My grandfather taught me.
& no, dreams don’t change,
we just pretend
we don’t want them anymore.
TEXT SANI SENDS BACK
“Summer Song”
Honey, all the clocks are against us,
we’ve got one summer, I’ll do your bidding.
Just tell me what you want.
I’ll do anything you want.
TEXT I SEND SANI
Anything I want?
You hardly know me.
TEXT SANI SENDS BACK
Then why do I feel
like the dust of your name
is buried in my bones?
TEXT I SEND SANI
Dramatic.
Five finger grass. Maybe?
I am glad you stopped smoking,
also maybe try out for Juilliard?
TEXT SANI SENDS BACK
Moth. Finding my voice
(again)
is not as easy
as giving up smoking.
I’LL DO YOUR BIDDING
I want to offer Sani some of my spark,
the thing that kept me alive in the car,
because that is what I need to dull,
because that is what makes it all my fault
& he seems to need more of it.
It’s like you play the part of invisible for years
& the egg cracks, revealing something other.
Like when the warrior layers off his armor
& even clothed, he feels naked.
Just tell me what you want.
I’ll do anything you want.
But Sani smells like witch hazel bark.
I know that root. Grandfather said
Native Americans taught settlers about witch hazel bark.
It can reduce grief, but it also can reduce the ability to love.
All I can smell is witch hazel when I smell Sani—
it burns the inside of my nose. So honestly—
I don’t know. I don’t know.
SUMMER STORM
Thunder rattles the house,
plucking at the screens,
howling through
feather-thin
cracks.
Something pounds, desperate, at the front door
& I am sure this time it is the devil coming to get me.
I tighten my blanket around my shoulders.
The front door swings open & Sani is dripping wet.
Fists clenched,
guitar strapped
to his back
& hair free & lip bleeding
& eye bruised
& chest heaving
& & & …
He stumbles in, drenched
& shaking & mumbling,
then smashing his guitar
against the floor. It cracks
& his voice cracks,
He said I was sick in the head,
he hit me (again),
he said I’d never get into Juilliard
with a mind like mine.
He kept hitting me.
My eyes are wide & Sani’s hands shake
as they pour a waterfall of (far too many)
pills into his palm.
He glares at his handful
of (too many) pills,
then at me.
I can’t find air;
my lungs tighten,
reading the thoughts
written in his eyes.
I sprint forward,
knock the hopelessness
out of his hand
but not off his face.
His pills spill
across the wooden floor.
I grab him. You can’t do that, Sani!
He crumbles into me.
He kept hitting me.
She didn’t stop him.
I wrap us tight on the floor
in my blanket,
rocking him back & forth,
not sure how I got here
with this beautiful, sharp-edged boy
whose voice is dipped in spirit & dust,
who smells like rain & dirt.
& me (Moth) a spark that won’t unlight—
a spark that wants to be a wildfire—
to ignite.
I whisper “Summer Song”:
I want to suffocate your sadness,
I want to run away with you. Please run away with me.
He nods
& nods
& nods.
RUN AWAY WITH ME, PLEASE
A road trip is a thing that you go on & come back different.
We were road-tripping before the car split.
From New York to Virginia.
& because even in summer, when all things happen,
when in the movies the cool kids love the outcast, I feel guilty
for sparking a little—
for being seen.
& because the house is too silent without clinking bottles.
I decide to be taffy & stretch across the US
from Virginia to his Motherland.
Because he (Sani) needs
to live & leave
& I think I might,
possibly, need
the same thing
because I don’t
belong anywhere
anymore.
WORMWOOD & GINGER ROOT
I stuff both in a flannel bag to hang on the rearview mirror.
Wormwood: to protect the car, keep it in the palm
of the ancestors’ hands.
Ginger root: for adventure & freedom.
This summer I want both,
I need both.
Please,
summer,
give me both.
Then I promise to cocoon again.
CATERPILLAR:
a) a segmented larva of a butterfly or moth
b) a long road that grows & grows until it doesn’t
c) the start of creation; a story of creation
You (Moth) will have to stretch your soul
like an endless story to find your way.
—Gray-Bearded Grandfather
(Rootworker)
UP & LEAVE
If you are going to disappear,
you have to empty the fridge—
deli meat, milk & yogurt hulked
into the neighbors’ trash bin.
Everything must go
except for the dull party food
the ancestors ate from,
which gets buried deep in the ground
with a few coins under a tree
in the woods behind the house.
(My subtle way of begging for a miracle.)
House is swept,
sheets stripped,
washed & folded into clouds.
Drapes drawn, signaling a close in business.
I think about leaving a note for Aunt Jack,
just in case she comes back early,
but she didn’t bother to say bye to me.
Now that I think of it,
she hardly remembered to say hi,
so I don’t leave a note.
I gather & rebottle the pills
I made Sani spill.
I lock the front door.
I don’t look back.
Steps in new directions are the hardest to take
& it is hard to be sure if Sani is the moon
or just a dumb lightbulb.
Sani is outside in his Wrangler with a full tank,
looking like salvation & sin—
in the few days since the summer storm,
he has reassembled somehow.
Ready to string himself across two families
from Virginia to the Navajo Nation.
Sani has a shock of lipstick in the center of his right cheek,
a fading bruise framing his eye
& an overloved teddy bear strapped in the backseat
next to his guitar, whose crack is now hidden with duct tape.
&nbs
p; I have my name (Moth)
& a gym bag stuffed with some of Aunt Jack’s clothes
because mine are all old & a small flannel bag
filled with crushed ginger root & wormwood,
which I tie to the rearview mirror
beside the bag of cedar
Sani’s father gave him.
What’s that for? (Sani tugs the bag.)
To keep us safe. (I swallow.) Cars make me nervous.
(He nods.) I like it, it smells like Christmas.
Wormwood & ginger root.
Adventure & protection. Right?
How’d you know?
I know things (he says, pulling away
& squinting into the sunrise).
I place his pills on the dashboard like an offering.
Sani brakes the car, pulls over,
takes one blue & white oval
without water
before merging back into traffic.
I lick my thumb & wipe the red shock
from Sani’s cheek. I don’t know how to
wipe away a bruise.
I lean back in my seat, thinking
it’s strange when no one cares if you up & leave.
SANI’S JEEP WRANGLER
I decide the beat-up Jeep is a caterpillar, because that makes
the expanse of road in front of us
less death trap, more journey.
The doors can be taken off & the wind
can make Sani’s hair more water than lava.
It can make the wind finger across our skin
as we caterpillar away, hearts thin but ready
to gorge.
Ready to rewrite our summer, maybe even change
our creation stories. Ready to un-break cars
& thumb away bruises. Maybe moving forward
in this Wrangler will be enough to feel at home
(somewhere), if only for a moment.
Maybe moving forward in this car
will help to fill in Sani’s emptiness.
Sani adjusts the rearview mirror.
We are leaving the First World,
the world of darkness (Ni’hodilhil),
where the Diné start their journey to the present.
I stretch my legs in front of me.
Who lives in the First World?
Insects & Holy People.
A bee flattens against the Wrangler window.
Are you sure we are leaving the First World?
I am sure (he says as the windshield wipers
clear away the carcass of the bee).
CATERPILLAR
After the egg spills open, a larva waddles out
& starts to eat a hole through the center of its universe.
Sometimes it nibbles;
often it inhales entire trees.
It gets as furry & fluffy as a cotton ball.
It inches longer—
building a road of itself
that leads somewhere opposite of home.
It wants to live.
Or …
An egg spills open & a larva waddles out
& decides it doesn’t want to eat.
It would rather be a larva.
It doesn’t want to change into anything.
It wants to exist.
Or …
In the rarest creation myths, the egg spills open—
& a moth flies out,
then another
& another
& another
& another
& that is called a plague.
LYRICS & STORIES
The best way to get to know someone,
to get beneath their skin & into the bone,
is to tell a story & offer music.
A story explains who you want to be;
the other shows who you are.
When Sani & I climb into the Jeep,
we feed each other
the only thing we own:
stories & song.
Our “Summer Song”
is a red string between us.
Sometimes we chew on & change
our own origins.
Moth: Christ is the Father,
the Son & the Holy Ghost.
Sani: Land is Mother & Father is sky.
Moth: Moses is the greatest Hoodoo spellcaster.
Sani: A snake created the Amazon River.
Moth: A dragon hollowed out the Rhine.
Sani: The moon is the eye of a giant owl.
Moth: Grandfather always said that
in the South,
when it’s sunny & rains, the devil
is beating
his wife.
Sani: Touch is like a breeze
through a shotgun house.
Moth: The moth is a blessing & an omen.
The ancestors have your back.
Sani: Hoodoo reminds me of my beliefs.
Moth: It’s because the ancestors are important in both.
Sani: When it snows,
the east wind
is starving.
Moth: Your stomach is growling.
Are you starving?
Sani: You make me hungry.
Moth: That’s good. Don’t want to become skin & bones.
Sani: I am not so sure.
“Summer Song” (Moth): I have found
that the whites of your bones …
“Summer Song” (Sani): Are so lovely they
should be carved into piano keys.
SANI NEEDS TO EAT
After driving for a few hours
we rest somewhere in the middle of Virginia.
On the wooden table stained with coffee
the saltshaker is a weight, the creamer the same,
pinning down a map of the United States.
Sani’s finger inches along our route & his brows crease.
Every iota of greenery & pavement we cross
used to be Native land.
My hand wanders over the map,
sometimes breezing against his.
Taking in the vastness of Sani’s truth.
How much is Native land now?
Sani folds his arm in front of him—
two bricks in a wall I want to hammer down.
According to me? All of it. According to the government,
something the size of Idaho.
I find Idaho on the map.
Crossed on the table, my arms
resemble bony brown wings.
If I could fly, I’d pick up the borders of Idaho
& expand them.
The waiter comes for our order.
I make sure my green dreads cover my face—
I don’t like explaining my scar.
Sani orders fluffy towers—pancakes—
& rains them in syrup.
I am not hungry.
Sani doesn’t force me to eat.
I think he knows
freedom has left a hole in my stomach.
I am afraid that if I eat, everything will fall
through my guts and to the floor.
So I focus on inhaling the essence
of pancakes. Just like the ancestors would
& I am satisfied.
THE ROUTE
My finger travels the course
marked in red Sharpie,
the paper crisp beneath my finger.
We will grow through
Virginia
North Carolina
Tennessee
Arkansas
Oklahoma
Texas & New Mexico.
I wonder if the hole in my stomach will expand
larger with each state
or fill itself in with something else entirely.
Sani pulls up a list of touristy things on his phone.
It’s not a road trip if we don’t explore;
backtrack and get a little lost.
Each pit stop a treasure on the map.
Is that Sani science?
Sani sticks out hi
s fork, says, If you eat, will you be nicer?
No.
No? Honey? One bite.
Sani—I smile—you just want to eat
your way across the USA.
I wish I could be that hungry,
but ever since the car split in two
& my stomach sliced open,
my belly cramps on food.
It forgets to be a stomach.
It wants to be a storm.
PLACES WE DECIDE TO STOP
Monticello Plantation, Charlottesville, Virginia: Where Thomas Jefferson committed several sins; we go to stomp on hateful plantation ground.
Natural Bridge, Virginia: A hill holds hands with another hill & we can softly walk across the length of their arms.
Ghost Town in the Sky, Maggie Valley, North Carolina: Abandoned amusement park, because each road trip requires an abandoned place where weeds choke everything, where ghosts might linger.
Billy Tripp’s Mindfield, Brownsville, Tennessee: To see if something beautiful can be made of twisted metal.
The Bluebird Cafe, Nashville, Tennessee: Sani likes the food; I like the memories.
Fort Smith National Historic Site, Arkansas: Crossroads of the Trail of Tears.
Pinnacle Mountain State Park, Arkansas: To swim with the moon.
Stafford Air & Space Museum, Weatherford, Oklahoma: To investigate the vastness of the cosmos.
The Lighthouse, Palo Duro Canyon State Park, Texas: A rock shaped like a lighthouse; we stand on it with a flashlight & command the sky.
Cadillac Ranch, Amarillo, Texas: A photo op with cars.
Navajo Nation, Four Corners, New Mexico: Home of the Diné.
MONTICELLO PLANTATION, CHARLOTTESVILLE, VIRGINIA
I snuck
some pancakes
out of the diner in a napkin—
You have to bring an offering to a plantation.
For the ancestors.
Me (Moth) Page 4