Poetry: “intervention with an imagined older me” by Natalie Gates

the first thing i can say is
it is so clean in here
sea spray tickles my cheeks
abandoning the ocean for my face
through the open window
                                                             she laughs our mother’s laugh
                                                                  i store the mess over here
i look to where she gestures
with her manicured fingertip and
index the corner’s calamity
          old receipts, a decorative christmas napkin,
          a dog toy soiled with slobber, a plastic fork
          with broken prongs, two water damaged
          books (the white album, white nights), five
          pairs of underwear—all black and lacy but one
          toiled, torn straight down the crotch
i run my nail over the shredded seam
                                                             she swats my hand playfully
                                                        i like to hold on to memories now
can’t you just write them?
                                                                       sure, we can do both
i’m not sure i can
i think
of the journals i keep under my bed
each spiral bound book abandoned after twelve entries
of how i buy more and more and more with the private promise
that i’ll fill that one until it’s full
i hold on too much unless i write it down
                                                             there’s no such thing as too much
                     she takes a slice of her hair and coils it around
                                                             her finger, around around around
do you still feel sideways?
i ask and await her answer with a dry
tongue, afraid she’ll say yes,
afraid she’ll say
                                                                       no, not the way you do
i think
of myself yesterday
decorative pillow imprinting my face

of how i don’t know how to nap or grieve

of how the ethernet cable dangled so lamely off the wall
of how the popcorn sheetrock was beige beige beige
of how when i got the phone call that papa died
          i was in that mental hospital that posed as a house,
          everyone in my family was out of california so they
          couldn’t tell me in person, i was excused from our daily
          ukulele lessons and laid on the bed upstairs and let
          the out-of-tune melodies melt over me because i couldn’t
          close the door because we didn’t have doors there,
          it sounded sideways, i never ate that year but when the staff
          asked what they could do for me, i demanded a large pizza
          and ate every slice and licked all the grease off my fingers
          one-by-one, staring out the window as the sun slowly sank
          for hours and hours and hours into the pacific until the sun
          died just like my grandfather had
of how he was just the first who would
of how it felt like no one should ever be allowed to die
of how i rang in twenty in that big florida house i hated
          four bedrooms but i lived alone, mom and dad came to see
          me that week, i cried the whole time because i wasn’t a
          teenager anymore and everyone who’s worth anything
          becomes something while they’re still a teenager, dad fed
          me an edible and glasses of wine until suddenly i wasn’t
          crying anymore and it was ten pm and the crime television
          show felt like real life and i realized i was welcoming
          twenty how my father had lived the past twenty years of his
          life—drunk and bit stoned and watching the television with
          such intoxicated intent that it’s as if the characters could
          crawl out of the screen and re-pixelate in the living room
          and play choose-your-own-adventure with you
of how i didn’t like it much but it felt nice to understand him
of how everything looks so heavy when it looks so sideways
when i’m so sideways
when supposedly one day i won’t be
how?
                                                                                   she pats my head
                                                                           she smells like daisies
                                                                                                    she says
                                                                                                   you’ll see