If We Are Going to Disappear

We start the day with the word anti-possession,

the two of us carrying watermelon rinds

along the interstate to compost them behind

the hospital where we were born. Everything

in sterile plastic, including these watermelons

and the memory of our thirsty tongues

before we broke them open. The hospital has grown

old, trembling if you look on from the overpass

for fear of blending into the skyline. We have

no reason to go back, nothing to do but bury these

belongings and pretend not to look at one another.

In the city, there is an art gallery. Imagine standing

at an open window and yelling am I getting

your likeness correct at every passerby in turn.

Imagine going into the restaurant knowing you

will not eat until each waitress sits on the other

side of the booth and pleads, even touches your arm,

and says this is not, anyway, what is going to stop

all that miserable growling. Imagine the graffitied

schoolchildren in their mismatched desks turning

one faucet knob at a time until every rusted door

in the district is underwater, all with you just trying

to be left alone like a fire escape. We avoid the smell of fire

in the suburbs, the unscented candle that is always

burning in this endless room. There are still

these watermelon rinds, our hands sweet

with all this dried water, so we scratch our nails

along a mile marker that fades every minute.

Here is a strand of rubber that can never get us

anywhere. Someone else offered it as a gesture

of failure and happiness which is how I feel

about this whole endeavor and what I have to say

about anti-possession is that it has never touched

me in any notable way. We feel fatigue once we

reach the compost pile, and we dig until nothing

is recognizable anymore and place this filthy

confetti over our stickiness. Here is the hospital.

Here is the laminated bracelet that was discarded

the moment you stopped being an infant. Here is

a needle I removed from the other biohazards

so I could prick myself at this exact moment

in the future. I am open now. Here is your chance.

When have you ever had to make a decision

between cutting into a dense and rotting green

skeleton or me when I am perfectly willing to let you?

We all once were whole: the nurse technician

smoking where there is no streetlamp to lean,

the drug addict touching himself in the alley

to keep warm, the lights across the harbor blinking

the words fuck you fuck me so clearly you cannot

miss it. Here is one joy of a compost pile:

everything has to become clean. Now, no one's blood

is making anything else red, no loose teeth making

dots of night like black seeds. No blood is on any

other surface but my whirled fingertip, and you

are saying will you be in my body in a way that our cells

will always run parallel and we will not care for

the consequences. I am ready to not care for any

consequences. Here come the museum patrons

the waitresses the schoolchildren the nurse

technicians the drug addicts the people who live

across the harbor, and all of them are angry.

All of them thirsty for something sweeter than

water, but all you and I have are watermelon rinds

and seeping fingertips. Their tongues protruding

in ways we don't want to remember, their limbs

more incorrectly muscled with every step. Our hands

touch, right where the blood is, just when it is close

to becoming too late. If we are going to disappear

properly, I need you to keep touching me, and I need

you to yell with me. Anti-possession is where we

begin and what makes us want to climb a single tree,

to press lips against what is unfamiliar and pull

through these two rows of teeth and what we want

all together, that one nearing coastline that says

it is okay for you to go but it is also okay for you

to keep coming, keep coming in this direction

and touch something, let it touch you back before

you disappear and reappear in someone else's

shimmering pile of trash.