I guess you could say it's all
inevitable
there is one last everything
They aren't there, like he said, in the shadows with their
creepy spyglasses and
notes about my favorite things
They aren't anywhere, and if they were
I'd be blind to their existence like I was
when he was there
initially and now the image
is a double exposure
Clear and shaded in the foreground by the ghosts of things that were
And still might be and fear
is not a thing that I'll allow and
attachment is a thing that I avoid and
letting go has always been
the easiest part of life
The only things that ever felt like were forever
were the things that tried to take me out
and failed
The cracked ribs the empty spaces where the things that we don't talk about
should have been
The endless fucking bouts of crippling anxiety when the only thing that I knew
was uncertainty and he asks me, this one, now
If you don't tell me
how will I know?
And I might have said, or only thought
(my head last night was hazy from the whiskey and the day)
In ten years, if you're still around, I might
I won't.
Sitting here like nothing, autopilot hair bleach laundry pasta salad lather rinse repeat I am balanced on the edge
Of moving forward
Tasting the blood on my tongue
From staying still.
Spun (for Audrey)
Published April 20, 2022 by April FoxWay back yesterday, we spun ourselves mad in the cold old dark, searching blind for why and wondering where the sea would end wondering how you walked away and simply weren't Way back before when we were small and looked up wistfully at the potbellies and sagging breasts that loomed like storm clouds above our heads we spun ourselves mad in search of attention and the feeling of falling over spun ourselves into the crumpled heaps of bones and dirty laundry that would carry us into adulthood Way back yesterday, we thumbed through magazines spun the laundry damp and poured in things to make it soft, caressed the edges of our cookbooks like the faded faces of lovers we maybe should have kept if nowhere else, tucked away in our pockets creased with age and worn with fear Way back then when we were smug and sure and everything was set in stone and cigarette smoke made shapes against the sky and we touched every single leaf and we tripped quietly and laughed at all the branches making letters in the woods, spelled out every single thing we knew was true, we spun madly laid down in the grass never knew that one day one of us who wasn't yet would walk into the sea and disappear.
Life Boat Blues
Published November 27, 2021 by April FoxI suppose it looks like
I should be drowning
in the proverbial sea of alcohol and tears
but let me tell you
Hank had nothing on me a few years ago and in the interim,
although it seems as though
I'd been saved and pulled aboard
a life raft crafted from his very skin, the truth is I had
carefully and willfully frozen the surface over and I could see
not long ago, the agony that I should feel and I confess
to having ordinary human
compassion and concern
for one I thought was hurting
(and admittedly, that was my mistake, but if those things make me a fool, I'll run the risk each time around)
but I was able to stand
above it all
and walk away
And perhaps I should apologize
for not reading the guidebook
The Modern Middle-Aged Woman's Guide to -- never mind
but the truth is, when it's been a life
of synapse hating synapse and of fighting every day
to keep myself and stay alive, I don't have time
for mindless reading
I'm so sorry
I don't care.
I don't have time to grieve
for things
that never even were
There's so much grief that's been required of me
now
There's no space left to mourn the ending
of some fanfic autobio.
And if I reached out for a hand
-- not the first
and by far not the only --
and let my hedonism rise and shift to
something like the taste of
coffee on a lazy Sunday morning
dark and sweet and lingering
forgive me if I choose this
over drowning
or sitting on the ice and staring down
at the shit below the surface
while I wished for something more.
Jump.
Published November 7, 2021 by April FoxIt's possible
that everything I thought I knew
was true
was false.
It's more likely, in the interest of objectivity
that it's probably a goulash of sorts
true, and not, and quite a few things that had had
the truth scraped away in order to show
the skeletal frame of deception.
It's certain, with very little margin of error
that I don't give a shit.
"You can't just turn it off
like flipping off a light switch."
But you can, if the bulb's been burnt out anyway
and you were only able to keep a hazy field of vision
by making light refract
from somewhere else.
It's already dark
flipping the switch just closes the circuit.
It's possible that I'm a little bit high,
taking a pause from responsibilities to
let a few words creep into my head
and out again
--and none of this
means anything
at all.
That's the one I'd gamble on.
I can look at the clock, now, and predict
when the next touch is coming
when I'll shift from blurry background prop
to something perfectly
but not at all sharply
focused
when I'll connect with this unfiltered life.
I can look at a few simple words scattered across a screen and tell
exactly where I'll be
when I close my eyes at night.
I can tell myself
with prejudice
that this is well-deserved.
I can watch the muscles of his forearm
jump as he leans forward
and know without a doubt
that this part is.
It's possible that everything I've said here is a lie
You never know.
Insomniac Storm Warning
Published November 7, 2021 by April FoxHe talks in his sleep
now and then,
a soft growl
low and deep, that wakes me up
for half a second
like distant thunder
that reminds me that
the storms are there
but miles away.
I'm too old
and cold
and tired
to have time to imagine things like fate
and deities and
predetermination;
karma is a privilege of the good, and the
universe is just a mass
of angry gas, but I have
learned
to heed the warnings and I am
grateful
to have listened when the
sirens all went off and I am not ashamed
to find myself here
sheltered from the rains
that weighed me down and nearly
made me drown.
Whatever's in the distance
has become quite self-contained
If it depletes itself or feeds itself and propagates again
is of no consequence;
there is shelter here
and peace within my walls.
Fin.
Published October 27, 2021 by April FoxThere ain't a single drop of sorrow in this I haven't felt a thing for two years now (up until last week, and that was mostly physical --and we don't need to talk about that, do we? you weren't there.) The house is hazy and there's a whole new type of woodsmoke dripping from my veins Who knew you could make so much room in the front seat of a Mazda 5?
Let's be quiet about this hide in the dark from the shit you're too small and I'm too big to say I'd set it all on fire but I'd just have to clean up the ashes
"You can own the stage but the lights and glares will not make you real." --Margot and the Nuclear So and So's wrote that line and it always felt like pulling me into a centrifuge Spotlight dead center, focused on me trying to pretend to give a shit about the covers and the Super Cool Radio Rock (soon to be) Hits! Bored out of my arrogant little skull. Feeling like the Cheshire Cat invisible aside from the big fake smile and the psychedelic fur.
I pulled out my phone before I knew, started to text my friend I don't think I love him anymore. Saying it felt like sacrilege and I wiped the screen clean and shoved reality off to the side one more fucking time.
Sold all the way out and still don't have shit and here he is walking behind me all the way up the street just because I'll let him
You can own the stage and it don't mean shit if everyone around you is only a prop.
Might Be
Published October 23, 2021 by April Fox
I might be
a little bit drunk, but the fact remains
that he never was.
It never was.
I left this behind
the same way you leave behind
a pile of trash, bits of paper
Once upon a time it meant something and now
You wonder
why the fuck you held on to it in the first place.
Did you need it for a return?
Proof that this thing existed?
Waiting on you, I know
you'll keep me warm
Melt me
into nothing.
Rough Cut
Published October 19, 2021 by April FoxThere's something about a rough edge
one that hasn't been dulled by the constant gaze
of an imaginary spotlight
Not sharp enough to hurt
just sharp enough
to feel.
Conversation, hypothetical
Published September 29, 2021 by April FoxWhat are you looking for?
Nothing.
I don't think you'll find it there.
There's a mannequin in the window, watching you. What's it thinking?
Not anything. Mannequins don't think. They just stare.
Lucky.
Remember the one thing you said, did you mean it?
Of course I did. I never will. I never have. Did you?
Of course.
One day they'll drop the bomb on us. I hope you're here with me.
There was never a point, was there? All the pencils, dulled with use and whittled down to eraser stubs, the pink dregs of mistakes huddled in the bent metal grip like refugees, bits of foil in your gums, chewed up by anxiety --
And the papers, long forgotten, formulas and spelling rules burnt up in time's incinerator
(I didn't coin that phrase; look it up)
And there goes my mind, spiraling back again
To the safety of lost album covers and songs they never played on the radio till they were oldies
And the speakers at the gas pumps tear my ears away
from my battered scalp
The exhaust fumes make big holes inside my eyes
What were you looking for? Did you ever find it?
No. I wasn't looking.
You were blind.
I was blind.
The lights were keeping score, tabulating risk
Halogen predictors of the future.
Why are you so quiet?
Go to hell.
The Economy of Loss
Published September 14, 2021 by April FoxIn this one small act
-- miniscule, undetected by almost
everyone --
there is the end of the world
A heartbeat steady and sure, stopped
by an unseen hand
vibrations stilled
the silence echoing through
a suddenly empty skull
I wish that I could hear what some might say should pass
for reasons why.
In this, there is no vast beyond, no other side;
the existence thereof is inconsequential
anyway
when one is there
and one is here
In the night sounds, I sit waiting
to hear the low thud of a string plucked,
reverberating
Nothing
Just the high-pitched sounds of ignorant, lucky things
with wings.
We are reduced in this to nothing more than the first thing that we knew
I am three years old and watching
my father melt into my mother
the universe closed in around them
I could feel it then, the nothing
the curtain coming down, closing off the reality
of permanence
the shape of letting go.
