POLLINATION
I let you wait by the raincoats, mom. We already picked out a suitcase. This was the last time I saw you, wearing a drugstore tank top and a cold chain wrapped around your burglar alarm - a nickel for a view of the moon, your socks were stained. For lunch we sat on the train and ate chili fries, we didn’t have any money left on our debit cards, the ceiling was rotting away above us. We could have gotten the grilled peppers and fried chicken.
The waitress was pregnant, her girlfriend managed the register - she didn’t drink whisky, never liked the taste of it, wasn’t sure what all the hype was about, she liked strawberry lemonade on Saturday nights and hot chocolate on Thursdays, sold her record player to pay off some old utility bill. Later in the morning I got hit on by this girl at the used car lot that me and mom went to take a piss in. She was eligible for parole in the spring, the girl at the lot. I told her we were just passing through but that she was cute, mom blushed at my comment. I’m sure she had her unspoken crushes herself on women when she was younger.
I don’t know where we were, somewhere outside of Utah. At the train station mom and I overheard a few conversations that kept us distracted from our pending separation. Baby, be good. Mom spit onto the break lights of the train and rubbed it clean. I told her I’d see her again, in a month or two, and we smoked a few cigarettes as everyone boarded.
TOPOGRAPHY OF THE GAZE
This is the last time I’ll work as a dishwasher but everyone knows that eventually you’ll find me back there, sorting cutlery and scraping bleach off the walls. I got diaper rash on my face I said out loud, pacing around the Filipino barbershop with a dozen of those two-for-one deals tucked between my forearms. A few pairs of socks for Milos, one for me too. Electric yellow and brown, what a selection. The store specialized in wristwatches without batteries, and glow in the dark chapstick. Opalescent spiders that resembled small crabs were watching me from the shelf of ratty oversized blue jeans, and the air smelt of wet panties, burnt onions, and moist pollo hot off the grill. The whole room is arranged to represent a human need, but the temperature strikes me as invaluable. Although if I ever decided to get married, this would be the spot. I chew on the deflated balloon in my back pocket, I do it when I get depressed, the sound of the rubber in my jaw is like a miracle. I growled at the kids who were making faces at me from behind the milk cartons. You don’t smile at the passerby only cos’ you might get a punch in the face, but if you’re a bleeder you get followed to your car. That's why I keep an axe in there. The other night the internet had finally collapsed. I heard it might rain this year, too. Should make my way back to bed before I get robbed. You’re asking why I’m a dishwasher at a barbershop, but if you understood the way businesses were run out here in the royal shit hole, you’d find such logistics to be ordinary. Each store front has at least two other businesses going on inside, it’s the only way for these places to stay open. Everything closes early. Once the sun goes down you don’t wanna be out there when the extreme assholes come out to play. Sometimes I get nervous when I’m alone out here. Out of the corner of my peripherals I see a large brown rodent of some sorts who’s gripping its claws onto the cement, holding on. I remove my eyeglasses to keep the glare from aiding my hallucination, but then I can’t see as good without them. I once had an electric toothbrush, hot water was a luxury in those days too. At the gas station I’m lucky if the tap vomits lukewarm out its moldy spout. Today we make an exception though, as I have company.
It’s 5am. Here in the dark wondering where I went wrong, as a flame from a candle burns a hole into the roof of my car. I’m thumbing through an event catalogue. Live piano music downtown, lectures on state prisons. In the early dawn all I wanted were some fresh hash-browns, maybe a greeting card I’ll send off to someone eventually. I got busted last night and didn’t tell Milos. Lost a hundred bucks. Which entails that one of us has gotta sell something, and I was all out of unadulterated urine.
Another night of lying awake. Worrying about missing out on the very thing that she so easily had access to. A deep sleep. Moving her hair from out her mouth, I tucked Milos in and crawled back to the front seat of my car. Tied a rag around the torn part of my pants to keep the cold air from giving me another stomach ache. If only instead I could create a diversion. Something that would help me forget the situation, so all the loose ends would again tighten. Once in a while I have a moment to myself where I can clearly see ahead, foretell all that I’ve been working toward. Although what I’ve noticed is that the second I feel safe and hopeful, it all comes crashing down around me. As if my optimism had somehow organized a silent collapse.
“We shoulda parked somewhere with more shade.” She mumbled, sitting up now, her jeans stinking up the car, the ones she pissed in the other night. Smells like hell in here, but it was home. Advantageous was the sky. That miracle wilderness which crippled my universal modernity, observed by my subsequent grin. Bacteria, the architecture of a gentle tongue, the sleep of surrogates. I was offered, for once, a freedom by that which I’d awaken to from my driver’s side front seat. This very sound, the sun, rose to a degree I could understand, as it’s warm aurulent glow caressed my tired eyes. I had found some cherries in a bag by my feet and rolled them around in my hands for a while, smashing the over-ripe ones into my ratty blue silk skirt. Milos got up suddenly, turning about like water, shifting into a kaleidoscope - her veined hands distracting me like a fungi. We had collected the larvae at sunrise last week, where we’d made it past the shit city and into the clearing. Feeling impatient, we imagined that we were tossing coins into a toilet,
“Make a wish!”
“In the shitter?”
“It’s all we’ve got.” I anticipated the sound of the small heavy coins drowning at the bottom of the hypothetical porcelain.