I’ve been trying to lift myself up by my bootstraps, but every time I hook my index
finger through the loops on the sides and pull, I somersault off the couch.
•
My sisters say no one wants to hire a pus risk, and it’s true that I can’t get a job. Still,
I’m determined. Even though I can’t afford skincare, I can afford a sparkling water at
Whole Foods. At Whole Foods, I pick up a sparkling water, its green glass catching
the light. I pick up skincare, too. When I drop my phone in my bag in the spice aisle, I
drop the skincare in my bag. I purchase my sparkling water. I let it dance in my throat
on my way out.
•
One month later, my skin is smoother, but I still can’t get a job. I’m told by the
internet that there are no jobs in our ghoul-governed town.
•
Every once in a while, I go to the bank and attempt to withdraw money I don’t have
from the ATM, but there’s still nothing for me no matter what I wish. The
ghouls kick me out for the sixth time.
•
The next time I go to the bank, I come in a forklift I borrowed from my brother-in-
law, who works in construction and insists that we should all make it on our own.
Forklifts are easy to operate, because they are so similar to cars. Easier than clearing up
my skin. I take the ATM and pay back 12% of my loans to the ghoul who keeps
calling on behalf of a bank whose name keeps changing. I’ve never been to the island
where the banks all live and change their names, but I know that where there ought to
be sand, they have concrete and steel. No tomato blossoms or pine sap. Something
like a wasteland.
•
A ghoul’s cameras can’t find me if I look like David Bowie. I paint my face blue and
paste over my eyebrows. I draw squares and triangles over my features. People look
twice, and I keep walking.
•
When I find like-faced friends on the street, we drink beer brewed in buckets in the
closet, leaving blue and pink and orange on our glasses so we know whose is whose.
At the end of the night, we dance home, spinning circles around potholes and kissing
one another on the mouth, catching our hair on each others piercings when we cross
paths.
•
One of my friends shows me how easy it is to snake into a system, their long nails
clicking against the keyboard they built on their own. There are only people behind the software.
We don’t mess with the richest families in town. We disable their alarms when they’re
gone and steal the gold from their wooden chests with the help of our friends, who
are in turn clever and silly. We take as much of their silk as we do of their bread. We
wear everything better. Eat everything better. I smile my blue smile in cameras that no
longer work.
•
Beauty is subjective, and I look beautiful with my face painted and arms dripping in
metal stolen or stripped from the houses. I see my beauty in the dark reflection of
dead television sets discarded roadside. Another new friend makes a bracelet into a
butterfly, and I wear it on my nose. We all share a house now. I forget that I have loans.
I have so much more now that I share everything I have.
•
No one can find us, so my sisters ignore the calls looking for me.
They find ways to disapprove from afar, though I only respond to their messages once
a week before I take out the compost.
•
It turns out we’re not actually difficult to find because we live through music. So few
places have a heartbeat, but three of my new siblings played in a marching band.
Having forgotten their own beating hearts, the ghouls keep the most glorious drums
in museums, leave them unplayed. They send terminator dogs to capture us, and we
hole up, stewing beans till we realize we can put diatomaceous earth and pickle juice
in our water guns. The dogs spit but don’t whimper as they malfunction. Even for their
parts, we say a prayer.
•
We put our phones in the microwave when we need to talk about our plans.
•
We fall in love with each other and when we don’t have to steal, we grow okra in the
yard and stew it with the tomatoes we grew in the yard.
•
We question our choices circled around a plateful of rice. We feed each other from
our hands. We never question the impossibility of choosing any other thing. We don’t
live for ourselves. We live so that this life is possible.
•
We find a way to reprogram their dogs. They drag tills through spaces between the
trees that hide us and check the nutrient levels of the soil.
•
When we hold each other, we think about not pulling out and sometimes we don’t. It
doesn’t matter. We create things every day. We’re, half of us, faggots. Do you think, we
ask each other, serious as an anarchist cookbook, before laughing. We do everything
first because of touch.
•
My sisters work for the richest families in and out of town, but one of them gets sick
because the family is sick. We all visit her in the hospital none of us can afford to stay
in, not even my sister who is sick. When she sees me, she says, Take that shit off your
face. When her husband sees me, he says, Get a job. When my mother smiles at me,
she says, You’ve lost weight. I give my sister herbs from our garden, and look into the
long, bare faces of the people I cannot save. I go home and do not wash my face. I
make tea and let fresh honey dissolve like a dream into the yellow.
•
When we dance to our heartbeats, we throw freedom through each limb. Our hearts
open like archways that never knew a door. Our feet meet the ground like the greeting
of rain. None of us remember what we don’t miss—not chocolate, not distraction,
not concrete. There are figs growing on a tree out here, where we live and work, away.
We dance. We eat figs. We write our names with our tongues on the perspiration of
rocks.
