No 3: BRAIN DEAD TOTE 3819SUNSETBLVD, LOSANGELES, CA90026
PHOTO PROVIDED BY JULIE AUERBACH
LUCIA AUERBACH
today I am on the subway with a white tote bag that has now gone beige.
the seats are orange and reek of bleach
[sometimes I think if I burn my skin
with enough chemicals I’ll have the
glow of commercial, undeniable
beauty and success]
in my childhood home hung a photo of my mother
grasping her bass guitar with a neck brace on.
now she has a scar under her back piece tattoo
of my family personified as fish—maybe we’ve always
had back problems. but she’s told me time and time
again that I should switch to backpacks and not these
totes so I don’t suffer from her own fatebutlittle
doessheknowIhaveworkedmypsychetotheground
toevenbeabletoresembletheraw, wild femininity
she has displayed.
I throw my tote on the floor of the subway.
I make sure I dump everything.
[I couldn’t get out of my bed this
morning because my floor was so
crowded. my feet refused to take
up the shoes’ room]
the tote bag spills onto the floor
but it’s 6 am and no one joined me in this car.
the tote bag spills onto the floor.
and I prayed for a cacophony
of sound to make my contents
feel more physical.
they are physical, yes I know,
but I would like the validation of
sound to confirm its existence.
the cacophony sounds like a miniature crash and it’s not beautiful at all.
the tote bag spills onto the floor.
I blinked and missed the cinematic display of everything that I carry in my tote falling in slow motion onto the bleached floor.
[did I mention that I wish
I could burn my skin so all
the acne would go away?]
CONTENTS:
· A penny I found face up outside my dorm—it didn’t give me any good luck the day I found it, but I kept it anyway.
· A bottle’s worth of loose Midol. My cramps got worse a few years ago when I decided to protect myself from his sperm.
· Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut; page 156 is bookmarked and now the angel is tattooed on my knee.
· Pepper spray disguised as a long, fat tube of lipstick.
[need I explain? I grew up in the US]
· Air pods I named DHONKA HARDWARE after the sticker it bears. I don’t wear them anymore. I blew out the speakers like the ones in my car;
[I tried to drive away from there and
drown out the noise in the process.
for a week I thought a truck was
following me every time I went to
Charles’ house. there was no truck,
only the fear of escaping his grasp]
· Suavina chap stick. The only materialization of a Spanish identity I’ve yet to form.
· Dior Maximizing lip gloss that I steal a tube from every time I see my mom because I don’t want to inject plastic into my lips anymore.
· Go macro bars and their wrappers.
· A post it note with lyrics from a Ricky Eat Acid song;
if I cleaned
everything
would you
come back?
· A post card I lied to my ex-boyfriend about sending.
· My small light pink Leuchtturm1917 notebook that I thought would make me sound smarter if I wrote down the words I didn’t know [SEE ATTACHED:
misdiagnosed dyslexia].
· A book entitled The Argonauts that I wrote on several pages asking the margins: what can I claim as scripture?
§ not that I read Maggie Nelson as a biblical author, but who decides what I can claim as scripture?
I should pick these up now.
I should get off at the next stop.
I should lurch my head out of the water now. I’ve been trying to drown my art in it. I would like to take a breath of air that doesn’t subsist on words and literature. my words do not exist as entities of myself but only as facets of an imagination I sometimes like to commodify.
