my bay of pigs

my bay of pigs
by Emma Blowgun
i hadn’t seen her in two years when she came
over on thanksgiving.
it was glorious and foreign and awkward for me
all at the same time, so my best shot
at succeeding
was to be myself and cross my
fucking fingers
and pray to the gods that i could do things right
for once in my life.
and for the most part i did;
we joked and told stories about the old times.
when you’re young, the twisted feeling in your guts
heals itself like a shallow papercut. the lump putting
pressure on your throat disappears in an hour. i miss
those days.
when i was young, i was conditioned for emotional
numbness; before i knew the definition of apathy, it
had defined me. my mother taught me to
believe
that loving relationships were based on a certain
standard.
my mind was very fucked up.
at 18, i would sneak out between my classes and snort
shitty cocaine off of a frisbee golf disc. i would peel the
coating off of oxycotin pills, and boil those fuckers down;
i felt no fear as i was putting those chemicals
into my bloodstream with my diabetic
friend’s needles.
i never learned if the coating to those pills was made out
of plastic material or some kind of hard rubber. it felt like a mix
of the two between my fingernails as i scraped the
extended release portion of the pill off and flicked it into
the carpet of my car’s floor.
the last time i called her was the night after senior prom.
i felt like i was the executioner
at the edge of the guillotine, pulling the lever that made
the blade fall. i wonder if any of those men ever felt remorse
or thought about the evil inside of them. i hope not; i don’t wish
that pain on anyone.
she pulled up on thanksgiving in her mother’s car. she flashed
an all too familiar smile as she strolled towards me. i froze.
my heart asked me,
“is it okay if i stop now?”
i told him, “not yet.”
the rest of the night was easy – laughter, eye contact;
i brought her drinks like i was
trying to save a parched rose garden with a thimble.
i walked back and forth between the kitchen and the living room
with tumblers full of vodka-7s again and again.
we were sitting on the floor.
“let’s go.”
i’ll never forget her saying that as long as i live.
fuck.
i walked her backwards into the bedroom and we fell on my bed.
now, almost a week later, both of my cats are crawling
over me as i wonder what went wrong
between then and now.
there is an indescribable pressure behind
my eyeballs in the front of my skull.
i haven’t looked at this poem for a day between
the last line and this line. i look out
my window and see the dim glow of the stars as a collective entity in the sky.
“shit, i’m bummed out,” i think.
i miss driving in the country, and my grandfather’s smile.
when will this catastrophe seem irrelevant?
she left the day after thanksgiving at 9:00 am and
we hugged goodbye.
i walked back into my apartment and loaded
a bowl in my pipe.
what the fuck else was there to do?