In my untrustworthy memory we have Susan’s house – for the weekend, for a day. “Pimp My Ride” loops on the TV in every time zone and language. All things are unspeakable green. The thin insistent fizz of vodka and white lemonade. How I learned to eat.
We are very adult. We have the house to ourselves and you have done many drugs. My singular fixation: your face a low roof of squash blossoms, your shoulder a twin scar. I am still afraid of your body. I spray perfume on the seat of my jeans.
In the backyard we do embarrassing things – Acro-Yoga, “contact improv.” We are found naked by Susan’s roommate. Break a picture frame and hide shards in the mattress. Try to spend your Grandma’s check. Cut our hands.
You are a person with no equilibrium. I mean this literally – there is a problem with your inner ears. I teach you to ride a bike, I don’t know how, I do it wrong. From me comes:
bile the color of Kool Aid, unsalted boiled potatoes, the heads of dead fish, premade prewrapped sandwiches, the greasy chips swaddled like a baby from the takeaway. Cigarettes and measures to reduce the smell of cigarettes. New psych meds. Paracetamol with codeine.
Yellow spit.
I remember this just like this. Before no one burned down the squat. I was vegan forever, could pronounce things – Fáilte, Guattari, Antigone – and know what they meant. There was an explanation. On the grass beneath the kitchen window, it was me, it was my hands around your neck, and you were the one talking, the one trying to talk
“it’s okay it doesn’t hurt don’t let go until
I say.”
—
griffin epstein is a non-binary white settler from NYC (Lenape land) working in education and community mental health in Toronto (Treaty 13/Dish with One Spoon Territory). They have academic publications in Social Identities and Disability Studies Quarterly, and their poetry has appeared in Grain, r.k.v.r.y., The Maynard and Plenitude. They play in the post-punk bank SPOILS and make weird videogames with shrunken studios.