Good Monster

DIARY ENTRY #34: EPIGENETICSIt’s been eight years and the ancestors in me are still burdened. I don’t know if I am gentle with them. I reheat the coffee in the microwave, find gratitude when they take what’s theirs and leave the rest. There will always be scarcity—less food, less Klonopin— which is to say I own a legacy of fear. Tonight, another grandmother is dying, and I cannot heal her. But I line up my idols like bruises on my belly and perform a nostalgic ritual: I shower with my clothes on like I did as a girl with a man who wanted to be my father, when I became a little bird, helpless to affection. Did he make me a good monster or a bad one? I can keep my cage clean, wipe my mouth with my thumb. PANTOUM IN CASE OF EMERGENCY Don’t call my doctor. Don’t callthe neighbor. Maybe I liketo be devastated, to make a medicineout of neglect. Maybe there is another neighbor in me who doesn’t likeSeptember—another birthday, another yearof neglect, maybe anotherday to smell violence in the air. I barely live till September, another year of birthdaysto stay alive for my eggs, so they can’t be usedfor violence. To leave their smell in the air, sometimesI take a spoonful of pills to bed and see my eggs still alive, never used. SometimesI dream of shoving whole loaves of bread into my mouth,as I spread my worth like pills on the bed. And I can’tstop looking for more bread, even as I spit out whole dreams shaped like loaves, my whole mouthopen wide to the aisle of the grocery store,even as people stop to look for more bread.Each time I come back from the hospital, I open myself wide like an aisle at the grocery store.I throw away the comforter and paint the walls.Each time I come back from the hospital,the deer show up in the parking lot to eat from the bushes. I throw it all away—my comfort, my walls.I’m the doctor you didn’t call.I eat the deer. I eat the bushesto be devastated, to make a medicine.