Biography: 2005

I am twenty-nine. I live in a small apartment
in a small city in the northwestern corner of the country
currently considered the most powerful in the world.
I have no job. I spent the last two years of my life
drowning. I spent the last twenty years of my life hiding.
I am an empty tin can with the lid torn off.
I have everything I could possibly want.
I love my boyfriend. He loves me. With him I feel
possible. With everyone else I felt like a tourist attraction:
Most Miserable Girl This Side of the Mississippi.
I exaggerate. I have everything I could possibly want.
I have books and food and a bicycle. I have a small
animal that relies on me for its survival. I have a bed
and a pile of clothes I never pick up. Someday
I am going to die and the clothes will still be on the floor.
Someday I am going to die, and my boyfriend will die,
and my small animal will die. If you can read this,
you will die. In a way I find this comforting:
something is certain. I would like to be burnt
on a funeral pyre in the fashion of the Vikings,
or embalmed in the manner of the Egyptians.
I don’t know if we have a spirit, but if we do,
I’d like mine to float toward the sky.
I don’t know if there’s an afterlife, but if there is,
I’d like to have my brain close by, and perhaps
some lip balm and a book. I believe in keeping
one’s options open. I am twenty-nine.
I’ll hold your hand if you’ll hold mine.