Kooky cookies

I can never remember learning to count, but I know that I have one soul, two irises, three grandparents, and four cookie recipes worth mentioning. My father and I would made shortbread cookies in the winter time. They were my great-grandmother's recipe, and we had the same name. The kitchen would smell like almonds for days afterward, and I remember when I was eight and Dad convinced me to lick the excess extract from the spoon. My tongue burned for a week, but I will never forget that taste. After dinner, we would sit at the kitchen table. Mom would have coffee. Dad would have tea. Christine and I would have milk, cold and warm respectively. Taylor would be sleeping by then, the baby monitor interrupting our thoughts with creaking breaths between static. We would all dip our cookies, wait for them to soften, and think about the snow outside. In the spring, Mom and I would make sugar cookies shaped like I-love-you hand shapes. She had enough cookie cutters for all of us; the Deaf school gave them away at the end of every year. We'd roll the dough on a piece of granite countertop Dad had cut down after tearing it out of someone else's kitchen. He didn't understand why someone would want to get rid of it, so it found a place between the cabinet and the refrigerator. It was always dusty when we brought it out, and Dad would wipe away the spiderwebs until we were ready to pour out the dough in floury lumps. We rolled it thin and pressed it with handprints, the same message stamped on every cookie. We would eat them outside amongst the daffodils. I remember how they crumbled on my tongue, sugar breaking apart like it was dissolving into me. In the summer, we made blueberry cookies. The recipe was one for blueberry muffins Mom found in the Joy of Cooking Cook Book up on the greasy cookbook shelf. Instead of using a muffin tin, we splattered the batter in messy lumps across the cookie sheets and were amazed when everything turned out all right. We ate them on the back porch next to the blueberry bush, sun tea steeping in its pitcher on the porch rail, watching bumblebees hum idly around our feet. In the autumn, our cookies were chocolate chip, the recipe on the back of the bag the chip's came in. Mom would add vanilla and sometimes oatmeal. We ate them while they were so hot they burned the roofs of our mouths. Christine would sneak into the kitchen at night to steal more after we were supposed to be in bed. She always brought me two and three for herself because she was older. We thought we were getting away with something, but really the linoleum in the kitchen squeaked so loudly with every step I know now that Mom and Dad could hear us from the basement and laughed to each other, sharing a cigarette and calling us their daughters and nothing else.

stuck on 12,000

You said that she was breathing as if it was something to be ashamed of, as if she shouldn't gasp so loudly when the words in her throat are pressing down on her lungs. I know what that's like now. The hands over my mouth shoved my screams back inside, and I thought my tears were blood, thought I was shedding the lining of my eyes like the lining of my uterus, could taste it on my lips with their fingerprints laced through. I could feel my lungs contract like they were trying to hug themselves, tuck their arms tight around their sides and curl up on the carpet, let the leaves falling from trees cover them until even the moon couldn't find them anymore. She'd search all night, moving idly across the sky, searching each corner, night after night, but never find anyone. I feel like that sometimes, in the moments I spend in the corners of my room gluing bottle caps to the ceiling and praying the never fall. My hands clasp each other. My fingers are bent so long they forget how to stand up straight. They can see themselves in each other's fingernails, all mouthing the same silent words before they choke.

I have a warning for you. I'm not sure what it says because it's too far away to read, but I'm getting closer every day. I have two pairs of glasses in case the first one breaks but apparently glass isn't as fragile as it used to be. They've made it so it won't shatter, the shards falling like snowflakes into my eyes, reflecting light into my pupils growing smaller with each moment until they're cut away. My warning for you is on a big orange sign on the back of my left palm. It's hiding the scar where the nail went through. The other one healed into the shape of a heart so I want to show it to you, show it to everyone, keep it on my surface and convince it not to float away.

I carve your name into the loaves of bread I bake. My bosom is dusty with flour. It hardens in the cracks of my hands. The bread crumbs I spill look like stars. They taste like light mixing with dust on my tongue like your skin does.

There are flowers on your pillowcases. I tried to name them once. First I said daisy, then rose, then lily, but I think they're a flower I've never seen before. When you sleep, your cheek is pressed against them and you wake up with petals on your skin. You taste like nectar. The ocean tastes like salt. I know this only because I've walked into it with my wounds still open, felt it sting, felt my flesh say it is soil that will never grow anything again. I cling to the peaks of waves although I know they're already breaking. I cling to your forearm while you're walking away. My fingers leave white streaks on your skin where they stop your blood for a moment. I don't want these streaks to turn blue. I don't want to be like the people who have carved their faces into your bodies because they want to own you, measure you into individual bags to sell at stands along the street to gain their two cents. I want to bring my clenched fist to them and drop my teeth into their palms when they're expecting coins. I want them to look at my bloody molars, shiny with spit that isn't yet dry, and see themselves in the cavities. I want them to weep, open their bags, and pour your body back into your soul. I want to see you glow like you did the first time I saw you. I want to glow, but not in the dark between streetlights where my bones are like neon signs exposing every bend and every broken edge. I don't want them to know the pain in my wrist when I fell off the swing the summer before second grade. I don't want them to feel my pulse in my center, moving in tides down my body like I am a shoreline. I don't want them to like the sight of their skin beneath my fingernails, to smell their scent on my shirt. I want to be a flower so ugly no one would pick it, choose it to decapitate, bring home its dead body to display on the kitchen table at dinner time. I want to be a flower on your pillowcase, just in front of where you lay your cheek at night so I can feel your breath like wind in my hair and remember that we are both very much alive.

You tell me I have a pretty face. I want to peel it off and hand it to you, walk away painting myself a mask with watercolor. I want to look like a cloud to you, like a puff of white with light shining through, then grow darker and send as much energy as I can hurtling toward Earth. The surface of our planet is hit by lightning three thousand times a minute. I want to believe I was born from this light, that I blind people who look at me too closely and only have to exist for a moment to be heard. I want people to count the seconds between when I appear and when they hear me to know how far away I am. I think about thunder storms when I was young. The trees leaned in toward the house, wind jerking their branches in every direction, and we all realized how fragile roofs are and how close the floor is to the ceiling. Mom would take us into the basement when the power went out. There were no windows and we couldn't see the lightning, but we could hear the thunder. I still love storms. I remember when they meant spending all day in the little back room in the basement, telling stories by candlelight, teaching Taylor the alphabet in darkness so thick I couldn't see the lines forming on my mother's face, her skin like broken shingles.

I can't stop coughing. My clothes smell of campfires and my sweat is drenched in charcoal. I have rings under my eyes that remind me of raccoons, and I think I am tired when I see myself, then realize how dark my fingertips are and how often I've been trying to rub away my eyelashes, catch them all and blow them away. When I have extras, I give you my wishes. I tell you to think very hard but know all you're noticing is the way my eyelashes are transparent at the base and black at the top. They look like a reflection of something that doesn't exist yet. They look like my great grandparents. I never understood why I didn't look like my father until I stared into his eyes and noticed the same gold growing around his pupils that spreads outward from mine. If you cut through my center, there will be more gold rings you can count for every year I've been alive. My mother keeps her gold wedding ring in the bottom drawer of her least favorite jewelry box. My father proposed with a handful of gems. He was younger than I've ever seen him, and I imagine his hands without callouses although I've never known them that way. They were softer than you'd expect, grasping me by the arms and lifting me over piles of lumber, his fist around mine while he taught me where to hold the hammer to pound in nails. I was always afraid he would hit my thumb, sometimes moved it the moment before the hammer came down so the nail would fall over and we'd leave a dent in the wood. My dad called it a dimple, and said it added character. I think about that now when I pace messy rooms with piles of unfinished work growing around me. I think about it while I count my talents on one finger and ignore the others. You told me once I have the smallest pinkies you've ever seen. There's not much you can do with pinkies that small.

nano excerpt blah

I used to think that the sun beams streaming down to me through clouds were ropes I could catch and climb on. I would imagine pulling myself up into the sky, feeling the warmth of the summer in my palms, parting clouds like lace curtains with my fingertips, urging myself through them. I used to think that mushrooms were stools. I would imagine the fairies that pranced on them at night. I believed in magic, in wishes coming true, in the stories adults told me. I would make wishes on dandelions. I wished that I was a mermaid and that I could fly. I thought the reason they didn't come true was that I was greedy. I knew, though, that every dandelion had at least a hundred dandelion fluffs and that a hundred dandelion fluffs could probably carry two wishes. What I didn't know was that the mystery lollipop flavor was really just all the extra bits of every flavor mixed together so no matter what you guessed you were wrong. What I didn't know was that people plant land mines to kill other people when they could plant forests instead. What I didn't know was that my parents wouldn't love each other forever and that my two best friends would move away and we'd forget each other eventually. I didn't know the weight of my words.

They tell me that no two snowflakes are alike, but I know that they taste the same. I've fallen into snowbanks on the side of the paths up our mountain. I've slipped while ice skating on my aunt's lake in Ohio, ended up on my back with snow falling on my face, onto my lips. I've rolled down the window on road trips to Grandpa's ski lodge, let the crystals melt on my arms and leave spots on my seat belt. I remember Mom driving through the long tunnel, how the radio would cut out into static that sounded like snow, how the sun would be so far away we'd realize that we were driving through the base of a mountain. The lights were yellow and came from above me so when I looked out the wind shield, all I saw was my reflection with a strange halo of polluted air mixing with the color of my hair. On one side of the tunnel, it was still fall, and when we came out the other side, Mom would always gasp, her breath turning to clouds, tell us to look at the snow. I'd roll up my window and watch the flakes running toward me, hopeful, then hitting the glass.

I read my poetry out loud because I feel like that makes it more real. I think my voice is alive sometimes. It sneaks up on me when I'm not expecting it. I imagine myself differently than the mirror tells me I am. I'm always surprised when I catch a glimpse at myself. Maybe I think I should have more wrinkles by now or maybe I think I should be made out of stone. I feel sometimes like I've been carved. My edges seem too sharp to be natural. My bones are too hard to be made of bone. I think I'm made of granite. You tell me I'm crazy while you eat pomegranates with the skin still on. You say you feel bad for peeling the skin off of anything as if it's not good enough, as if its sour taste is offensive when really it just reminds you of the poison you've poured into the world. The oceans have a salty aftertaste and the rain is too bland these days. The soil makes my throat too dry and I can't chew bark anymore; my teeth are forgetting what softness is. I read my poetry out loud and they ask what these noises are. I weave my tongue into baskets and use them to carry everyone else's words.

Today I learned that trees can grow through fences. They just reach out their limbs and refuse to stop growing. I think people are like this. I think they are like this until I listen to them speak. They tell me that they've given up.

I whisper words to no one in the nights that feel like very early mornings. I wait for the sun to rise because I know it's more likely than the rain, although I wait for that too, as if it is a sure thing. I think about god and pretend to reach a conclusion or two. There is a box of tissues on my nightstand. There is a silver comb in my top drawer. It belonged to my grandmother and is carved with roses, cold metal petals against my fingers, reflecting my fingerprints so close there isn't enough light to see them. I want to comb your hair. The closest I've come is running my hands through it like they're raindrops. I glide across its surface like your body is a frozen pond. I take careful steps when I'm near you because I don't want to scratch the ice, etch it so it looks like lace from the sky and birds are distracted as they pass over, run into the windows of our living room and only turn around at the last moment, just enough time to see their reflections, see the fear blooming in their eyes, blooming in metal roses harder and stronger than bones, even those that aren't hollow.

I like to sit in leaf piles because it's impossible for them to sneak up on me. Every time the wind shifts the leaves, I turn, my eyes burning, and wish that I'm still alone.

We're all parts of an alphabet

A is for apple. We only bake the sour ones into pies, add as many handfuls of sugar as we can grasp, marvel at how much they've changed afterward. The only poison I've ever heard of is in the seeds of apples. But if you place it in the Earth, it sprouts nothing but more apples. An apple reminds me of my uterus. The red ones especially. They cup the seeds as if they'll become something one day, even though we mostly just leave them in the stripped core, place them into trash cans or, if they're lucky, toss them into the woods.

B is for butterflies, like the ones we had to brush from our clothing in Costa Rica. They stand around for too long, except the ones as blue as mirrors in the sky, the ones I try to capture in photographs but only manage to paint as blurs in my memories. You are like that when you dance, blue dress spinning outward, hands moving so I can't see them. I think about my mother's hands, how they are really words, how she speaks with motion. I think about my own short fingers. I think about my angry fists, clenching and unclenching, trying to tear the movement from the air.

C is for center. The center of gravity, higher than if I were a triangle. I center myself around an axis. I center you around my center.

D is for delinquent. I think of people who are older than me. I think of my friends and the people who are not their friends. I see jail bars, night sticks, bruises. I see handcuffs digging into flesh that might as well be plastic to them. I see my skin, remember how you told me I was transparent once, my veins like road maps lit beneath. I don't know where I'm headed. I can't recall where I've been. I pretend these footprints behind me are mine, but when I look down, I have no feet.

E is for elegant. Elegant is something I almost never feel. I feel clumsy. I feel large. Only my fingernails are elegant, like shined pearls or beads of sweat on the ends of each of my fingers. But then sometimes they're short and I garden with them and they have dirt underneath and I'm embarrassed when adults see them and I try to hide them in my mouth or my pockets or beneath me. I sit on my right hand when it moves without asking me first. I don't want the other kids to see. It takes me years to show you even, and you think it's cool, don't believe at first that I'm not telling it to move. I think you're jealous of its freedom, or maybe I'm projecting. I'm afraid to take a step without checking the rule book first. My hand contorts itself, as if calling out in agony or rage, and doesn't take the time to ask or let me know. It just knocks over my glass or tears my homework in half. I sit on it. But sometimes I just watch. I wouldn't call it elegant.

F is for forgotten. I've forgotten books on dusty shelves until they smell old, although they haven't yet been opened. I've forgotten my little brother in the back of a chain store with tanks of fish. I've forgotten until I was at the end of the aisle and a goldfish with a puffy head looked me in the eye with such longing I knew it too had forgotten someone important. I've been forgotten, left out of a photograph of an incomplete family. I've been forgotten purposefully, while I rush to keep up, realize I don't understand bus schedules or know how to leave this kingdom. I am a thirteen-year-old, and you expect me to be quite young; I look much older, but there are tears carving canyons into my cheeks. I chat with a merchant while I wait, and I feel bad when I'm distracted by how crooked her teeth are. Later, we see an armadillo. You think you're hallucinating. I think you're right.

G is for geyser. I've never been to Yellowstone, but I wrote them a letter during fifth grade when you were teaching us how to properly address formal writings. I placed my soul into that letter, creased it gently with unskilled fingers, and drew my self portrait on the envelope, a mirror image because that is how we imagine ourselves, the only way I saw me daily. The envelope I received back was blank, spare my name and the address of the elementary school. I have no image of who sent it. I think about overalls and maybe a rain jacket. Inside the envelope was a brochure for Yellowstone Park. I've never been there. But I've seen pictures of their goats, their trees, their faithful geysers. Sometimes I feel like that's close enough.

H is for hyperbole. I use about a million of those every day.

I is for ice. Like in my veins, ice that only melts on those summer evenings when the sky is so clear I can see myself in it and you tell me that if there were no branches above us you wouldn't believe we weren't drowning. In February the icicles on the roof drip dirty water into my hair. I stand there anyway, stubborn. There is frost crawling across my skin, spelling my name over and over again in cursive. They all look different somehow.

J is for justice. I grew up knowing my country was drowning. You stared at the backs of my eyes and found only water where my soul should be, soaking into the window frames until they are so swollen they crack like my grandmother's feet like the layers of the Earth like young people bursting with laughter, their seams stretching until you can see what's inside of them.

K is for killing. I try not to think about war, which is easy because I live here, where I see more red in trees than in blood and the mountains slouch on all sides of me as if they were put there to protect us but know their job is really a joke and are just waiting for the week to end so they can head home to easy chairs and mugs of hot tea or hot spiced cider or love. The soil beneath my fingernails when I dig my gardens used to be alive. The world was made of bones so recently I wonder how we can grasp sticks to throw for our dogs and not think first that they are femurs.

L is for liminal. I find myself in a doorway and don't know whether I'm coming or going. You push me, they pull me, and I don't ever move. My life is a transition. I have no name. They look at me but never see me, stare through my sometimes, or see themselves reflected off the beads of sweat on my skin.

M is for money. It stains my hands. I can smell it on me for days. When I clutch coins in my bare fists, they eat through me like I'm candy and they're deprived children on Halloween. I string shiny silver dimes from fishing line and hang them from stars so we think we can see more of them. You tell me it's a bad idea, but you help me name the new constellations anyway. You polish more dimes every Sunday, repeating over and over that you need to see yourself in them before they're ready.

N is for neo-Nazi. I see myself in their shaved heads. A shadow with a swastika in the middle. I haven't met many of them lately. The people where I'm from scare them away. We don't want hate like that. We don't want your kind of hate. We have children here.

O is for organs. I have them in my body and your fingers run across them, playing dirges with some lullabies in between. When I sleep, I dream about the circulatory system. I hear it pumping through my ears, feel it in the parts where my body folds into itself. Sometimes I have ten heartbeats folded into my fists, one at the base of each of my fingers. They keep me up at night, penetrate my dreams, reminding me that I'm alive when I didn't ask and don't need to know. They hammer my flesh, oscillating through my bones to my chest, interrupt my breathing and shove me out of bed. Then your fingers come, weaving mismatched lullabies throughout my body, chasing sleep back into my core.

P is for pretty. I listen to you too often and my thighs not often enough. The veins in my legs look like the naked branches of winter time trees that don't sprout buds of new leaves when spring finally comes. They look like my mother's. When I was seven, the doctors cut tiny slices all down her legs and tore out some of her veins. I remember her on the couch afterward, legs bound in ace bandages; I remember bringing her cups of almost-clear tea in glass mugs, my reflection drowning at the bottom. I have a spider vein on the top of my left thigh. I think about spider webs hidden in the grass, sticking to my toes so I pull strands of silk behind me wherever I walk. She tears them off and rubs them from her hands, a disgusted look on her face.

Q is for queer. Strange. Odd. She had a queer feeling that they were being watched. Informal, usually offensive (esp of a man) homosexual.

R is for reason. I don't always have one, other than the halo of fog blocking my eyes and the boxes of matches in my pockets.

S is for silence. I remember how invisible I used to be, how I opened my throat to scream and moths flew from it like ashes. I remember choking on them. My breath fluttered like wings, trying not to exist, to disturb the air as little as possible so they wouldn't notice me. I would lay my face on the desk and pretend to dream but really just try to form syllables upon my tongue, try to feel the words to match my feelings. I wrote poems about how beautiful mountains are and about waiting for winter to come. I watched her write my name in her skin with a knife. I watched her blood stain my carpet, watched her try to clean it up, remember thinking she was only rubbing it in, deeper, deeper.

T is for train. I think about my little brother's second birthday. We rode the train and saw Santa Clause. He gave us gingerbread cookies and told us to be good. I was good back then. I wished on stars every night and sang songs to ease my brother to sleep. I read during recess and wanted to be like Cam Jansen, read all of her books. I think about the train of a dress, heavier than it should be. I think about trains that carry people into the after-life. You told me you tried to catch the same train as your mother once. My eyes teared up. We were sitting at a table together at the time, in an anonymous cafe on the corner of some quaint street. I wanted to fold you into my pocket like a love note. I wanted to tuck you under the velvet layer of my jewelry box. You smelled like citrus, and I wanted to get lost in your hair. I cried every time you spoke.

U is for understand. I can't. Not now. I still have bruises that looks like fingerprints on my thighs. I still have foreign breath on my neck, can smell it when nightmares shake me awake in the dark. I dream about streetlights, about drowning in pools of light that are meant to keep you safe. I dream about being alone, about walking alone, and now sleeping alone. My flesh has grown back where the chin stubble rubbed it away, sand paper to my wood finish. I planted seeds in my open wounds, nurtured them with kind words and sunlight. Nothing has grown back yet. I can't tell if there are roots. Sometimes I think I feel them, winding down around my ribcage and up toward my belly button, intertwined with my vocal cords, resting on my eardrums, stretching their limbs down to the bottoms of my feet, out to the tips of my toes. But sometimes there is nothing. Sometimes, most times, I am empty.

V is for violets. African violets were my paternal grandmother's favorite flower. After she died during my seventh grade school year, we went to Ohio to her funeral. Going through the things she loved, I found a plastic violet in a pot. I took it, liking the knowledge that I had a plant that would never die.

W is for window. They told me once that the eyes are the window to the soul, but I think my soul is in my throat. I can feel it there, strumming songs on my tendons and teasing my vocal cords. I saw you through a window once; the glass made the highlights in your hair disappear so the next time I saw you through only air you seemed somehow different to me. I was never sure how you looked. Even now, I can't picture you unless I draw the world around you first and then fill in the missing space. I draw the corner of the doctor's office waiting room, the tiny child-sized chairs you insisted we sit in even after you were taller than most adults. I draw your shoes folded onto each other on the floor. I draw your bed, the covers thrown to the side, none of the sheets matching the pillowcases matching each other. I remember that's how you liked your environment, clashing but always making sense. I draw the garden, empty holes awaiting bulbs, your gloves sitting lonely in the grass while you have wandered inside for lemonade. I draw the kitchen floor, remember you sitting cross-legged in front of the door, tossing aluminum foil balls again and again all afternoon, laughing every time the new kitten would bring them back. I draw the glass pane of a window. I see you missing behind it.

X is for x-ray. It usually is. One of my earliest memories is of my dad carrying me through the hospital parking lot on my way to get an x-ray. I was wearing puppy dog slippers with bells on the ears. One of my ankles was broken. Dad had dropped me in the kitchen. It was two days before Christmas, and my hair was the color of snow. My sister was at home laying cookies on a plate, wondering whether they would last long enough for Santa to come. We didn't have a fireplace back then. We hung stockings on our doorknobs so we'd have something to do when the sun woke us up. We weren't allowed to go into the living room until seven. I carried mugs of hot tea to my father in his chair. He could pick me up as if I were paper. He called his hugs bear hugs and I felt like all of me was being squished at once. I didn't mind.

Y is for you. You are the one who reminds me of me. You are the one who reminds me of who I want to be. You pick me bouquets of daisies, and you know to break the leaves off the stems so the water doesn't turn sour. You dance. You like the moonlight because it reminds you to dance, the way it tricks the grass with shadows that are only slightly darker than the dark, the way it seems so thick you could drink it but you can't quite reach it anyway.

Z is for zipper. There is one between my lips that I try to open, but it closes in both directions. I tug on your shirt, needing help, but when you turn to me you are caught off guard by your reflection in the metal. You hide your face behind lace curtains in the desert. I want to tell you I've walked around the Earth three times to get here and that the bottoms of my feet have been worn away. I want to tell you that there is sand in each of my pores trying to be castles but my body's tides are too strong to let them last. I want to tell you that I saw you from miles away and memorized your shadow before we even met. I want to tell you that you have your mother's ears, always ready, holding faux gemstones, unashamed, too busy straining for music to feel much of anything but love. I want to tell you these things, but my lips are metal sealed tightly to each other.