1.

this white woman is a crowbar is a knife in an oven is coming out of her well her cage her father's knee. over here she is wanting to wait another year another beer she is the gardener she was there when chernobyl was written for american consumption she shaves her eyebrows puts her gut out on tv eats a chicken raw paints wool with menstrual blood pulls astronauts into her bedroom childproofs her corner of the street stands still bedazzles her vagina. in poland my mother was in love with her white roommate's long black lashes. my mother says this never happened but I still remember. what is memory? when I was 6 they said my memory was photographic (click) and I said no eidetic. how far can you remember back? eidetic memory occurs in 2 - 15% of children and rarely in adults. this is not to be confused with echoic memory: it would be extremely rare to lack echoic memory. our eyes have longer than our ears to eat the world, so sound lasts longer in us. in my headphones this white woman is breaking her voice on the rough parts of her throat. I join her there, gashing up against the vocal nodes until she swallows me. all my mother's friends are white women so my mother has no friends. I try to keep white women inside my cellphone singing. I cover up the camera on my laptop if they can't see me I can't see them if I can't see them they might do some good yet. our eyes have more time to accept their stimuli. my eyes do not connect. on my phone this white woman stares at me from the top of grey sheets. or rather. this white woman stares at a camera. I am looking in her eyes she is looking at a camera. I used to have a photographic memory. there is no such thing as a photographic memory.


2.

sometimes I want to move a photo from my laptop to my phone or my phone to my laptop. I send myself an email. are you sure you want to send without a subject? yes. are you sure you want to send without a body? the photo I am sending is of me as I will look in 40 years. I will have less whites to my eyes my lips will eat themselves my forehead will worry and frown, my cheeks will hang down covering my neck. my neck will be darker. I hit send. the email goes to my outbox and then disappears into my inbox. it is unread on both my laptop and my phone. (no subject) (no body). the app that made me old has left my hair brown. my mother dyes her hair monthly with henna and a plastic bag and a blue and silver rag that used to hold her head together while she washed our floors with other rags and a red plastic bucket. I have never seen a grey hair on my mother's head. I have 9 grey hairs all on the right side. the henna takes all day. she can't go out because it smells of cooked manure. my mother's forehead is large and smooth. there is only one mean line between her brows. black don't crack she says. we make fun of her ex-best friend. she's shriveled up my mum says. yes I say she looks like an anaemic rat. I buy an eye cream called resist that's made with hyaluronic acid and licorice. it visibly depuffs. it smooths fine lines. it refreshes and brightens. my mother wears a tinted sunscreen 7 shades too light and goes out with a black umbrella blocking out the sky. I don't like the sun, she says. she buys me an organic sunscreen but it leaves a cast on me. I look like flash photography in an 80s magazine. I go to a nude beach with a friend who says they want to make their chest less white passing. my friend is not white passing so it's funny. I don't wear sunscreen. I look better with a tan. there's a crease below my left eye that won't come out. there are two lines on my forehead when I wake up tired. I open the photo of myself in 40 years and try to map out which lines I can live with. start saving for the ones I can't. black don't crack. crack don't black. I run the photo through the app again and my lips disappear. again my eyes have lost their whites, stare black and gleaming. again my hair has wrinkles.

3.

when I watch movies I don't watch, I listen. I don't listen very well because I'm also on my cellphone, but I hear enough to get the picture. what is enough? on my laptop a white woman is an alien is talking about freedom I glance up and catch her eyes above a ridged nose. she has long dark lashes which are probably fake. our eyes meet. she is not looking at me. I pause. I google her: she looks like shit now. no. she looks older. I think I want to be her. I close all my tabs. connect my buzzing bluetooth speaker to my phone. sound lasts longer in us. this white woman is saying, tinny, that she knows, she knows she knows a crowbar pries me open. I know, I know I know. it’s not what she knows that hurts me it is what she doesn’t know. I know this white woman better than she knows herself because I know that she is innocent. innocent is not the same as good. I am good because I am not innocent. I am not the garden, which is innocent. I am not the gardener. I am not the wall around the garden though I have touched every stone of it. I can see her she can’t see me. I can’t see her she can’t see me. she doesn’t know me so she doesn’t know herself or what harm she can do to me. but I know. I know. I know.