What came first? Was it the burn or the smoke? Did she sit up in bed, stare down at her nightdress for a moment, then make a ring of fire in their room? I bet her sister heard it, woke up, opened her eyes quickly to waving arms and the light of my mother, up in flames. I bet their feet were hard and asleep, toes in shock, an inch above the carpet, trying to stop, drop and roll- silhouettes writhing across the walls. The cotton began to stink, thin and disappearing from her 5-year old body, leaving black in it's wake. Or maybe, was it red? Was she all red and her sister pale when they ran to their mother's room and screamed? And she, awakening to her daughters' dance, died some, maybe? I don't know what happened behind her eyes, even though they're my eyes now too. I couldn't even say maybe.

    So now I talk to a girlfriend quickly, ending conversation before I lose it, the slow creep of inspiration that doesn't visit my room near often enough. With an "I'm at the peak of my high and I've got a great idea for a poem!", I move, smiling with teeth glowing yellow, too fast and singe my pajama pants with a piece of my cigarette. No tissues for crying, I grab what I do have, a piece of paper, and rub the orange to black, not feeling any pain.

     Not like her, when her mother called her father, begging for a ride. Hot and wet, how did she sit in the car on the way? I think, maybe, she dreamed in her fever of firefighters coming to her gymnasium and telling her things. I think she dreamed of having fixed her mother's lighter and presenting it to her the next morning, showing teeth in pride. Maybe she'd just leave it on the counter, or in a purse, hoping her selfless act would stop her parents from the yelling. I've done that too, and I think both of us have learned that our smoke signals cannot reach the noses of our mothers and fathers.

    I always asked, in the supermarket, for candles. At the end of the aisle, coloring all four tiers with Christ and Francis and Mary, they stood like an unattainable realization, Eve reaching for the apple. At fifteen, I finally got a Virgin to guard my room. One turned to twelve and I am here now, lit up and shining and begging for a pen to write about the burns that told her she needed bigger breasts when she was thirty-something, when my then-father came back from Las Vegas with sequins and skin dancing in his head. I'm writing, now, about his mother, who told me that, when I think of 'Grandma', to think of she who maybe was listening to her country music on the way to the hospital, maybe telling her daughters to sing and forget. Because, my father's mother told me on the phone, that's the only grandmother I have now, now that my parents are finishing up their yelling for good.

    Finished up myself, blowing out the candles, I wonder if it's wrong to write about my mother, 5-years old and underneath a butterfly net for two months so nothing could infect her still-tender skin. Maybe it's okay, maybe this is my inheritance- the burn and the smoke, sitting up in bed.

I waited for her there, all night to come back. Until fourteen past three, until I fell asleep to the television's mumbling lullabye. I said to myself and to her dog, "Well, she won't be back for at least another four hours", then, an hour later, "She won't be back for another three hours, at least." This didn't make the moon shift quicker, nor time in that room at the Super 8 pass any faster. The Fresh Prince still took a half hour to talk himself out of whatever pickle he'd gotten into as the paper of my cigarettes took their time at peeling away, exposing grey fate, dwindling downwards to nothing save a shaky grip.

The numbers changed slowly, growing larger with my hips, damned moon, and nothing in that room could help it. I clawed at numbers I could control, could wind down through the dreaded triple digits and help me take up less space on the queen-sized motel bed I'd have to myself, envying Sleeping Beauty. She who got to pass out one night, no aids required, and wake up with no bed-head and a boyfriend who could waltz in a world that was light, and she in it. In the bathroom mirror, squinting under artificial light, I held onto myself and wanted that, knowing from experience that it wouldn't work for me as it did for Aurora. As hard as I try, I cannot seem to trade a kiss for happiness.

I started thinking, a dangerous pastime, at noises from down the hallway, colored as any other in the northeast, wondering if it was her coming back early. Even though by seventeen I knew better, still I rushed to the spy-hole to catch full, lively, drunken conversation coming from shadows cast on the opposite wall. If I could live in the space between that Aurora of a room and the life flickering before me, I would. There, from my two-inch tunnel, I'd learn all I'd ever want to know about what could lie between two shadows, sweeter than tension and heavier than echoes, but no space at all. Not even two inches.

have so much going on, ayie!! this weekend cannot come quick enough.
(e:ladycroft): i would LOVE to attend (e:thecarey)'s birthday party. if anyone's doing the carpool thang, let me know!


also, (e:drchlorine): yr ass is grass for that picture post, my friend.

just left (e:pmt)'s. am sososo tired and headachy. tomorrow should be painful.
it was fun though.


to all the (e:peeps) still going strong: DON'T SMOKE MY CIGARETTES THAT I LEFT!!!!!!! pleasepleaseplease i'm poor and unemployed and there was like, a whole pack PLUS a lighter!!!!

oh, and david's locked out in the cold cause timika's got his keys. yeah.

have decided that all the skinny girls i've put up in my room and locker and notebooks need to go. they were there for thinspiration, but maybe if i put up a bunch of fat girls i'd feel better, haha.

will i actually do this? no. drat.