Mon Ménagerie

An excerpt from my memoirs, The Girl Who Left a Butcher’s Knife in the Door

 

For the majority of my life, I have been raised by people without proper uvulas. I found this out officially from my grandmother when I was in the kitchen, tossing swoll blueberries into the air and trying to catch them in my mouth.

“I can’t do that,” she said, “because it would just go straight down my throat. I’d choke to death on it.”

I looked at her from across the ugly forest-greenish-bluish counter. Part of me vaguely remembered discussions involving uvulas from the past—it’s not hard to keep track of quirk topics with only two or three conversations to their name.

I call such things capybara thoughts, thus dubbed after my friend Chris observed one day during AP Lang: “You know, capybaras exist.” I think about capybaras about once every three years, but they are still in the back of my mind, somewhere with all of the other useless things that are too useless even for me to use. (My quotidian visits to the Internet placate my unquenchable thirst for niche knowledge).

If prompted, my brain goes back and pulls out a full album on capybaras: pictures and incredible facts about them. I have other albums that feel the same way. It’s weird to think about, but somehow, I had a capybara thought, a capybara memory, that my grandmother did not have a uvula.

She elaborated on this, after I had asked to make sure that my conviction was correct. In fact, she had had it reattached after her tonsils were out, but one day she opened her mouth and bam, no more uvula. She had swallowed it. My grandfather had his cut out as well, but I don’t think he ever digested it.

And so, these are the people that raised me. Without fleshy, dangling throat sacs, and even more without filters.

Memories of Rain

the first time I remember rain was sitting on the porch in the front. my grandfather has been to Kazakhstan, and he related for the first time a story about a house ride with the very unruly Chenkis. he told me how the horse had backed away from him the first time he attempted to strap his pack on. and later, how he either ran or slugged on through grueling terrain and weather. and because of the pine trees in our front yard, I found it especially entertaining to think of Chenkis walking repeatedly under a low brush in an attempt to knock my grandfather off his back. he had stories of trekking with horses through the mountain crests. he had stories with a Russian man named Sasha who spoke very little english, of a small mountain cottage with meat stews and brawny, red faced women who spoke only Russian but served heaping portions of cooking with tidy smiles. he had stories, and faded Polaroids capturing it all to prove the tales. every time it rained for about five years, I heard about Chenkis. and each time, the story was drizzled with details as long as he ground was drizzled with water. the last time I heard it, it wasn’t raining. it was in a drought, like the mountains in Almaty during the months before the 1990s my grandfather had visited. but in the dry heat, more and more of before and after Chenkis was said, and more of the real purpose of that trip was realized. more Polaroids came about from a thick off-white envelope held together with a rubber band, and it’s companion albums in a similar manner. the last time I sat in the rain, I had bare feet and lots of jewelry and I was alone. it smelled like spring but I don’t think it was and there isn’t a way to remember. I used to hate getting wet in the rain. but if it was planned that I had nowhere to be, then I didn’t mind pretending I was part of a remote tribe, and everyone knows that tribesmen do whatever they must, even if it means getting soaked. of course, people everywhere must do what they must; but it isn’t quite the same. very improper to abandon an umbrella or the shelter of s house, safe from water and dirt and grass sticking to one’s feet. the last time I walked in rain wasn’t too long ago. I had a warm black peacoat my grandmother thought I lost. I walked away from my house down the street. with my head down, I thought how simple it could be to walk far away. one foot, other foot, left, right, until mile after mile was between me and where I began. Keep walking forever. I never realized how often I thought I could. but of course, those thoughts of potential leave with the rain. a lot of things leave with rain, like sun and warm. but also away with melancholy and jammed thoughts. before rain, there’s a tall slate of space from sky and the bottom. kind of like a sheet that is a natural to-do list. fill it with clouds and wind and hot and cold. and sometimes with rain. once it decides to, fickle or frightful, it comes. it’s only seldom missed, because it always comes back, even in the desert. it’s here now, seeping from the clouds, filling all that space between

Candles

1. Lighting

The candles come forth from my drawers tonight

and light I them with essence for the heat.

Not for the hour would kindled candles smite

their purpose, nor with flames atop seem meek.

Have I the diff’rent movements from within

to call upon the wax for strength or scent.

The oils within the glass, filled to the brim,

are oft poured out to rooms without relent.

Atop this stationery filled with ink

rest flickers from the shadows of wax beams;

I write under their haze that seems to blink

when bobbing heads of candles nod and lean.

Love I the feeling of such ’til I blow

with somber breath away the candle glow.

 

1. The Study

A novel with a cover bare and worn

is laid upon a desk of carvèd yew.

The fading ink and print that do adorn

such lit’rature dispel the text not new.

A single candle flame the printing skews.

Its cousins— scented oil lamps— make light

and rise the shadow even in the muse

by glowing days diurnal or the night.

A scholar, one might say, inhabits here,

who, sedulous, makes mind of novel-prose.

The light by which he readeth never veers,

’tis dim, that flame atop a beam of rose.

The smoke shall never thwart the right of mind–

the study bright with candles always shines.

January

Bejeweled with snowflakes fresh as heaven’s eye

to herald in the coming of the earth

comes candidly the month ever so shy

to offer neoteric swells of mirth.

Pulchritudinous with frosted firs

and saturnine with ice and bitter rain,

the perihelion does much to stir

a sleeping, frigid earth from chilled disdain.

Bright flurries blanket cobblestone and roof,

whilst open hearths soothe tender, algid hands;

slim icicles cling everywhere, aloof:

how wondrous is the new, enchanted land!

Delight says I to winter’s whitened whims

as January jubilates herein!

get [Out.] of my head so I can get [In.]

Imagine having your annoying cousins or weird step siblings come over.

Different than you, separate lives and identities. You share a room with them.

Since they don’t have anyone else, you’re in charge of taking care of

them.

 

At first, they’re okay. Fun, like a new addiction;

friends for the lonely times,

entertainment for the boring times,

an escape for the hard times.

But then they start to inflict their emotions on you, until you can’t have any of your own.

 

Oh, and you can’t tell anyone.

 

Now put those annoying people, everything they do, in your head.

They are distracting, but if you don’t give them an opportunity to exist outside your head, you feel dazed and jittery and off.

They are both very tiring and distracting,

but you decide it is easier to give in.

That means precedence over school,

sleeping,

relaxing,

working,

even your own private thoughts.

 

Still, the more time you give, the more they want. The more they need, to take the pressure away.

If you feel something, experience something,

They apply it to themselves, and you don’t get to have it.

 

Soon, the plots of their lives start intertwining with yours;

their bad day in their world crosses into yours.

It isn’t so common to cross good days, only sometimes good moments

Everyone is perceived simultaneously. They might be conflicting, yet they are separated.

They become hyper realistic. Their preferences, their histories, their friends and families, the towns they live in. you find yourself at the computer to fact check for optimum reality.

you are having to control the mind, actions, and reactions of as many different people as are appearing right now. There are some characters who exist in the same world and know each other. Only you know everyone.

 

Who are they?

They are drifting off while the answers to an exam are read. They are losing five, six, seven hours a day. They are passing up parties, outings with people you only seldom see. They are losing your passions. They are being ashamed of someone who isn’t even real. They are missing someone who never existed. They are missing assignments. They are wanting so much to sleep but reliving the same scenes every night for months on end, until one night you finally don’t have to. They are not being able to remember if you are sad because of yourself or because of them. They are forgetting your best friend’s graduation party. They are losing the friends you do have.

 

But imagine all of these people are you,

and you are them.

So you feel like a different person, and the real life you sometimes becomes “imaginary” while the imaginary part becomes the “reality.”

And it can be very hard trying to stay you on the outside when you feel as though someone else is trying to control everything inside.

An Orange in the Road

I saw little snakes of white

along the tarnished leaves

strewn on the street at night,

like auburn blossoms, sieved

sugar, like snow that coldly cleaves.

I heard sibilating wind

as I walked through the copse;

it seemed that it had thinned—

the warm embracing drops

of rain fell from their naked brims.

I felt the gentle pallid brume

as it hung in the sky,

encasing like a tomb.

Made outlines all awry

and hazy as the moonlight bloomed.

They’s an orange in the road;

it sat alone and stout.

My venture somewhat slowed

to see what that’s about.

And as I walked away it lightly snowed.

Milk

It begins with an hourglass. Fine granulated sugar in lieu of sand, only this is better, because the sand never runs out. Added to that is the soft butter. At first they seem like they’ll never mix. They’re happy to cohabitate, but in that fishbowl they don’t like being watched as they circle one another, time refusing to get caught up in something so sticky.

The next hour is added. Its sand comes in the form of flour. I add about fifteen minutes at a time, but it’s pulling teeth all over again. The sugar-butter paste is a firm believer that two is company and three’s a crowd. They don’t acquiesce unless something warmer happens. Suddenly everyone is happier as the sun splashes in from its capsule in the moon and makes that lovely smell.

Another fifteen minutes. The half hour mark brings a taste of the south pacific, or Mexico, or Madagascar. Somewhere deep in the jungle little vanilla beans were sleeping in their sleeping bags, and before they’d a chance to rub the sleep from their eyes, they’re squashed to a pulp. The bodies don’t smell like decay, as their liquified remains disappear into the sugary sea.

The next half hour comes with intermittent showers. It looks like glue has spilled all over; there will never be enough time left to soak it all up. But somehow it happens, and the hourglass forms a mixture softer than silk. That aroma wafts all the way back into the brain, and with it pulls out every flashbulb memory of calm, of happiness, of guilty pleasure.

Since this is the gift that keeps on giving, it bends at the hand of time. It swells with all those fat happy thoughts. The hourglass tips over once more, only this time the sand is real. And when it runs out, time itself stops until the sugar begins pouring again.