Emily Vance Brown

Carbon monoxide poisoning in the public library parking garage — $5 an hour.
Anything to relieve the August heat. It’s better than fighting crowds for
freezing springs, spreading like salamanders on algae-ridden rocks. 
dying grass shores are a bed to stretch catlike and tan our backs beside the
only overpriced tourist destination I still visit alone in this place, where 
cost and heat rise in unison. The warmer the climate, the steeper the 
rent. The truth is, I don’t remember the time before. I can’t explain why
the summers sear memory more than skin, or why we suffer so much just to pay our
dues to the Capitol crowds who gather to cry in community. Here, you learn not to ask why
not. The heat has made you hard. Like your mother, you learn you owe no
forgiveness; you accept no apology. You receive a card on your birthday, or maybe 
a text from the dead. “Come find me here in ten years,” you said. I beg your
pardon— I digress, yet again, derailed from my five-year plan, distracted by 
government officials who behave like scolded children sent to sleep without a
bedtime story. I am not a story, I once told her—I am the villain. Bolder words than those from
the child of god I was raised with, bathed with. Now, she remembers me only as a
profession of undying adoration. It cannot be true that I owe no allegiance to
the clay-ridden soil of my youth. (Am I lying to you yet?) The red dirt, too, deserves a
moment of respite from the futility of rolling brownouts and droughts that harden
my palms until I can retreat like the Mexican free-tailed bats to the bridge, seeking a
cool, damp place to grieve strangers through the border. I breathe through
electric car factory smog and endless first dates. At night I cross my fingers and beg to find a 
devotion-like insanity. I’m begging you, rid me of my humanity. I hope there’s more to life than
this godforsaken city, but I can’t be sure. I just can’t be sure. All I know is 
I didn’t feel alone here. Did you? Didn’t you? I’m afraid I might love
the nostalgia of it all, the regret, the yearning, the homesickness. I can’t say
whether or not the sun still sets in the evening if she isn’t there to watch it.
we’re all hallucinating in sync. I’ll die before I let that happen, she says, not knowing
what to say. Pity the fool who never learned to drive. The fumes make me think
of my father: overzealous, overpowering, overwhelming. Please tell me
what day is it? This must be why I left. I’m afraid I might be crazy, that I’ve killed the child
and I would do it again, again. Is it over, yet? Won’t someone please just tell me,
don’t think about it. I don’t know why I did it but I did, I did, and it’s done.
You call the cops on me and I’ll feed your Mary Jane to the feds. If it bothers you,
Take out the recycling. Never mind the abortion pill box in the bathroom trash.
We do what we can to survive. Choke down your anti-psychotics, breathe.
Close and latch the gate on your way out, please.
It’s all lies, anyway, whichever way you read it.