On my nightstand at home, beside the busted jewelry box, the stained glass lamp strung with a blue scarf, silver photographs of friends, is a small polka bag with thirty or so rolls of film inside. The film is taken, exposed, but I have not developed it. I told my friend this last night and he said, How exciting. Just think of what you could remember.
A few years ago, I started to get obsessed with scars--not having them, avoiding them. I did all right. Childhood bike wreck and car accident, oyster shucking in Maryland. I have no piercings, not even my ears. I have no tattoos. I will get none.
I know what to do: puncture Vitamin E with a safety pin, spread the oil.
Now I find myself with a hurt on my foot, the usual story of summer, high heels, strung-together sandals. I will lash myself into anything pretty. It's a small cut, the size and shape of a teardrop, pink. And I have not touched it. I want it to linger. I want a scar, some way to remember, some small point to look down upon and know: This was June.
What will happen to all my photographs--people no one else knows, a barn that means something only to me, only because of that night? What will happen to that night? The unfinished poems, the ones that don't make sense yet, with dot dot dots between. What is a poem but a letter to the world, about me, about you? It was all happiness, what I wanted the world to know.
I don't know if I want a book so much as a record of being alive. I want it on my body. I want to carry it with me.
I will do this thing, I said to my friend in the ground. I will find a way to stay.
