Cell
Messes
& A Table
Sam Liming
Cell
It was a small apartment full of itself to begin with. Then you
brought your belongings: bike and guitar and boxes of I still
don’t know what. Your body like two of mine and loud and
it was temporary but limitless and from the outside it shrank
but from the inside it grew into the place. Yet I couldn’t help
—like a craving biology had wired into me, like a doomsday
button—thinking of you displacing the air the way, as a child,
I learned crowns are measured: by sinking them into a basin;
taking stock. We pushed out the window onto the slate. How
was I to know, from the inside, when you eventually came, not
to this place, but to the new place, that I wouldn’t be ready,
that you would spoil the sadness I had just grown into, and that I
too had sunk myself into a pool and seen how much slopped
over and decided the worth of the overflow wasn’t enough.
Messes
the morning finds me like a sad clown
read I have diamonds of mascara
under my eyes
greasy hair last night gone
with a bottle of wine
its exoskeleton still on my kitchen table
I know I shouldn’t drink like that
like this like we have alcoholics in our family
and in the morning my stomach
reminds me I am no better than the next near drunk
developing drunk drink the solution
I’ve heard my whole life from my
father just pour yourself a drink
you look like shit no shit I just broke
up with him again but let’s not talk about that
it sounds so personal it doesn’t sound
nice like ice tinkling into the glass
that sound like a story like a lullaby
like I could tell you if it were ice
in a glass or glass breaking
if you hid behind a curtain to
test me but time to wipe the worst from below
my eyes twenty minutes to coat a new layer
onto what was left what is left
left the house went to work left
behind the mess to clean later
a mess to come home to that
is my home this knot of things
my junk drawer umbilical cord tangled with
all the others all the others used
to charge my life as if I could be
plugged in but don’t but don’t
you see I’m trying to run away
maybe maybe you can picture it
maybe you have an I used to a glass an I forgot that
this glass was full of downer when I downed it
now that I am drowning in this thing
these things that I cannot turn off
and live inside me multiplying like roaches
or worms something to haunt like my aunt drank margaritas
until she fell down and broke her neck
but really that was the pills
my grandfather sloshed beam
in the garage after telling his daughter
she should cut it back like hide it
away in another room or in the trunk
or just somewhere where no one sees
your messes after my grandmother died
we all drank until we were sick
I threw up all night telling my
ma I was fine don’t worry
I’d done this before and look how fine I was
and then I poured some rice krispies for
my brother drunk sleeping
in a different room in the same house
we are all still here ma look see
don’t we look alive
A Table
Sitting in the middle
of the back bench seat,
we look forward,
through the windshield.
A box of chicken on our lap,
our hair the color of my hair.
There are glasses on our nose—
you got yours years younger
than I got mine. The man
who is two different men
to us turns off the street
into the half-moon drive.
The cattails quiver in the bright,
summer evening, the lightning
bugs not yet blinking
over the yard. I think of us
wearing the mustard yellow shirt
you wore camping.
The car is full
with the smell of the chicken.
Arrived, we sit at the circular, kitchen
table, each in a chair that swivels,
and eat. Perhaps, later,
I lift you from the table,
walk our legs out back to gather
raspberries from the rows
and rows of spiked bushes.
Perhaps it happened. You swing
your legs keeping time
with nothing much.
I turn your face
to the woman who is two
women to us and try
to make her move her head
from the one angle
I’ve seen her hold it.
I don’t think she would have held it quite
that way, not yet. She
is the hardest for me to see
since I met her before I
remember faces. I was hoping
you could remember for me.
I know how the house will smell
and I image it smelling that way now,
under the greasy pleasure
of the take-out chicken. I know
the cupboard, the sheet metal
mask hung on the wall,
above the breadbox.
I know the mirror hanging in the hall.
But I cannot hear a thing
but the distant humming,
buzzing, straining
as I make one small hole,
stretch out the mesh of it,
as I push open the windows
and let light into
the dark rooms
I’ve snuck inside.
As I let the heat in
it wavers up and hazes the scene.
I can’t even hear
our voice, only
your voice full of years,
your voice
climbing up the stairs,
calling me down
for dinner.
Sam Liming currently lives and writes in South Carolina. Her work can be found in Leavings.