On my twenty-sixth birthday you come to my door and try to kidnap my baby fat. The click from the door splinters my ear while I’m in the shower. Cool sweat prickles my skin as I hear you probe the front door of my home as if it were the plastic Barbie playhouse we shared when we were small.

Towel wrapped, I tweeze you from my living room, but you parrot your hauntings outside the windows:

Memories. I want our memories.

___

Jars slouch together on garage shelves—our histories siphoned into glass. Six-year-old teeth, fingernail clippings, toddler snot, spit-up from burp rags, lice from our hairbrushes that were later used for Britney Spears karaoke.

My hands tremor as I collect them. I have not sorted out which are mine and which are yours for the taking. My fingers read their labels, to give my eyes a vacation from this vacuum-sealed gallery.

rotting

Squirrels and mice we planted in the backyard. A string of ribbon tied to my eight-year-old molars, the other end—our bedroom door knob. My soggy eggplant tampon that you told me I hadn’t put in correctly. My three-year-old hair you liberally hacked off with kitchen scissors. Unapologies you made while holding laughter like vomit in your teeth. Roaches, squashed with books and smeared into glitter—the penny-sized ones that were good at hiding under our dolls eyelashes—Mama told us they’d crawl up the toilet bowl if you try to flush them away, and I asked you if Santa crawls up the chimney the same way.

Who? You asked.

Santa.

He isn’t real, you said.


regurgitated

Beach sand you swallowed as a baby; cyclical skeletons of seashells and crabs. Grilled chicken, bread and cheese I pushed aside on my plate, that you vacuumed up. The first man that Facebooked me, asking for photos. I said that I wasn’t interested in him beyond friendship, so you stood up like a goalie and gobbled him whole. The Avril Lavigne CD I bought for you. Tokens from Chuck-E-Cheeze—the ones  you convinced my friends to give you to set up a manicurist business with press-on Pepto Bismol nails.

A lilac training bra, you wore and gave to me.

Makes your boobs come in, you said.

The lightbulb you bit before I was born; a Harry Potter bolt of lightning on your tongue. A scar you’ve snugly held in your mouth, just like I’ve protected your name.


toys

Violin strings, worn from practicing Minuet 1 and that one about the grasshopper. Love potions that contained hair we gathered from our crushes—including the one of yours you stole to rub deodorant in the crotch. Polyvinyl hair from our eight-year-old friend’s Mary-Kate Olsen Barbie. Paprika crabs that we’d find sashaying across our living room carpet, escaping their tank. The first time you showed me porn I thought I was seeing a woman trying to swallow a snake. It isn’t real, you told me and I asked if we could go back to playing our Busy Town CD-ROM. A closet full of Christmas presents you opened to prove to me that Santa wasn’t real. A map of our apartment complex, an escape plan with our bubblegum Barbie jeep. Don’t worry, you’d say, I saw it in a movie once. The plan never worked, we needed more D batteries. A Dollar-Tree rhinestoned tiara. Curtains from our bedroom we shared as teens, left open whenever, because I was unaware that you were hiding your boyfriend in a tent outside.

It doesn’t matter, you told me later.

The hemorrhoid-pink bathing suit I wore when your boyfriend sleeved his hand up and down my thigh.

It didn’t happen like that. You told me.

It isn’t real. You told me.

It isn’t real. You told me.

It isn’t real. You told me.

___

Your foot stomps like a clock as the policemen hand over the jars. The officer tells me that next time, this is something that should be done between family. There won’t be a next time, I want to say. This is all there is left. None of these were yours to begin with. In my head I say this, despite the fact that it isn’t true, for every time I step through the front door it asks why I did not let you in. And every strand of gold in my hair does arithmetic on how long has it been since I’ve brushed yours.

If you come back asking for more, I will scrape the dandruff from my scalp, squeeze the jelly from my eyes and wring the sour from my armpits. I will tell you there are some constituents that are living too deep under my skin. Elements that maybe, in a few hundred years, you can collect with a magnifying glass and masticate them with the stubborn overbite of a god. I will offer them, as you perversely scratch on each drain fly that circles my existence, pacing the floorboards of my peace of mind, shouting to the world:

Don’t worry. I saw it in a movie once.

Powered by Froala Editor

Powered by Froala Editor