Outhouse
My friend visits her family in India
and returns with stories
of squatting over a flushable hole in a room
That’s how
when
she knew where she was
Together in the diesel bullet I drive
through this pass of night
She does not say this
I read it in the air
in the muffled letters spattered on
the coarse locks she keeps
brushing out her face
coming out
too fast too slow at the same time
I want to say I can not hear her
At this time in my life
things keep coming out
the memory plays so loud over and over
there is not enough breath in the car
for squatting in India
and the air shredding windows
my thoughts corrode
to the point where I can’t stand
the weight of my bones
on my skin anymore
I want to talk so slow so fast
I am on singular stretch of
rubber running streets
Every time I say things this way
it feels like shattering bathroom glass
in the scatter of a we clean face
the hot-cold eyes
the gasp
the drowning
I wake and end each day like this
In a was of solvent film
I can’t get clean
What is left stains like bleach
my face comes out
I try to pencil in my eyes where I left them
I take a pen and trace out circles with my left hand
Of all the dreams I can not sleep through at night
I should tell her where I am
That I am not driving anymore
I am just moving
I can not hear her
I pretend I am calm
and there is an outhouse
on the edges of this road
I want
I try to disguise it
but it comes out like a vein
like a drug that goes
hit
hit
hit
all the time
Shayla Lawson 2003
Copyright © 2006 Shayla Lawson.
Site Maintained by shayla@shaylalawson.com