Mommy J always drove home in the dark.
Today my chest lifted & I pretended it didn’t
so it might stay longer. It is rare I cry.
I love myself but not entirely. Sometimes I’m so vain
even I think it’s stupid, if vanity is the right word
for what I do in secret. Like googling myself—it never
gets old, the shock of seeing my name on a list—
the scrolling down, past obituaries and Italian gardens.
I’m embarrassed by it. I’m embarrassed by letters
I’m afraid to open—who ever heard of such a thing?
I lie about stupid things. I look at myself in the mirror.
I look at myself all the time. When I masturbate
it isn’t anything I think of really. This whole hollow head
isn’t so much hollow as dormant. I’m a container
for something I don’t want to contain. I’m writing for an audience
right now and trying not to. I don’t care how Mommy J died
I only care about the child who watched her and the child
who hated Mom for losing her. Oh how I hated her—her
wailing. My sister who disappeared. I didn’t even notice.
I don’t remember Mommy J’s dead face, but I remember the cops
the faces of my mother and my sister. I didn’t want to die.
Not really. I wanted to pack up, to go on living in the moment before dying.
Now, I live in a triangle that was once a square. I am part of a home
of people who live outside of suitcases. After Mommy J died
I stopped being homesick. I never stopped being homesick.
I took Zoloft and I bought shorts for camp and now
I can be gone forever.
Honor Giardini is a student at Bennington College. Her work has appeared in Roxane Gay’s Emerging Writer Series, Orca Literary Journal, and on The Poetry Societies website. She is forthcoming in Salt Hill Journal. Honor can be reached on Instagram @honorsage15.
