you can die if you want, you can do as you please.
health &images
—- someone says they could never imagine me having “social anxiety”
I don’t tell someone that sometimes it takes me half an hour to
—-I talk to therapists, doctors and a dentist.
I have no cavities. Everything else is “inconclusive” all tests come back fine.
The dentist says “you shouldn’t floss so much” and I want to tell him that I am trying to make up for lost
time, the first ten years of my life. Instead I say “I’ll try”. They give me the kind of floss that I don’t
like (it is too thin, slides too easily through my gums). I have never had a cavity but I no longer get a
gold star. On the way out I shove hard candy into my mouth.
—-Someone says that I’ve ruined the image they have of me.
“I imagine you walking around your apartment in
high heels all day long.” At the time I am wearing yellow flip flops, sitting crossed legged on the living
room floor. “flip flops,” I don’t tell someone that it’s a left over (bone marrow) from Florida. I don’t
explain high heels and sand. It’s not the proper audience.
—- I talk to psychics, palm readers and a woman in Chinatown who read tea leaves.
On Broadway
directly next to Grace Church the woman across from me tells me I bare a family curse. I nod my head
I believe in psychics more than dentists, but I believe in cavities more than I believe in curses.
On the Upper West Side I lay my hand limp as if I am getting a manicure. “You have no fate line,” she
says. I ask to see her palm but she doesn’t show it to me. She gives me water to wash my hands in
I doubt it’s holy.
Down Canal street a cup of water tells me I’ll be fine forever. To always remember I’ll be fine forever.
“No charge!” she says. She hands my tea and tells me to drink it. I have no idea what it is but I’ll
drink it anyway. Constantly my parents get packages of tea from China, and when I visit, I drink it too.
Before I leave I double kiss her on the cheek. This is not polite to do. Really, you just kiss the air.
—-“You know none of this is relevant” someone says.
I don’t say anything to someone, you know with the curse and the high heels. With the eager need to party all day and all night. Flip flops in my mouth and my feet turned rotten.
