Groceries, Library, Pole

“Pole dance”

TOMASELLI AWARD, Runner-up

NONFICTION

by Olivia Nyah Rose

7:00AM, 7:03AM, 7:06AM, 7:09AM, 7:12AM. I’ve not once slept through an alarm, but the mere thought of it leads me to make my alarm app look like the departure times for a subway. I’ve never stood on the yellow platform waiting for the subway and not thought about what it might feel like to be eye level with the train’s headlights, my body suspended in the lowest part of the station.

My favorite moment of the day is when I first open my eyes, and the sun reaches them in a way that is not yet overbearing. At this moment I exist, but I do not yet remember who I am or what has happened to me. If those two things can even be seen as separate entities.

This doesn’t last long. I stand up, and my legs react to gravity in a way that cannot be normal. They are heavy and not my own, but they make their way to the coffee maker regardless. I filled the basket with grinds and the pot with water the night before. All I have to do is press a button, but even this feels like work. I look over at the flowers I picked myself last week that are now rotting away in their own flesh.

There is hot amber making its way into my bloodstream as I create lists in my head on the dingy couch of my apartment. Groceries, library, pole. Groceries, library, pole. My brain is funny that way. I could have a to-do list on my desk, my phone, the bathroom mirror, and in ink on the palm of my hand, but I would still need to put this broken record of rudimentary tasks on the stereo that lives inside of me. Groceries, library, pole. Groceries, library, pole.

Outside of my window, the fog makes my town look unspecific. The white house across the street from my building has faded into nothing more than a gray shadow. This makes it easier to get dressed. Though I exist in the same body I did yesterday, at least my surroundings will be painted a different color.

Getting dressed is not an excruciating task in the morning. I pick out my clothes the night before. I fold my pants vertically and string them through a hanger that I place on an over-the-door coat rack. The shirt that I pick hangs on the same hook in front of my pants. The hangers fit next to each other like books on a shelf, and I drape whatever earrings I choose into the neckline of my shirt, or through the holes of my sweater, depending. I loop my bra around the neck of the hangers and place my shoes with a ball of socks inside side by side at the base of my closet door. There are many days when I have a change of heart in the morning and pick a different outfit entirely--my intended outfit standing on my closet door like a museum relic.

Though I understand the ebb and flow of style choices, if I don’t pick an outfit out the night before something bad will happen to my family, my friend’s puppy will die in some terrible car accident, or Trump will be re-elected.

I think the modern grocery store was invented by Satan himself. I’m not sure when he would’ve had time to make his way to Earth, but I am sure he had some part in the curation of Shoprite. There is something about the fluorescent lighting and meandering aisles that makes me want to gouge my eyes out with a dull carrot. In the grocery store I don’t allow myself to buy comfort foods. Instead, I stand in front of the kombucha selection and decide whether I want to buy “hazy purple sunrise grape” or “reverie raspberry.” I don’t think I even like kombucha very much, but I do like my fridge to look like that of a mentally stable person that does yoga and doesn’t take pictures of herself from a self timer on her phone in the passenger seat of her car to see what she looks like to other people while she’s driving. I buy fruit that will be nothing but a home for flies by the end of the week, but, at least I will have some un-leaving company.

Soon enough, I feel the weight of the world consume me. Gravity once again works against me. I feel the muscles in my face search for the floor. I think everyone around me can smell the poison I am leaking into the water. Everybody must be able to hear my thoughts. I make my way over to the condiment aisle; where I know I will be able to blankly stare at salad dressings for too long without judgment.

I’ve left the grocery store in search of darker planets, for something to be sad about, even though I haven’t cried in 128 days. But, in reality, I look at the calories on the back of ketchup bottles, and cringe at every number that doesn’t end in a two.

I check out with three bottles of kombucha, rice cakes, organic ketchup, a pothos plant, and three candles I found in the clearance cart. I don’t have much of an appetite nowadays anyway, and it is easier to have an empty fridge than to cope with the stress of having to organize something meant to keep me alive.

On my way to the library, I walk slowly and deliberately, as though the way my front foot places itself onto the ground after each step will determine whether or not the oncoming strangers will think that I am doing well. In this slow meandering I find a monarch carcass on the asphalt. The orange wings stand out against the ground like a blood moon, and I squat down in the middle of the road to investigate this glimmer of light. Before I continue on my way, the monarch’s body is cupped within my palms.

I don’t do any work at the library, but isn’t it wonderful to dream? Instead, I roam the aisles of classic literature with one hand stretched out as though I was holding a serving tray at cocktail hour. In lieu of a platter lies the small body and fragile wings of the butterfly. I scan the books, but I don’t do more than that. I know I would check them out just for them to sit lifeless on my desk. Plus, I don’t want to hold anything else, fearful of crushing my butterfly’s wings. In some small way, I need to prove I can take care of something, though already harmless in death.

At home, I place the monarch on my desk and prop its wings up with a stack of dimes under each side. She watches me as I undress. I shed the clothes I wore all day that resembled the style choices of a librarian in her late sixties, despite the fact that I am only twenty-two. I wonder if the lifeless monarch thinks my body is attractive. I don't mind the way my body drapes and curves over my bones, but I also don't think I give off an innately sexual vibe. Most of the time I am seen with a cardigan I hold taught across my ribcage like a middle aged woman wearing a robe she bought from Kohl’s. I try not to think about myself in a sexual sense as I put on shorts and a sports bra and pack my sparkly red pleasers into their respective bag for pole class. I know that crying would be more satisfactory than an orgasm.

In class, the cold metal cylinder callouses my hands, and I secretly long to see the bruises tomorrow from my soft body against the pole. The teacher calls herself a boss babe and says things like, “Get it queen!” and “You go girl!” If the pole was more easily removed from the mounting, I think I would use it to bash her skull in if she called me “queen” one more time. I stay quiet and smile. I bang my knee into the pole a little bit harder on purpose during my climb everytime I fuck up. I know that I look hot, even though I feel like dying.

I listen to “Rainbow Connection” by The Muppets on repeat during my drive home. At every curve I wonder what it would feel like if I kept my wheel straight, and I think about how badly I want to break glass.

Once I’m home I decide to take a bath. I like to feel the full spectrum of water temperature from scathing hot to ice cold. Somewhere in the middle the temperature is so close to my own, for a moment it feels I am outside of my body. I bring the monarch into the bathroom and prop it up against the old bar of soap on the ledge next to me that has cemented itself to the tile. I don’t listen to anything. Instead, I stare into the white realm that my body lays in until I no longer notice the details of the room I am in.

In my towel on my way to bed I see the rotting flowers in their vase. For a moment, I think about changing the water--maybe they will perk up or come back to life. But, there is no use in watering old flowers. On my way to bed I throw the debris out of my window including the glass vase, and by the light of the street lamp, I watch it shatter on the asphalt three stories below.