IN DEFENSE AT STARING AT THE SUN

     i don’t think i qualified for the it-girl residency this year,

     my application got denied because i’ve never been off the east coast,

     & now i can’t stand the sound of california in everyone’s mouths —

     i don’t need to stand on the production-lot of a hollywood blockbuster

     to know of nepotism, to know that good art & good candidates are rarely seen.
   
    i think i typed “da innernet” instead of “The Internet”

    because i thought that the job was here for “diversity”

    maybe i didn’t qualify because they thought i couldn’t swim

    & would drown in the valley of LA traffic.

    but i told them that east coast traffic is just as bad too

    if you’re driving through virginia during the holidays.

    i imagine i’ll be twentysomething living in the city

    at a corporate job & my cute corporate coworker turned work-husband

    will smile at me & i’ll smile at him but eye contact is hard when

    your contacts are drying at the center of your irises,

    so i keep blinking, trying to alleviate the dryness

    & now he thinks i'm strange because i can’t blink correctly

    but blinking is involuntary like blushing or breathing

    & maybe he thinks i’m a cool girl for my rare & niche hobby

    of bodily autonomy & then i’ll tell him about

    the endeavors of bathroom conversations — not a conversation

    held in a bathroom but a conversation about bathrooms

    & how for a long time i missed standing barefoot in a shower 

    & not worrying about the girls talking shit about my type-4 curls

    clogging the drains or sticking to the shower curtain. 

    but i want him to know that i’m a cool girl outside the cubicle

    so i tell him about my vinyl record collection & how i was a dancer in a past life

    maybe then he’ll want me a little more. but even between

    all the cubicle conversations, we all want an inner circle,

    but i just want to feel like the center of a circle:

    alive & calm in the eye of a storm, even if it’s out of reach,

    even when the world’s ending around us, even when i don’t say

    the words “violence” or “systematic” or “bondage” because

    apparently, those words retired from the mouths of millions so long ago.

    but how when they’re the reason why i’m here in the first place:

    disjointed & carrying myself on the train where the silence of strangers

    is the most peaceful part of my day & after getting lost in the beauty of

    the way the old man holds his own hands over his belly & i’ll think maybe

    i didn’t dream big enough, maybe the dream could’ve been held in my hands,

    or maybe i thought all the days would be endless,

    & i would learn to love a broken thing like the printer or the scanner & maybe

    i’ll find the reason, find the malfunction or the paper jam of all my past heartaches

    telling me why i’ve spent my whole life trying to be the center of someone's world.

    2020