pleading with a machine

"fierce flawless" -Ani Difranco she was cuffed to the truth like the truth was a chair bright interrogation light in her eyes her conscience lit a cigarette and just stood there waiting for her to crack waiting for her to cry his face scampered through her mind like a roach across a wall it made her heart soar it made her skin crawl they said, we got this confession we just need for you to sign why don't you just cooperate and make this easier on us all there was light and then there was darkness but there was no line in between and asking her heart for guidance was like pleading with a machine cuz joy, it has its own justice and dreams are languid and lawless and everything bows to beauty when it is fierce and when it is flawless on the table were two ziploc baggies containing her eyes and her smile they said, we're keeping these as evidence 'til this thing goes to trial meanwhile anguish was fingering solace in another room down the hall both were love's accomplices but solace took the fall now look at her book of days it's the same on every page and she's got a little tin cup with her heart in it to bang along the bars of her rib cage bang along the bars of her rib cage ... a few nights ago I finally understood why the woman I'm pretending to be said she tends to leave the lights on all the time so she won't come home to a dark house and why she keeps a mentally challenged golden retriever, two cats, and half a dozen chickens, so she'll never be alone. I wake up alone in the morning to a dog that wants to go play outside and chickens that need feeding. Get up and take care of them because it's easier than listening to the silence and stretching across a bed thats empty except for me (and sometimes a hooligan kitten). Read through the morning and afternoon, not quite able to lose myself, making meals and even setting the table this once even though I'm not hungry and don't care, just to make note of the fact that time is passing as if paying this homage will make it continue to pass. The shadows start to lengthen and I make the dog's bowl of food: dry and wet food, pills, and then float the lot in water. The wet food is real meat and the smell and look of it nearly makes me gag. Someone at work says hello to me. I reply. It is the first time I've spoken all day. ... I went to my old highschool the other day. My twenty-something friend, Erin, is still there. Trying to make a bunch of stupid teenagers give a damn about words. It's the sort of thing that it breaks my heart to watch. It will break her in a few years if she sticks with it. She tells me she's looking into a job at an alternative highschool in Rhode Island. She sounds excited about it the way she used to talking about classes a year--maybe two years--ago. Her daughter will be nine on my nineteenth birthday and I promise to visit RI on her behalf when I go back east. I'd love to get her and her daughter (and sure her husband, why not, though I've only met him once) out of this town. Her daughter is what I was when I was nine, down to the crooked teeth, huge bifocals, and uneven pigtails. She'll come to hate this town just as much as I do if she stays, maybe more. My hatred grows as I read the papers. They're putting in a Walmart and sooner or later a strip mall. I'd like to see the highschool, at least, burn to the ground.