Once I started talking to myself like I was someone 

else it was the only way that made any sense to think 

about anything: you notice the acorns now. 

You comb your hair. You miss your mom. You 

are not a good daughter. You were about to say this 

mechanism makes it easier to forgive yourself. 


I know I never was a child but still I have to ask, 

is everyone grown up now but me? I am getting older 

now and I still want people to want to fuck me but mostly 

I am concerned that I might not be getting any smarter 

nor any kinder, that I might not have really learned anything

after all, that I will die asking myself the difference between 

precious things I am afraid to touch, that death is our only lasting 

invention, that there is nothing more commonplace. 


*


Most likely several twenty-two year old women with baby 

daughters died last week but only one of them was your baby 

cousin. You are wondering if America did not break your mother, 

too, if blame is the reed your mother breathed through jungle nights 

until the bayonets passed, if the reed is what swung your mother’s hand. 

Your mother isn’t dead but you miss her anyway. You believe 

in dead things, old trees, some stones, your ghosts, that every death 

is commonplace except the death of someone you love.