hot like trauma

this morning i woke up too early, before everyone. the windows of our room were closed and the curtains pulled, both the thick one for the light, and the thin one for privacy. the dog was snoring and pawing at the bedding that maria and luisa had kicked off in the heat heavy night. only one spring of my mattress has not been completely compressed by time and bodies heaving over it for decades. it is between my ribcage and left breast. a month of sleeping with it there has given me a heart shaped bruise next to my heart. it started pink, then red, now it is deeper, bluish, almost purple. the ritual scarification of mexican suburbs. now, by accident, i am marked as a woman.

there is a thin line of light that filters into the room from the skylight over the shower. it is almost smoky, and filters into the room in an unreal way, affirming my unrealness. i shift to my back and imagine coming off the plane in san francisco: the cool air of the airport, the ambient noise of rushed good-byes and horns of luggage carts, wheels peeling away on the linoleum like a zipper coming undone. i imagine that you come, and i don't have to say anything, that you don't flinch when i touch you, that things are allowed to move smoothly forwards, rather than stopping to yell, or stumble on a hard block of secret time, held out of my reach always, faceless and mute to me, held against me like a grudge or a hammer.

i fall back asleep while someone takes a shower, the water sounds rinsing away this and other foolish dreams i've had, the vampires at the door of my childhood home, windows with the wrong views, a soft white hand ripping the film from my reel and tearing it down the center, splicing it badly with somthing else, and rolling it, jerkily, without feeling, without sense.