somewhere on the east coast

The day after the fireworks, the sky coughs up blood. The bruises resemble that time I fell against the concrete and couldn’t recall my name. How many sutures will heal the clouds from our electrical outbursts?  

Is my body too old to change? This is what I am thinking about when visiting my mother in New Jersey in the first few days of July during a stroke of heat. I study the loose skin on her arms. The spaces between the words she tries to remember. I used to live inside her and now I can barely catch my breath even with all this space around me. Where am I supposed to be?

I have removed my hair and breasts, yet still seem to be recognized as someone I’ve never been. I consider getting a name tag Hello, My Name Is… tattooed on my chest, my arms, anywhere they stare. I will include my pronouns, allergies, the patches of necrosis haunting my insides.

My mother and I talk about ways we could die. I tell her about pillows and bathtubs. We can speak about this now. She says she’s at the end of her life and I,    and I    have always been.

Dear New York, we met during my lonely period. We’ve done some horrible things to each other and yet I keep coming back. What am I expecting from you? On a day so hot my teeth melt, I walk through my old neighborhoods and recognize all the spaces I lost myself. Gave myself away. Was broken up with, broken into. I push myself into the Gowanus to burn away the evidence of a life never really lived. I float amidst yellow-bellied sapsuckers, coal tar, tunicates, volatile compounds, sewage and kingfishers and mercury and me. In the water, my body is hidden. I prefer it this way.

Last night, I went to bed hungry because I couldn’t remember what hunger meant.

Over a plate of freshly stretched pasta, I talk with two others about all the ways we must start over,

the rip of the splinters we pull from our bodies from each door that slams us out.

I am bleeding through everything. My body is a reservoir of eggs no one wants. I stuff a giant wad of toilet paper in my underwear. There is so much blood. Like the sky the day after. Like that time I had a panic attack outside of that bar and fell forward, cracking teeth, cracking bone. Like that time my mother tried to clock out from a life I thought she wanted. Like all those days in the back row of the classroom, trying to undo myself. Like our bodies, every day, pumping, pumping our selves out the door.