i have fourteen letters, unsent, laying on my bed. eight from the back of my notebook, folded, three still in my notebook, written on unserrated pages. three from the bottom of my backpack, completely crumpled. they all say more or less the same thing i'm constantly thinking, that i have been constantly thinking since i could think again, maybe february. i called my mother on the telephone from redding, where i would watch tv for sometimes even seven hours a day, looking through the screen. i didn't even want to say it to her, my lips almost didn't form the words, spitting them out like something sour, our of context, just before she might otherwise have hung up.

it's been since march that i've only had my voice in my head. it's nice, here, even with all the clutter and my bad thoughts. in san luis, luili and i went to theatro de la paz. we snuck in through the back entrance and up the airs to the box seats. it was in the afternoon, and the stage hands were erecting sets, skeletal and sawdusty, particles floating golden and backlit through the light flooding in through the back doors, open to alleys and mysterious city machinery. we burst in, and luisa stopped up short and sat down hard in the cushioned, wine-colored chair. i ran right up to the low railing separating the balcony from empty space. i bent over at the waist to look down some sixty feet at the seats below, the air opening up below me like a well always getting deeper, or a whirlpool in an ocean, or a fault line, uncovered. at the bottom of which, chairs lined up dumb and innocent, and all i can think of is how my body would land.

and my stomach was the only place where i could feel the shadow presence of the railing at my knees, and luili at my back, and my whole life hung over my head, like a body on a string, corpus neglectus. we could tumble down, you and i, i think, we could see how our limbs would hang over these seats, how the string of blood and spit would lie on my cheek. we could rend the ribs, and spill the organs, and ride the last breath home, hard. ride it over the bumping ambulance on these thick-laid, dark stone streets, we could ride it out half anonymous, a stranger to be unlaced from these trapped seats, these deaf and dumb seats, lined up here before whatever spectacle may come.

but i suck the last breath into my lungs again, i keep it in my stomach for later, and i turn fast on a heel, through the swinging balcony doors, down the steps. the costume designer's door is open, he is at his work table, but watching tv. there is a hallway that ends at a window and a pink vinyl chair with metal legs and there is a bare bulb. and the lit up particles are here, too. i'm thinking about the light particles elsewhere, in your irises, the shape of your fingers, and how the skin meets your fingernails, tapering to whatever you touched, maybe just the air. how you held your hand sideways and curled in on itself like a shell. like something might spill out while you explained things. how the hair on your face caught the light, and the place on my stomach where your hand lay, in the morning, warmer than me. a bookmark, holding me where you stopped, and planned to finish later.

this morning, restless, and the hours fit badly. mother has made new haven cake and the kitchen smells like dates and chocolate. the dog snores softly, the chickens are quiet after laying the morning eggs. i have the finished paperwork and a marshmallow on my desk. in a few hours i put the queen in the hive. i will stop the end of the matchbox with a marshmallow, and her subjects will break her free with their teeth.