A LITTLE SAILBOAT
Sveta.
Hey, Sveta.
Look, our hair’s all tangled and wet!
SVETA
You dead?
WHO’S GONNA PUNISH ME?
I’m a gross bitch.
YOU SAID YOU’D HELP ME WITH SCHOOL
Gulp, gulp, look at all this water.
TRUTH OR DARE
I kind of liked it when he stabbed me.
It made me feel close to you.
OKAY, I’M A DYKE
You happy?
I’m blowing you bubbles under the water.
They’re secret messages!
I’M SORRY ABOUT WHAT I SAID EARLIER
About you being a skank and everything.
ARE YOU SORRY ABOUT WHAT YOU SAID TO ME TOO?
Bubble, bubble.
COME ON, WAKE UP
We have to go over Crime and Punishment, remember?
WHAT DID DOSTOYEVSKY MEAN
When he wrote,
“To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s.”
BUBBLE, BUBBLE
Why don’t you wake up like me?
AMERICA SUCKS
Right?
Let’s go somewhere else together.
Me and You.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN
This world is sad, Sveta, and every day I wake up half-dead already and in my dumb-dumb cadaver I still want to laugh so bad it hurts, it hurts.
WHAT DID DOSTOYEVSKY MEAN
When he wrote,
“The darker the night, the brighter the stars,
The deeper the grief, the closer is God!”
TRUTH
I’m in love with you, Svetlana.
EVERYTHING IS WORTHLESS
But I think you’re beautiful.
GUESS WHAT?
I smell like lilacs.
I smell like lollipops.
I smell like death.
I KNOW, I KNOW
I’m not capable of love.
I WANT TO HEAR YOU LAUGH
Aren’t I your favorite joke?
Come on, laugh at me, Sveta.
SO I HAVE AN OBSESSIVE PERSONALITY
I’m a broken record.
But I’m your broken record.
SVETA
Nothing is literal.
BUBBLE, BUBBLE
Death is a spell.
I NEED YOU
Wake up.
PLEASE
I’m failing at school.
DOUBLE PLEASE
I’m failing at life.
TRIPLE PLEASE
My lungs are failing.
TRUTH
I don’t want to die I don’t want to die I don’t want to die I don’t want to die I don’t want to die I don’t want to die I don’t want to die I don’t want to die I don’t want to die I don’t want to die I don’t want to die I don’t want to die I don’t want to die I don’t want to die…
DARE
Are you close to God?
TEUTONIA AVENUE
KNOCK, KNOCK
“It’s me, Nicky.”
I’M PACING AT THE CORNER
At the stop sign. It’s dark everywhere, except for the low light that the moon gives.
I’M RUNNING THE NECKLACE FROM ONE PALM TO THE OTHER
Like a stream of water.
YO, HOMIE!
A kid yells out in my direction.
YO, OVER HERE, MAN!
He’s across the street. His face is in the shadow. He’s got big shorts, wide and loopy. His T-shirt bunched. His zip-up sweatshirt gaping open.
ONE-TWO
I lean away from him and feign a cough. I put the necklace in my mouth, under my tongue. I straighten back up.
YOU OKAY, HOMIE?
The kid takes a step into the street. He lifts his T-shirt. There’s a bit of his skinny white belly. There’s a black fist tucked into his underwear. It’s a gun.
I RAISE MY ARMS INTO THE AIR AND LOWER MYSELF ONTO MY KNEES
A reflex, slow and focused. I lower my chin and make sure not to look at him. A ruffle of wind.
RELAX, HOMIE
“I ain’t gonna shoot you,” he says, coming closer.
I keep my eyes to the sidewalk.
THE SONG OF BRUTUS
Authority is so lyrical. Our music, Bozhé.
I HAVE BEEN PUNISHED SO MANY TIMES
Punishment means very little to me. But as a man of the system, I have an ear for its music.
GET UP
The kid tells me.
I GET UP TO MY FEET
He flicks his head at me. I know to lower my arms.
I keep my palms facing toward him just in case. I wait for further instructions.
A TRICK I LEARNED IN PRISON
The American kid says he’s been watching me. I slide the necklace discreetly behind my gums with my tongue.
LOOK AT ME IN THE EYES
He says.
I like it when the instructions are clear.
I look at him in the eyes.
SOMETIMES I’M SO TIRED OF HAVING TO EXPLAIN EVERYTHING
The kid tells me.
“You feel me, homie?”
I nod my head yes.
The kid’s pulling his tongue out, just to stretch it. He looks both ways. Then smiles.
“You got something I want,” he says.
I USED TO BE AFRAID TO DIE
I was just a kid.
I was never a kid.
I was fourteen.
There are boys and there are men and there are criminals.
IT’S NOT EASY TO CRY
For nobody. Even a baby has got to use all the force in its little body when it wails. It’s got to shake and quake and shimmer and go red in the face with tears and snot. It’s got no choice. This is how we ask to stay alive.
It’s not easy to ask for life. Not for girls and not for boys and not for women and not for men, and not for nobody who was birthed and left asking.
CRIMINALS CRY
Scarred-up mammoths and lanky loners and seedy Samsons. All razor-bald and stiff-eyed and reeking of abandon. Proud and fatherless, sanctimonious barbarians, rattled prey.
IN PRISON
I don’t know why my life began to matter just then. I began asking for life.
THIS IS HOW
I became a little songbird with no song to sing. That’s what the other men told me. That I was a little bird. When they took turns with their fists in my gut. In the beginning.
I don’t want to go into the details. Their force. Their reign.
They were owed a song.
I owed them a song.
And I sang it, I sang it.
Until my fear went away. I’m not sure where. But it flew from me. Away.
NOW WHEN I’M AWAKE
I’m no longer afraid to die.
BUT IN MY SLEEP
I’m still afraid. In my sleep, I’m so angry with myself. In my sleep, I’m a little boy and I can’t grow up. In my sleep, I’m a murderer. In my sleep, there is a dog that is smelling me, and a baby that is spitting out my soul with disgust.
I KEEP MY MOUTH SHUT
“Well, well,” the kid says. “Looks like we got a hero.”
He tells me
