Birds on a Wire
by E. Kristin Anderson
(after Prince)
What would you say if I told you tonight that half a Klonopin
isn’t enough? My toes are shaking. My piano is possessed
and my eyes will not stay closed. I open my mouth so you can
see the colors on my tongue. Look at this false start—
ink smeared on the page, dirty fingers curled around nothing.
My guitar is a gaping maw. My printer consumes toner
like a struggling addict. Watch me affix postage stamps
to melodies. Shout into the vapor, curl around telephone lines.
My dad called to make sure I wasn’t having an emergency.
I told him I was afraid of falling down and running out of money.
He had to pack a suitcase. It rains and the cracked dirt soaks it up.
It rains and I hear my name in the echo. Jokes make my friends
comfortable and I sink deeper into a pillow, twitch like a shadow
on the wall, yell at the TV. I am afraid to watch you. What I hear
is its own real. That real, with half a Klonopin, is enough.
I email friends. I switch on lights. Curl my whole body into itself
until I am invisible, except not, because there is no such thing.
There is only beauty and emptiness. Watch: I will empty myself.
Give me a tambourine, and I’ll dance as it all leaves me—
every birthday, dream, death, try, do, fail. It lands in a puddle
at my feet and sinks into the sand. What is your truth? This is mine—
the one I can’t tell my father while he’s on vacation. I ate
four cupcakes tonight and now I’m awake, looking for America
in a solid oak headboard, strings falling over me as if I
could remember where they go on those black and white lines.
E. Kristin Anderson is a Pushcart nominated poet and author who grew up in Westbrook, Maine, and is a graduate of Connecticut College. She has a fancy diploma that says “B.A. in Classics,” which makes her sound smart but has not helped her get any jobs in Ancient Rome. Kristin is the co-editor ofDear Teen Me,an anthology based on the popular website. Her YA memoir The Summer of Unraveling is forthcoming in 2017 from ELJ Publications. She now lives in Austin, Texas, where she works as a freelance editor and is trying to trick someone into publishing her full-length collection of erasure poems based on women’s and teen magazines. She blogs at EKristinAnderson.com and tweets at @ek_anderson.