YOUTH, BY LIZZIE HARRIS |
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I love you so much, I never tell you I wanted to die. I have been an inconvenience to many. A baby come at the worst time. A bridge between my parents’ bodies. In New York I have the Internet and through it I search for pictures of my life in Arizona. I see total anonymity. I chart paths away and back to where my body was unmade by the people who made it. I pick up a new life where I left the old one. I zoom in close enough to see a mouse flash across my father’s roof. I can live where I want: outside anything tangible. If eyes are watching, I’m safe to survive again: I need to stretch into old age like dog. I need to fill bowls with lemons. I need to take the right pills in the right dosages. I need to ignore my father’s letters. I need to eat. I need to imagine a world where I’m unlovable by no fault of my own. I need to forget the chainmail telling me it’s unsafe to wear a ponytail. I need, when I meet a man, to not see the ways he might batter me. (I need less overlap in language that means “to hurt” and “to fuck”—pound, ram, bang.) I believe I can change. I've seen dogs unlearn their beatings. I've seen the Internet diagnose everything. I see myself running through a lawn, sleeping at the foot of your bed. I use all my sick days and breathe easiest in the hospital waiting room. My mind moves like warp speed in an action film, so fast it's slow again. I live three ways a minute. I work in a lifetime of punishment. On the subway, my iPhone reminds me this is when I listen to music. Life shouldn’t be this accommodating. I've seen death near enough to know it lives in me, but on the Internet, I have as good a shot as anyone at being remembered. Remember: I was never the happiest or the most beautiful, but I did everything I could to be alive. |
Lizzie Harris is an American poet. Her debut collection, Stop Wanting, was published by CSU Poetry Center. She was born in southern Arizona, raised in Pennsylvania, and lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband and daughter.