THE SCRIPT

I ubëred to Topanga. Pinkheat, dust and iced-tea       got stuck very practically       no cars headed the other way.        Call it “Narrative Lost”   what did you smell            pre-teen runaway      drunk on the grass     somebody’s yard in the valley.       Ocean,  mallbreeze   ocean-draw,   drive-thru

Capital One.             Money dressed-up the palms.     The night smells like fire      and it’s not our identities burning.     Did we know     how we made real                  things                 by pretending to dream?   Night smells like seasalt, watchdog on the cul-de-sac.  Salt tastes like skin.  Ocean  a mouthful of bodies.     Cold sand   smelled like silence.    In the too-familiar   I began

not existing.  Within objects.  The table setting pulls back from my hands.  The sun draws back its life.  Nothing fed but our scars.   The cars, their stability      turns to  wild water                turns light hands in the red this scope is longer    this weird          daylight of end.  Landscape of bloodsugar  vertigo thigh muscle   sensitized wound   since you left        my bones are heavier.

New gravity.  Nude bra.  A summer.       Sweat collector babydoll     tee      arc of a parking

lot, edge of the concrete    its summer crumbling side           where we sat   thinking forever as ever like anything else   we did, we assumed       Romeo, Romeo                more than a thrill…

Romeo, echo delta       this edge of my scalp skin set to: want.  A degree in “to keep.”   People moving away       back into the lines    outside of a Best Buy.    The 90’s.     New York or Baltimore     sounds like our youth    turning worldwide     on digital radio.   Who wasn’t still isn’t afraid?   My body remembers   discharging itself         into the sharper kind of    grass.

The white nights, white teeth     hypnic jerk.     Descartes in a darkroom    I, too, am    sure I’m awake         taking pictures but not                    of what this reminds me. Siri’s confused.  I look out the window.     Just snow light.  No image so.  Or is it a swimming pool    season, location, et cetera

slithery pool light        any body of water        slip your heat in and     draw back the wet bundle

drenched with “and”               silence and                  silence and familiar

                                                                                    silence.    Whiskey [I am]

[I don’t] hotel      [I know, I know] [What is]   Yankee

candle, flattened pillow.  Smudge in my palm says uncertainly, “Never.”     [I know] [I am]

We watched that film “The Swimming Pool.”   I saw a picture  of my body            Really Naked   [who’s that] from the back  [I turned]   17 that year online.   Call it “Narrative Cost”   defrosting

in darkness      edited    hypnic jerk.  As I begin not existing …  Watch this: the men piss on a woman    good old flickering firelight and    last of all    your ex     steps forward as he unbuckles…       Someone’s always making the arc of    contact    towards   flesh.         My art

history teacher   said       Lee’s douche hung in the bathroom.   Night smelled like pine… dead fire… piss…   [I turn] [say won’t]  [I wrote] “No Point.” A large circle     drawn in pencil somewhere inside… nowhere is nope.       Narrative won’t.      A scene she wrote…

actress angrily masturbating   after a fight.   They laugh.    Okay, that’s dignity      call it a wrap.     Later, I surrender     my boots                      in a parking lot.      In a dark room, watching my life’s world   side    turn.  [What is]  Inside joke.  Inside-out denim jacket.  Denim both sides.  Denim all the way down.   Her long thighs.  [I wrote] Nevermind, I can’t   even find   a beginning.