from DAYCOUNTER
30 months, 2 weeks and 1 day: arriving
Just by writing you efface yourself, efface them. There's no room for lineage. Between being and not being there is an existence, and you sit there: a fat pile of the nothingness that already happened. Don't forget to include the blood, the moon, summon something. Erase. Or, don't, but decide.
10 weeks then 3 months then 2 years: supplying
You wake and milk at intervals. Fall asleep sitting and holding. Like a sigh when the thief arrives. On the tenth week you strap on the machine prescribed to you by your doctor, covered by your insurance. After a few weeks it's hard to pump twice a day. You make less. The company contracted to provide the machine charges you $1,800 on a piece of paper in the mail. They send your account to West Asset Management Collections. Two and half years later you win the fight against the company whose name you can't remember. You supplement at three months. You rely on formula by six. You punish yourself for both the punishment and the lack. You blame anyone with authority over your day for your allegiance to blame. In three days they cut down the albino redwood and you will never again sit under its shade (what color is shade?) and milk, but you never did anyway. The tree locations kept secret from public bodies.
16 weeks and 2 days: fading
The meeting about the meeting about the committee forms.
12 months, 2 weeks and 3 days: submit
West Oakland to Civic Center (closed). Police. Exit Mission 16th. Take car. Arrive, art studios (temporary until the tech company moves in). Wait with coffee. Droplets on toilet. Wipe with crumpled seat cover. Bottled water. The documentary on bottled water. The meeting, the interview, the tour. The app says there's enough money to get home but not to take a car. Walk to Civic. Civic to West Oakland. Honda Civic to Thornhill Ave. Park, take all belongings. Enter. Exit with child. Lady with Lexus and smashed out window in driveway. Footage, you tell her. The neighbor across the street will have footage. This happened to you in April. He drove a silver Audi. The comment posted online read, "someone that owns a $50,000 car doesn't have to break into a 96 Honda Civic." Civic to Lakeshore. Exit and walk to smoothie spot. Tantrum. Dirty hair, skin. Uphill, up up up. Dinner, music, drumming, bath. Clean shirt, mama, clean shirt. Email thoughts, task thoughts, text, text, text. As an experiment, try taking the word mother out.
Continuous
Mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mutha mutha moder moder moder mutha mutha mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother metros matar meter
14 weeks and 3 days: fingers taping
We are the peons, she whispers in the fluorescent conference
room, that is why we need him.
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