FOR ALL THE LITTLE DEAD ONES LEFT BEHIND

Zé on the rooftop making videos about razor blades, me up there weeping. I use my cupped hands to raise and lower the volume of Earth. I phone my mom and cry some more. I’m building the Barbie dream house here, I tell her, your unfinished masterpiece, the one you blame us kids for burning the bones of. I will make it now, I will make it perfect, I will make you happy, I will make you proud. I will make you live forever here, safe from the sirens, the corrosive drops of chemical rain tornado-lodged, whirling. I hereby swear to complete your vision above all other things. There is nothing else to me but this legacy. The punk sounds grow too loud now, mom, I have to hang up. My hands can no longer quiet the rowdy mechanism, the bands warming up in the city that churns and burns below.

I am in the sky I have seen the eye I have advertised its products and glories

Earth water exported to Mars Sour cream faces in pools of salsa Max with his shirt off Spitting mouthfuls of water at Clothilde

A taco I made for Steve To eat at the picnic table An oasis in a desert of dog shit

I shave my face with the duct tape razor, the one Zé used to split his forearms like firewood. I imagine using the blood he spilled as the wet for a slip n’ slide party. We’ll cascade off the roof and straight down to hell, which is where we all are already, we were present at one other’s unbecomings, witnesses or helpers to the great crossover. I was there when Zé bled out, his skin flaps folding open like the wings on paper cranes. He held onto the end of the neck rope I’d tied when I burst through the hatch of that speeding Subaru, cradled me in his arms in the grass by the highway as I flickered and faded, saying No Mabel, no Mabel, no Mabel, no. Luka and Bren drowned in pools of filthy floor mattress vomit. Itsi and Del with their throats slit wide by Mad Maxian half-breeds. Tika and Emmy just barbecued torsos, arms and legs twisted off and devoured. Georgie, Benjamin Buttoned back to a single spun-out sperm cell and scorched to death, like parchment roasted in the desert sun. Dutchesz and Pussy packed full of eggs, burst open like cordyceps ants, cockroach gods spilling out over the frameless red futon’s edge.

I run in barefoot circles in the kitchen ‘till tornadoes fill the unit, orbs of blue flame from the stovetop roiling the atmosphere, paint a crucifix in nail polish on the locked bedroom door. The fire extinguisher blew up in my face. The threads form a web around the mirror and the portal. I huddled in the cold shower, screaming. Demons surged and swam through sage smoke plumes.

Winking, they tickle my skin. They blow smoke rings through the tubes that twisting together form my body. I feed them little pieces of it. No one answers my cries. Everyone’s gone. Everybody’s dead.

But we helped each other go. It was beautiful. The other squat neighbors looked on poetically, dreamed of acquiring the stovetops and fridges we’d left behind. I’d died before that, of course, and will live and die a million times again. I made Zé promise to protect me forever, and I guaranteed a similar vow. When the Earth dies screaming I’ll be ready to leave her. Is this a betrayal, or merely the forked garden path leading some to redemption and others to ruin? I’ll leave you behind again and again, if that’s what it takes to complete a full rescue, but I’ll always be waiting for the day you decide to meet me again, back behind the tracks, half a can of something, rolling a smoke, me on a rock, the blue wildflower petals’ soft alien whisper caressing my sneakers in the night.

by Unity

Unity is a writer and performer who lives in upstate New York with many feral cats and alter egos, including Miss Unity, the greatest Lana Del Rey impersonator in the entire hospital. Find Unity on social media @doyoumissunity