Coughing, Swallowed, Forgotten, Free
Hello Surreal Times People, It's been a while and so far I don't think I like this year. I haven't seen my gulls in a long time. It's like I'm on another beach upside down, hung. I close my eyes and see all the gulls playing. I like knowing my friends are having fun but sometimes, I hope they stop to notice I'm not there, and then it sort of feels like I am.
Seagulls will spin for hours just to see the waves meet the rocks through dizzy eyes. My friends toss up leftover sand sculptures with their wings, and follow them up into the air. I remember gulls scribbling their webbed feet, all up in the seafoam, over washed-up papers. Drowsily inky notes slide off the page to be sweetly forgotten or maybe just remembered wrong. But then they’d be just like me; unnoticed. We are swallowed, we wake up to friends frozen, or flown off, or choked on too much spit up, or just choked, but all that is far from me. I feel fictional, but by that I mean free.
Thinking they're grand when they're small, the Pigs took me from Egg Rock, put me in a big mean van that has so many screaming fingerprints stuck on the metal bench. They took me all the way to Salem High, even though I never went to school before.
I guess I was lucky, they sent my friend Francis back home, not to the beach but back to Puerto Santo. She told me when she was littler she was a poor fisherman's basket who found her way to Lynn cause she could never hold her hauls in. Before they came to take us, she was already packing her stuff, very quickly, like she wanted leaving to not take so long. We said goodbye that night, she's not a soft person, I didn't mind that though, she was trying for me, I think.
", but I will miss you, you've always had alot of excitement. You'll have to wise up for yourself now. You pretend it's not, but this place is a house for the stolen, built on carcasses while they still breathed. And they'll eventually come to clean us "rot" out,"
"Francis, sure I pretend lots of things, but I like it that way, it doesn't mean they aren't true. They're, we're just unseen."
"It's not they don't see us, they just think defuncts like us best wither where we're woven, like all the years I spent here are just rust. They say we're lazy but we're just slept on."
"What's wrong with rust?" I asked, “It's like metal's beard.”
"Please forget me quickly, there's so much sweet nonsense in your head and I never could stand being too near that."
But Francis pretends too. She pretends she never liked our games, ever since her and Klip, my seagull friend who I buried a couple months ago sewed me up, Franis'd front, like she wouldnt look over at us and smirk, thinking she was sly, that we never notice how our balls inflated every morning.
[Editor's Note: both parts of Klip the seagull's journal can be found at surrealtimes.net]
She gave the heavy cracked eyeballs that looked down from above the tenements too much mind. They think I don't notice things, but I do. I got so excited I just try not to see them, it hurts to notice. I'm now like my friend Klip like that. I'm scared of mirrors, I'm scared that I'll eat myself by mistake and end up too deep inside my guts and stuffing. I think you Surreal Times people would understand. I know I seem strange, I’ve heard them shout 'fag' and 'shemale', I've felt bruises, judgy people sent me to the beach but they don't get to hold it, it belongs to us featherless gulls.
I think Francis felt better feeling bad, she was thrown into the shade, and found it cooler. But I think feeling bad is tiring, being sad and angry wears you down, but there is alot to feel sad and angry about. I feel bad that I haven't gone to see Klip's body since I don't know when. I used to go down to say "hi" and make sure the ants don't get greedy and take too much of her at once, she liked to take her time before going anywhere. But I haven't been to the beach in so long. The staff who watch us in the beds at the empty school said I'll get sick if I go out to see her. But I know they just want time to wipe down the street art I never told them I did, and clean our little beach hangouts. I'm pretty sure the bike cops wanted to steal my friend's cut-off fingers, after they got them chopped in a puppet's hand hole, but I swallowed them first so they couldn't take them.
And after stealing the breath from black featherless gulls, the staff here expect them to take a big mound of clay filled with years of hate thrown and story erasing, then magically shape it into something pretty. All the staff are tripping on purpose, holding their gas lamps trying to blind us.. Then the staff get grand and grumpy when black gulls take their tired-sadness and righteous anger and sculpt something loud and sharp, powerful and beautiful.
I think that's why I can't go see Klip. They said I could stay in the school or head to the Farm in Lawrence, and I'd rather stay in Salem because I don't like to be far from the beach. They took my earrings, they thought I'll cut if they let me keep them. They served us chicken noodle soup, but they laughed at me when I asked if the noodles and the chicken get along. If they don't, I just hope they will make up. But I can't help them, cause I can't have make-up here. In the bathroom they have all sorts of phone numbers on the walls, like one that says, "Ronnie Mack gives good head. Shoulders knees and toes, amputees please call." Another says, "Come back next week kids for more old fun wonder times with Boko the Dilapidated Ferret." Sometimes you gotta dream big when I get bigger I'm going to be the Security guard of all these bathroom stall masterpieces.
I skipped dinner and tripped on my way back from the bathroom, I hit my nose on the ground. The floors smell like decaying off brand perfume, and anxious hand holding. But I don't mind decay, I even once held its hand when I would wait in line at DMH reception. Decay isn't mean, they just like to loiter, when you’re old you have time to loiter. The beds here don't decay too, they are made of special Hong Kong plastic, so bed is always dry, even the tears just pool up.
I'm scared, I feel like I'm flailing inside like a stray newspaper turned into a tattooed origami pigeon, folded paper cut thin, till thankfully no one could see me. I'm shivering into place but my feet won't settle, they're just pins and needles. The tears gather like my tidal pools, they smell saltier and eggier, I'm sleepy.
There are little bits of broke wooden row boats twirling around me in the water, I like them. Paint chips with bits of free sea serpents dress up the smog as smoke, and show me how to dance. Klip is back playing with me. I can't feel my feet, hands, or thighs, or any of it. I feel like melted crayons, and the gulls finally let me join their dart games with the hypodermic needles. I'm close to my friends, finally, and now they don't scatter when I wave. I'm scattered but l have warm sighs where my aches used to be, no old skin, just tattoos, the gulls squawk and I understand what they say.
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