On Your Left

Anastacia-Renée

rock: ridge of light  

1. 

for my birthday i got an abortion and i ordered white sheets to watch myself bleed for the upcoming months. this proves i am still a person alive with a womb. i also ordered yellow sheets because i want to wake up with the sun on my pussy and warmth in my heart. the day people are cold. the day is a cold place for (me.)  

i have begun to put items from my walk in mason jars and i’ve labeled them the way i think a god would. for example, the small white rock with a ridge big enough for my thumb i named “rock: ridge of light.” dramatic i know but i mean, if there are kids introducing themselves as “tragedy” or “lexus,” ridge of light is not so bad. but you know there’s a lot of courage i guess in owning a name like tragedy. who would answer to a name like raped? or abandoned? or just-holding-on? can you imagine? for example: 

“text you later, “i’m about to have a zoom meeting with raped and i know as per usual they will constantly throw in the chat, no, no, no.”

2. 

the abortion (my abortion) it seems has started to be a roommate discussion of my friends and chosen family. i am having the real out of body experience. i am watching fuckers who are out of my body talk about whether it was the best thing or worst thing i did or did not do.  

when i hear the replay of what they said i wish the abortion and me were a palindrome. this way no one including me (the actual abortion -have-er) could be right or wrong. just like no one can be a little pregnant or a little ———.

online i saw there were t-shirts that say in helvetica font, “i had an abortion,” but i am not sure i want that to be the first thing i say when i meet someone. whether i say it or not, i’d be saying it. 

3. 

i’ve been dreaming a lot lately and for what it’s worth i’ve been writing them down and labeling them too. in the most recent dream stevie nicks and i were having sex when all of the sudden she calls be rhiannon and i lose my shit. i’m like “my name is not rhiannon take it back, take it back!” after i ask her to take it back, she kisses me and i feel rewound inside myself like a spool on a sewing machine and i wake up feeling wobbly with only thread holding me together. and that’s how i felt after the abortion like i was a thread unraveling but not unraveling into nothingness. unraveling to create some other kind of pattern.  

on your left 

1. 

i don’t really know why i am here. i don’t like this couple. they never speak to me when we see each other in the building. or maybe, i don’t speak to them, in the building. in fact, i hate the way their apartment smells. i hate cats. i especially hate 3 cats. i hate people that have windchimes hanging in their windowless kitchens. i hate the way they hold each other's hands and take up the whole step walking up the stairs. haven’t they heard the fucking rule where you stand to the right so that others can pass if they want to? wait, maybe that is only for escalators. 

 in any case, i hate the way they swing their little loving hands while they walk up the steps taking up the whole fucking step. on your left, on your left, on you left, i once screamed while walking up the stairs. and i wished i had a big ass bike to accidentally tap them both with my front bike tire. 

2. 

but here i am in apartment 2b with the "we don't speak hate in our home" welcome mat and, they are making emoji heart eyes at me and leading lively conversations like tedx speakers while offering me wine and thousand calorie bread and playing gil scot heron’s “the revolution will not be televised” in the background. and when heron says, “because black people will be in the streets looking for a brighter day,” we all stopped to sing. still, i hate cats. i hate three cats. i hate the yarn unraveling in unpredictable directions. i hate windchimes in windowless kitchens. i hate their hands still holding on to each other, (how the fuck did they cook dinner holding hands?). 

after dinner there is more dinner and then there is more dinner and then there are drinks, non-wine drinks and then after the non-wine drinks there is finally a real conversation. and when the one who gets their hands squeezed the most decides to take off the sweat shirt, there it is…the t-shirt i want. they do a giggle-snort and say something like are you looking at my chest? and i say something like not at all but i want that t-shirt. or, maybe i said something like yea and i really want the t-shirt. and the next thing you know the t-shirt is being thrown in my face.

afro-past-ism 

1. 

 there are a number of bipocs hanging out at my neighborhood café that have been getting together to philosophize about what the future of africans and african americans or black americans looks like. there have been layers and layers of science fiction and theorizing about time jumping. once we dissected “parable of the sower” and thew out the question “what would octavia butler do?” i like listening to these conversations. i like watching whip cream sit on black beards while thick lips flap furiously and effortlessly. i like hearing words like, “brother,” as opposed to “bro” and i love it when black women laugh so loud their shoulders shake and other people in the café uncomfortably turn around as if to say “stop making those happy sounds wench. your happy is too loud. hush your happy. silence.” and i know i could be making all that dialog and those thoughts up, but i also think i am right. i think i am sandra bland (sometimes). dead on. i like the black women at the table who are so comfortable that they unwrap and rewrap their headwraps at the table and none of us asks, “is that called a headwrap?” or “i have three of those that i picked from my missionary trip in kenya…do you want me to show you how to wrap it? did you know those are used in ceremonies?” there is an ease and steady outpouring of give and take to these conversations. there is no one person eating up the stage time. we are all guest. we are all presenters. 

2.

and then, one of the women at the table says, “well i think we really need to keep our focus on our futures. what’s in the past, is what’s in the past.” and then i said to her, “and what are you going to do now throw away all your audre lorde, toni morrison, gwendolyn brooks and adriene rich books?” i said this nervously with a sort of snorty mischievous laugh. but then she said, “yes.” it felt as if a baby ripped my titties off in slow motion and erased my memory. has it come to this? it turns out it was her birthday and she’d just moved to our area. she was so excited to see a table full of “us.” she said the word “us” like marian anderson. a lower octave but a higher register. i wanted to share her happiness because i know what that’s like but instead, i jokingly said, “ what did you get for your birthday? i got an abortion.” she laughed slowly and said, “yea, i got that for myself three years ago.” one of the people at the table asked if mine was gift wrapped and she chimed in and said hers had been in a bag to save trees. and we were being really morbid. and it felt good to be sarcastically morbid in a time when any of us could pull up black death or a crime scene on our phones.  

spread 

1. 

when we got to my place, i was so happy i had already filled it with sandalwood incense. it was like a hotbox for people who were into meditation and second hand smoke. it felt like, as soon as we walked in, i turned to her and blew smoke on her lip gloss. i cleaned the day before and for that reason there were only minimal pieces of untidiness. i thought it would be best to sit at the table to talk and drink tea. she mentioned she had a portable hoodoo card tarot deck with her and that she’d like to give me a reading if i wanted one. i declined a reading for myself but told her i’m a tarot card voyeur and that i’d love to watch her spread. she declined as well. i told her in that case i’d like to just see them and talk about them. she gave me a quick tutorial but honestly, i couldn’t stop looking at her eyes. i almost stopped her when she started talking about (insert later) but i didn’t. at one point she laughed the same laugh from the café only there were no onlookers here to give her a menacing, silencing glare. just me laughing too. two black women laughing and drinking tea and one black woman trying not to be mesmerized. at this point we had gone through the entire deck and i asked her very casually if she wanted to move to the couch.  

2. 

my couch was gifted to me from a famous (now dead) writer i didn’t know very well. one day after going to see her read she announced to the small group of us that she’d be having a garage sale but that she had no garage. someone yelled out, “if it’s inside it’s an estate sale!” and she said something like i don’t have an estate or a garage—the point is you are all invited to buy my shit and thank you.  i bought the yellow couch. i wanted to experience sun in my space even at night.  

but we never got to the couch. 

museum

1.

i’m not interested so much about the items on display at the museum as i am in the people looking at the items on display in the museum.  like the three white women hovering over the rusty left foot shackle of a woman who is said  to have been a “magical slave” who took over the plantation by using mind control over the plantation family. one hovering  woman’s shirt says, “i am not an ally, i am an accomplice.” i want to tell her that wearing a shirt saying you are an accomplice is a privilege. if i walked down (insert any conservative white business area here) wearing such a shirt, i might be asked outright what nigger i helped rob, kill or fuck. 

2.

weirdly, there is a place here in the museum which is supposed to be an area showcasing model home decor of some of “the most brilliant writers and artist of our time.” i wonder exactly who’s time are they referring to as there is no time frame listed. room number two showcase a yellow couch very similar to the one in my house (just brighter). it makes me think about my house yes. but my head is suddenly filled with the three times i spent in the company of the writer who gave me the couch. if anyone asked me what living people i know combined would represent the whole person she was i have no idea what i’d say. also, that’s the kind of question i’d ask someone else , not the kind of question anyone would ask me. 

3.

the three white “woke” women have come to see this bright yellow couch in a living room model too. i notice one noticing me, noticing them, noticing her, noticing me. i have home training and what not to do and to do in public training too and so when the notice-er looks directly at my blackness, i smile. in that moment, i grieve for saartjie baartman and what much of existence must have felt like. she is wide awake and looks at me like a piece of furniture to rub and ponder what type of texture my blackness is. am i down and feathers yes mam-ish? am i brooding and velvet? maybe i am smooth & important feeling like linen. in any case she wears a classic white tee shirt dress and thick sparse silver jewelry. for a moment i am very interested in her being interested in the yellow couch. and then i am interested in her being interested with me being interested in the yellow couch. the couch and i are having a moment. it is our moment. this is our thing. and then i become completely obsessed with the small blurb above the wall of the yellow couch which reads, “note: this is only a replica of the famed yellow couch owned by the mysterious peoples poet _______.”

my favorite bar

it’s the kind of bar that’s called “everybody’s” bar. what that translates to is it’s a living  for the straights. it’s a bedroom for the queers. it’s a speakeasy for the butches. it’s a place for the friends of marsha p & aude lorde. it’s a place for folk. it’s a place for folks. It’s a place for folx. it’s a place for retired bookworms.  it’s a place for the known, the well-known, the wanna-be known & the “do I know you’s.” it’s a place for the_____. this is the bar i lost my virginity in after being celibate for a whole fucking year to a woman who told me she could tie a cherry in her mouth perfectly but only in private, only in a bathroom stall, only if i were watching. this woman, did indeed keep her promise & after asked if she could accompany me to my home. i was so desperately intrigued because no one uses the word “accompany” anymore. no one even gives a fuck about the fruit or veggies guarding the rims of drinks anymore. & no one, i mean no one, had a laugh like her. the sex was not noteworthy but the time spent before & after was something i looked forward to in the way that one looks forward to having a meal they don’t eat much but like a lot. in fact, at first it never bothered me. i was never upset when she would scurry out of my bedroom to call her husband to check in. it never bothered me that he & i enjoyed the same inverted nipple & the same tiny mole next to her pierced eyebrow. i had been thinking of her lately as i was retroflecting about my life with my birthday coming up & so i guess i should not be surprised that she would be here in front me while i’m sitting next to a woman i’ve just met with a cat named fido. 

i know that look. she’s searching for meaning in bright lights & watching the mouths of the millennials lamenting on how old they think they are becoming. she catches a glimpse of her youth in the spoon beside her wrist. she is so gorgeously unhappy. the son & father return to the table & her mother/wife switch flicks on. her eyes gleeful & overcome with artificial light. a real spark of joy for the young plant she is charged with growing. how she dotes over the innocence in his eyes. & it’s ok that it’s come to this (she thinks).what a pretty fixture in a room full of moving parts. 

she’s a brick house 

she’s mighty mighty

just letting it all hang out 

& this is her moment. a runway walk to the bathroom. her hip free from little dna strips crawling. & one & two & pause & smile. in this moment she’s a fleeting fucking rockstar all stuffed with sensuality & pee. 

i miss her & all her bricks but, while i sit here with a woman who is so (care) free, i have to say it’s easier to love someone who is alive as opposed to falling in love with the ghost of someone who haunts you two saturdays out of the year.