I was seven the first time I sewed scripture to the cuffs of my suits. I was attending my uncle’s funeral. I say uncle because legally that’s all he was to me. I don’t even know his name, mom had this to say about him: “oh him? yeah sweety(I hated when she called me sweety) he’s your uncle. Wanna have a little secret? before your daddy married me your “uncle” used to make kisses on me” I ignored mother that day, I ignored mother most days. Now don’t get me wrong, I loved her. But I did not love her words. I haven’t loved someones words since I was three. The last words I loved I heard on the radio “we offer a discount on towels” we offer something about those two words stuck with me. Anyways. I borrowed thread. I kidnapped a needle and I sewed a chapter of Habakkuk to the cuff of my “dashing suit” thats what my aunt called it. She’s the type that calls everything dashing. Makes me sick. I sat in the pew of a musty church, pinching my leg. stepping on one foot. occasionaly peeking at my scriptures. I do the same thing now that i’m older. My wife. when she picks me out a shirt she asks: “Hey babe, what scripture do you want to wear today?” I never answer. She knows. That was a day. Thats what I would say, “That was a day” I never learned descriptive words. Later when my age became larger I learned that “weird” would have been an appropriate word. “That was a weird day, I saw my first bra, dead person and realized I look nothing like my family” You’re probably wondering what my age is. Well by calender talk i’m 27. But in the world of science i’m only 13. I never paid much attention to science. Why do people want answers for everything? I have to stop talking now, sorry for such a weird ending but I have to sew.

Evelyn made sure the sleeves of her sweater or the hems of her skirt never rose up around the other children in school. She wasn’t ashamed of her skin, Evelyn used to sit in the tub on the nights she was allowed to use water admiring the fairness of her skin. But that was before her mother started losing things. That was before Evelyn sat up at night pulling off the sins and memories that stuck to the bottom of her mothers foot. Ones that had slid off her body without her knowing or even if she did know she no longer had the strength to hold onto memories or sins. Not after the “storm”. Not after the night her mother came home crying with two men from the Police station all wrapped up in a blanket and led to her bed to sleep the storm away. Evelyn didn’t want to overhear the Policeman as they left, but a child’s ear is a mysterious thing. “I’ve seen her before, she never was a lady of the evening..but she also never favored the mornings.” Evelyn’s ears made no sense of what they heard and that was for the best. A child’s ear has no need for ignorant words. She stayed up with her storm battered mother, reciting her poems, singing made up songs and counting the hairs on her head. Now things are much more complex, her mother never recovered from the storm. She lost all her memories, the humanity of sin, the grace that lived in her. It was falling off her as she walked, washed off her wrists when she scrubbed the same dish for 20 minutes. But Evelyn walked behind her, slept at the edge of her bed and drained the tub for her. Collecting all the memories, grace and sin that she so unwillingly lost. Evelyn saved her lunch money for a ink and quill set so she could take all things lost and write them between her thighs, under her arms. Covering all her flesh with her mother in hopes that one day she would want it all back. And if not..she would walk this earth with her mother on her skin…

sleep writing

I used to bury my nickles under mothers porch so the aunts and uncles of my father wouldn’t steal them from me. I buried my shoes behind the old truck that dad pretends to drive. I cover the cuts on my ankles with the mud from the hill. In hopes that one day I will grow roots and become one of those trees that sit so safely in the distance.

3 nights ago I was sleeping in granny and papaws old bed while dad slept on the couch, I woke up that morning and was throwing my pillow around trying to find my shirt and I found this wadded up piece of paper that I had scribbled on. I seem to always hide my sleep writing under my pillow

How Whales Communicate

When I was seven I knew a man who collected paper cuts. He traveled from library to library adding to his collection. The collection he hid on his spine and under his socks. When I was eight he showed me his spine. riddled with cuts. A spine painted in fiction, horror, living and children's books. When I was nine he would lay on his stomach and let me read his spine with eager fingers. That's where I learned what a kiss was. What it is to lie to your parents. How to grow flowers in a tub. By the age of twelve I had started my own collection of paper cuts. "How Whales communicate" was the first cut to sink itself behind my knees. When I turned fifteen he let me peak beneath his socks. He wouldn't let me read. Just look. He promised by my eighteenth birthday I could read the cuts between his toes. By the time I was seventeen he had moved on. He hadn't died, in fact i'm not sure if he was ever born. He simply moved on. Leaving me. a young man. a young man with knees full of paper cuts and fingers that craved a spine.

When I learned of how mother cut her tongue on those pages my tongue cried to feel the sting of sacred edges. My bones ached for the breaking I knew those pages could bring. hit me. cut me. rip my sides out. I would scream at her locked door. The door she hid behind cutting her tongue on those sacred edges. The day mother let me in I walked in on all fours with a hunger for anything she left. But mothers tongue was gone. Her bones were no more. She licked all those sacred edges. She was broken by every last page. She was no more and I fed upon her flesh. But a child shouldn’t feed upon a sacrifice such as this. A child. me. a young girl. never left that room again. never tasted the sacred edges and felt the breaking of pages. I just was and never could be. For the rest of my days until my spine was worn down by the windows light and my legs married the dust.

I used to ask my knees why they smelt like the sea, I only asked because my knees have never seen the sea. But somehow their wrinkled faces held the scent of traveling winds. I used to know this man who carried bottles by his side. Bottles full of truths but he bottled them up. to afraid of how they would make people feel. I used to be the type of sinner that only prayed for my forgiveness on sunday afternoons. I used to be the type of sinner that held hands to tightly and left bruises on toddlers wrist. I was a vessel of holy water with not a drop to spare. And when you came crawling out from under my legs I knew your face. I knew your wrists and I remembered your thighs. But you remembered not. You didn’t know my face or know my wrists.

I never asked to be accountable for all the sins my father committed down in those mines. I’m sure if he knew i’d be the one paying for his wicked ways he would have thought twice about doing them. At least that’s the way I like to think about it. Nobody wants to think of their father as a wicked man. Last month he put on his nicest pair of slacks, took the change from grandmas rainy day bucket and went down to those mines. That was the last time I saw him. Cracked hands digging for a few quarters, pennies and mistakingly picking up a button is the last image I have of him. Days later the post man came, the one with the limp that seems to switch legs depending on the weather. He brought me a letter. Boys like me never get letters, I get the occasional Happy Birthday card from my aunt in the city but it’s nothing more than an obligatory gesture. I stood on that porch with the heaviest letter my hands had ever held. My old dull schrade knife slide right through that letters spine only to find hundreds of paper scraps all with black bold face letters on them. My fathers sins. They mailed me my fathers sins. I carried that letter till my hands were just as cracked as his. I carried that letter till there no longer was any rainy day money in grandmas bucket. I never married and I never became promiscuous. I never wanted children. I never wanted them to receive my letter full of scraps of paper with black bold face letters on them. I never wanted them to be accountable for my sins.