges/ rearranged them to go by linearity/ then intensity/ then pure favoritism/ and then truth/ yet they were all true/ I played dress up/ chose the things I couldn’t live without/ my body doesn’t seem big enough to fit all of this trauma/ all of this too much/ but I have always been damn good at packing suitcases/ will sit on the top and contort my body until the sweater sleeves stay in/ I have stopped caring if extra pieces stick out the sides/ I have made myself into a homemade valentines box, overflowing with the girl who overshares/ and the one that nestles herself deep inside the nerds carton/ I will walk/ limbs stuck out/ pillows duck taped to middle if that is what I have to do/ I will still be walking/ and if I get tired I will have a soft place to sleep.

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when my brother calls, he calls until I answer, we both pour until we run out/ after call number fourteen I emerge from the shower and pick up/ he calls me a version of my name with more emphasis on the second vowel this year/ he lets out a witch’s cackle and tells me something we both know to be true/ I miss you/ and I say yes/ me too.

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