Crown Noble

by Bianca Phipps

  is there a vacancy i can fill with my gallbladder? can you host my

  heartbeat in the place beneath your ear? it is my favorite place.

  my thighs would love to meet with your hips, if you have the time.

  each molar whispers about you to my gums. my tongue runs over

  to soothe them into silence, but it doesn’t last. could your kidneys

  pencil mine in for coffee? my ankles crack up near you. you send

  them rolling. can you see? my eyes are nervous, can’t make contact.

  my hair sticks to your sweatshirt. wants to curl with you.

  if you’d have me, i’d come over. we could make a good mess.

  MOONSTRUCK

  jumping spiders can see the moon

  & i wonder if they jump to get closer.

  when the spiders teach me how to speak,

  i want them to start with the word moon.

  i want to know if it sounds anything like

  my word for yearn, which is spelled like

  your name while you sleep in our bed.

  jumping spiders have eyes like telescopes,

  able to see without turning their heads.

  what is the spider word for telescope?

  is it just eye? what is the spider word

  for what i am? where you are? do the

  spiders have a word for home, and is it

  spelled like distance? i watched a spider

  try to hitch a ride on the van’s antenna

  & i thought about the spider word for

  fear. must be close to their word for love.

  i, too, would fling myself across the country

  or the street to get where i needed to go.

  needed to go here might be moon or love

  or our bed before you wake up without me

  again. god knows i am grateful we share

  the moon if we cannot share a bed. the

  spiders may not have a word for jump. i

  may not have a word for how i do not think

  to love you; i simply blink & there you are:

  my underbelly, my tender place. it is just

  how we exist. they jump. i love. and we

  all stare up at the moon.

  ALMOSTS

  I have never felt so at ease

  as I did the day you called me precocious.

  I have never feared big words,

  only those that refused to use them,

  and the syllables rolled off your tongue like honey—

  I was hooked.

  Language became ours.

  (And I know that everybody uses language,

  but this was different,

  as if in between the letters

  and the syllables

  there was a secret message

  only we could decipher.)

  My days filled with the sound of your voice,

  and your nights became littered with the loops of my handwriting.

  We exchanged our favorite words:

  mine: illuminated,

  yours: catawampus,

  and our least favorites:

  mine: moist,

  and yours:

  almost.

  When I asked you why,

  you said it was because almost held failed potential,

  represented our ability to be just not good enough.

  We came to the brink of something beautiful

  and fell short so many times

  we crafted a word for it.

  But even we, with our supposed mastery of English,

  were not invulnerable to our shortcomings.

  Words only help if you speak them.

  I never told you I loved you.

  You never told me you were dying.

  Five words each:

  I love you, I think.

  I have a brain tumor.

  To this day I don’t know all the details;

  medical jargon never fit in my mouth

  and even now it feels like an invasion of your privacy,

  but I have pored over our conversations

  searching for the secret message,

  and I am sorry,

  but I only almost found it.

  Saltwater is not good for paper.

  My tears warped your words.

  After some serious consideration,

  I’ve decided to change my least favorite word,

  because while moist is gross,

  malignant is malicious.

  Malignant is uncontrollable,

  means a phone call and the phrase

  he didn’t wake up.

  Malignant is messy, unfair, a thief.

  Malignant means I never got to say goodbye.

  Malignant is the cause of almost.

  You were on the brink of something beautiful,

  but you couldn’t quite reach it,

  and you fell too far.

  I am so sorry I wasn’t there to catch you.

  I hope your heaven is a library.

  I hope it is void of almosts.

  Te amo, Daniel.

  Sleep well.

  I AM ALL THE ROOTS

  i am swathed in the luxury of wanting—

  how it maroons me & blues me & crushes me.

  underneath: a verdant biodome. i unfurl in the humidity,

  flytrap eyelids with radiant curl & radiant teeth,

  hibiscus bloom cheeks, clipped bush mouth, all roots

  running under skin. it’s all beauty, really, run by fear.

  root veins drink at the feet of anxious electricity.

  i drip lush negativity. i dress in pretend forgetfulness.

  i want to be a greenhouse. i want to be a devourer. i want

  & it gives me away. i want to be a terrifying unknown

  & i want to be loved. i always pick love. i can’t help it.

  i suck at the root of love. i drink at Their feet. i want Them

  to pick me & i let Them dress me in green. it brings out

  the color of me. the color they like. i pretend to be a girl

  They will be proud of. i want to be grateful so i write

  myself into a garden & let them prune me & harvest.

  but: i did not forget. i am flourish & flesh. i, heartbeat.

  i, want & wanted. worthy outside expectations. i suck

  at the root of love & am nourished. i am all the roots, remember?

  i am the humidity bloom. i, love & loved. i am afraid & still

  i live. i live. I live.

  IN THE CLOUDS

  Nina and her mother sit across from each other at the kitchen table and clip coupons. Nina and her mother tuck their hair behind their ears at the same time but neither notices. Nina looks up a moment too late. Nina studies her mother. Nina’s mother is gray around the edges. Nina’s mother doesn’t dye her hair; Nina’s mother doesn’t fear the mirror. Nina studies the wrinkles between her mother’s brows, charts the terrain of peaks and valleys. Nina is the cartographer of her future. Nina’s mother leans back in her chair and the space between her brows smooths into a lake. Nina’s mother smiles at her daughter’s curiosity. Nina looks to the scissors in her left hand. Nina gathers courage from the coupon in her right. Nina admires the careful boundary the dotted lines create. Nina says to the coupon, the room, the future: I like girls, too. Nina cuts the boundary. Nina’s mother sets her scissors on the table. Nina suffers in the silence. Nina’s mother extends her hand across the table and lifts her former chin. Nina cries. Nina’s life is full of water. Nina’s mother says, Okay. Nina and her mother smile at the same time. That’s okay.

  ELENA ALVAREZ IS LIVING MY BEST LIFE

  & I mean it / with a sincerity that overwhelms me / I mean when I watch her / I look into a mirror & want / to care for what I see / for the first time / I see what I could have been / had I found the girl earlier / or / had a mom like Penelope / instead / I observe from my couch / ache for a life I never got / but almost had / Penelope praises Elena / for stealing hotel t
oiletries / & I am fourteen again / flushed with pride at my miniature haul / and my mom cooed / I learned to love hungry / learned nothing / in the pantry was the sure way to beautiful / I was only six empty stomachs away / from being her perfect girl / she taught me / men will ruin your life / she didn’t mention girls / neither did I / couldn’t tell her I wanted to kiss / my friends / want / is what keeps us from perfection / shame is our love language / guilt / the mother’s tongue / Penelope confesses to Elena / we all cry / in the car ride home / from planned parenthood / my mom confesses to me / she had a bad mom too / and it was the closest we ever got / to apology

  SONNET FOR MY DAUGHTER

  from my mother to me

  i dreamt of the lives that could have been mine

  (dressmaker, horticulturist, doula,

  ethical hacker, hotel manager,

  perfumist, pilot, a bounty hunter,

  locomotive engineer, stunt double,

  dentist, sommelier, ocularist)

  while cradling the swollen belly that locked

  all doors but one. my identity was

  relative now. you made me mother and

  stole all the rest. gilded cagemate, child:

  you lock-picked your way into the world and

  left nothing for me to eat. i starved, so

  i fled. you’ll understand when you’re older:

  we only get one chance to escape love.

  LENGUA

  we’re all screaming as we play loteria

  & jack wins again with la bota. we

  laugh & it almost sounds like a family.

  mom laughs the loudest. mom always

  laughs the loudest & it’s always so

  quiet when she’s gone & it’s always quiet.

  everybody tells me i look like my mom

  except my mom who says i look like

  my dad. we both know what it means.

  the tias talk shit about me at christmas

  in spanish & i smile while they do it.

  i don’t defend myself. i probably deserve it.

  wouldn’t know. i got the wrong tongue;

  i got all the names for what’s wrong

  with us but only in ingles, so.

  i’m not my grandmother’s favorite grandchild

  but we are the most alike. nobody likes me

  because i am a reflection.

  dad always talked about what grandma conjured.

  once in the night they all heard a scream

  that drove him & his siblings & his parents

  into the hallway. the story goes nobody was there

  but the family, exposed in their fear.

  we don’t talk about the screams in the night

  that drive us out of our rooms. we’re not

  supposed to give it the power of a name.

  the truth is i look like both my parents but

  they don’t look at me. i want to talk about

  the screaming. the absence in the hallway

  of something else to blame. i want to talk

  & i got the wrong tongue & it conjures all

  we look away from when the light turns on.

  THE SNOW CONVINCED THE PLANE TO STAY HOME

  for one more night. The plane agreed,

  and we all stayed for one more night, too.

  Our entire neighborhood remembered the

  joy of snow day. We walked to Seth’s as

  children threw soft fistfuls at their siblings

  and their parents watched, soothed for now.

  The journey back home was treacherous. The

  full case of PBR was passed back and forth

  as we took turns throwing snow. It was your

  burden and you set it down, asked me to wait

  with you. Our band of friends moved ahead

  and you kissed me. I forgot about our friends,

  the children, the people at the airport. I forgot

  about the morning that loomed over me, about

  Christmas at home. I forgot we had not spent

  our entire lives kissing. It was as new then as

  it is now. You kissed me as the world froze.

  Come on, you said, snow crowding your hair

  to get a better look. We’ve got all night.

  WHEN THE BOY SAYS HE LOVES MY BODY

  but does not say he loves me,

  I let him.

  I close my eyes

  and feel his matchstick fingers

  strike against my skin.

  I feel how he burns the girl out of flesh,

  sucks the blue out of bones,

  admires the glass jar

  that traps the dying firefly.

  How pretty, the frame.

  How soft, the entrance.

  How beautiful, the archway

  that gapes into the burned-out church.

  When he leaves, his arsonist hands

  flick a final spark into my mouth

  so I remember how he feels,

  so I think him when I think myself,

  so I write his name in whatever is left.

  I find my body is a locked door.

  I find I locked myself out.

  I find I did it on purpose.

  If the boy will love the body

  and burn the girl,

  she will learn to make a home upwind of ash

  and pretend she is not cold.

  Suddenly everything is the body.

  The weight.

  The worth.

  The shape.

  The case.

  It is easier to pretend the girl never existed,

  that all there ever was

  was flesh, and cartilage, and blood—

  If I pretend I never learned to kiss the ground and call it lover,

  I never buried myself under the carcass of everything I used to trust.

  Nothing went wrong.

  I laugh along with the song of my own undoing.

  Never tell anyone how I forgot to go home.

  How I couldn’t.

  How I don’t know where I left the key.

  I became a stranger in the window,

  the ghost in the eaves.

  The body became haunted,

  mausoleum,

  burnt sea.

  I forgot to forgive what could not ask for forgiveness.

  I forgot it was not what needed forgiving.

  The body cries for me to come home,

  and I only hear his voice

  asking with what tender touch

  I would like to be evicted.

  If I go back,

  what will be left?

  What does the forest lose before it trusts the sun again?

  What does it cost to reach for warmth and mistake it for war?

  How does it unlearn the fear of beauty, wildness, becoming a target?

  Will I ever cease building myself into a castle of kindling?

  Does the firefly hate the hands that trapped it

  or the glass jar it died inside?

  Does it live long enough to choose?

  STAY WITH ME

  talking is a matter of convincing my tangled mouth to create

  something coherent, but it only works sometimes I don’t know

  what to say next time I see you I will be honest to God I’m trying

  I promise you won’t walk out before you wake me, I wouldn’t it

  be nice if I could keep the same line of thoughts are wreckage,

  they scatter, they’re everywhere I go I return to the time I allowed

  that boy to confess he loved me though I knew he was lying next to

  you is the quietest my mind has ever been. the howls and

  hisses smooth into a chorus of tamed, holy beasts. the constriction

  thaws, I break free, I breathe. I breathe. I breathe to reveal this

  to you, but I worry it will ruin everything happens for a reason

  yet I couldn’t tell you the reason behind that choice is difficult
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  with anxiety, I struggle to identify the lesser of two precipices

  and therein lies the danger is the familiar taste of a rainslick

  unlit side street, keys crowded in between the knuckles of my

  stronger hand him my secrets and give his earthquake fingers a

  loaded gun to press against my heart beats: the body’s language

  of choice. a thousand silent signals passed from my wrist to

  yours. I wonder what my skin has been able to communicate

  and if any of it will be the right one day I’ll tame this wild

  garden mouth and cultivate something soft does not mean

  weak; it means gentle men with sharp teeth know to draw blood

  without notice me, please, I’m right here is every ghost I haven’t

  learned to let go of everything I’ve lost, all I want back is time

  has a gift for warping the memory of warmth, clouding what

  you used to remember the first time I cried? my body shook

  apart. your hands wove the steady net. I spilt sorry like an

  accident. a cut tongue. the safest way to see you out. you didn’t

  go. I’ve stopped waiting for you to. trust, I’m learning, is not a

  soft gift, but worth the pain. somewhere in this coward mouth

  is a brave heart’s confession. please tell me you hear it. I can’t

  promise how long this clarity will last time I visited home, my

  dad asked why I wouldn’t date anyone, so I lied: no one interested

  me enough men have left with scraps of me between their teeth

  that I can’t remember the taste of feeling whole armies have

  fallen to poor planning; my mouth stumbles to keep me from

  falling in secret is the loveliest form of self-destruction is two

  people who drown warning signs under the sheets and ignore

  the way it screams no person ever asked me for details of what

  he did I lose you?

  FLYPAPER

  in summer

  the spiders haunt every underpass:

  doorways, stairs beneath the train, streetlamps

  i skitter underneath

  nervous blood flaps my wings faster

  as i fly through the gaps in their webs

  i know it’s silly to be afraid of what can only hurt me

  if i am foolish enough to get caught

  still

  i don’t breathe until i am inside