Dispatch from the Future Read online

  and I said maybe you would like a picture of someone

  who loved you, but who wasn’t with you in the cave. Like

  a woman?, she said. I don’t know, I said. You know

  him better than I do. I told her I bought you a book

  of stories about a Thai man and his adventures

  in cockfighting and love, which I hope you’ve received

  because otherwise I just ruined it. I meant to ask you,

  though, do you ever see things, out there in the wild,

  and wish there was someone standing next to you

  so you could point and say, Look? Such as bats?

  Or strange lights? Do your dreams take place

  in different weather? So many things happened

  this year that I just didn’t have the courage to write

  them down on paper and then photocopy it and then

  mail it to people I don’t talk to anymore just to show

  I’m still alive, but I hope you at least sent something

  that says you’re in Alaska now. There might be

  those who miss you and would want to know

  where you are so they can pray in your direction.

  Not that you need it. You were always so solitary

  and reckless in the good sense. I found a picture

  of us from when we were children, our eyes

  alight with matching blue-green expectancy, our teeth

  missing in the same spots, our arms outstretched,

  holding the pigeons we had caught in our hands.

  Do you remember at what point you let yours go?

  IMMORTALITY

  At the gym, they told me I would not die,

  I would only get sexier, and I believed them.

  I spent my nights wondering if this was going to turn

  into something long-term, if this was what is meant by casual,

  or if this was just my annual catastrophic disappointment

  because if it wasn’t, then I would have to brace

  myself. I took my medication and looked at pictures

  of people who were not in love with me. I deleted

  their names from my cache, said hello to my cat

  over the phone, took more medication. Days

  passed. I learned it’s hard to measure your own increasing

  sexiness. I enlisted bystanders. I passed mirrors

  and pretended they were not mirrors, but clean

  windows, and I was not myself, I was

  a clean stranger. Some days I was sure

  she wanted to come home with me, and

  I had to let her down easy, through the window,

  like a priest. Once I’d been unleashed

  from thoughts of my own death I was free

  to be loved in the way I always knew I’d deserved:

  reciprocally, in Fiji, our bodies lithe and bronzed

  like gods, but at the same time I felt like a vampire,

  and none of my friends could relate. They were jealous

  of my book deal, my time spent at the ashram

  while they were here, suffering another winter,

  their unsexiness a fluorescent sign that blinks all night.

  A BRIEF HISTORY OF MY LIFE PART XXVI

  I can’t go to the east village anymore

  because that’s where all the ghosts are.

  Yes, I went and got older again.

  I made the mistake of having a birthday

  and taking it to the mansion

  where birthdays fall down stairs

  and break their necks. Be careful.

  I’ve never been comfortable before

  and you should know that.

  You should know I’ve outlived

  everyone in my family, and now

  I’m your guide to the haunted

  universe. Watch out for pianos.

  Take my picture if you want

  to see what color my energy is.

  In the dark I’m either pretty or sad-

  colored, and my silhouette might exceed

  your expectations. Out with the old,

  in with the nude, as they say.

  Say you want a ghost to stay.

  Say you light some candles. Say

  you lure her with sadness because

  ghosts are hungry for palpitations.

  Say you try to hold her but you’re never sure

  if it’s tight enough. We’re the ghosts

  and we’re here to tell you:

  it’s never tight enough. You’ll never

  keep us from floating up

  and down the staircase like memories

  you didn’t even know you’d lost.

  No one wants to watch me break

  my neck, so watch me disappear.

  I can’t go to the east village anymore

  because I’m already here in the dark.

  HAVE YOU HUGGED A LATVIAN TODAY?

  Miss Nicaragua was born in a village you’ve never

  even heard of, and she reads Michael Crichton

  paperbacks aloud to impoverished young women

  to improve their English so that they, too,

  may some day enter the Miss Universe Pageant.

  I couldn’t find any socks that matched this morning.

  Miss Japan is 5’8”. Miss Japan loves horses. She

  says she wants to be a spokeswoman for pediatric

  AIDS, or toxic shock syndrome, or aphasia

  or something, but it gets lost in translation, and

  I’m like, I wish, right? I wish there was

  a spokeswoman for aphasia who

  was also internationally recognized for her

  beauty, intellect, and equestrian panache.

  During the commercial break, my boyfriend

  tells me about this girl who makes the best

  mix tapes “ever,” and I’m like, What’s her name?

  What does she look like? But all he’ll say

  is that I’m sitting too close to him on the couch again.

  Not even her eye color or anything. Then he starts

  to ask how much an MRI is because he believes

  he has all the symptoms indicative of a brain

  tumor, but when the show comes back on

  I’m like, Shh. Watch. Do you think Miss Nairobi

  had her teeth done? Do you think Miss Slovenia

  comes from a broken home? My parents

  put me in ballet when I was a child, but still—

  I’m nervous about moving to Albuquerque

  so I practice by sitting on the balcony

  of our apartment in the sun and reading

  The Unbearable Lightness of Being while

  keeping in mind the humidity factor, and

  how, in the desert, it will be a dry heat. Everybody

  says that. Everybody specifies. Even Miss Mexico

  would if you asked her. I had hoped Miss

  United Arab Emirates would make it

  to the top five, but of course they gave it

  to Miss Nepal. The judges are: Michelle Kwan,

  David Hasselhoff, and the ghost of Virginia Woolf.

  Once again, I wish. As Miss South Africa put it,

  It wasn’t nails that held Jesus to the cross. It

  was love. And you know what? I am going to

  make my boyfriend the best mix tape ever ever.

  It will have a song by Joy Division, followed

  by “How Deep Is the Ocean,” followed

  by an acoustic cover of “Hey Ya,”

  followed by a Bach cello suite, and I

  will call the mix, “Let’s Leave the State

  Together.” Should we tell our parents?

  What would Miss Korea do? Now she’s

  walking, floating, across the stage, like

  it’s the length of a desert in a country

  she’s never seen, and when she makes

  it to the end they ask her w
hat she sees

  in her future, but we never get to hear

  her answer because the moment she

  starts to speak the heel of her shoe breaks off

  and she falls into her translator’s arms.

  UNIVERSALISM

  A good girlfriend never cries and when she sits

  it’s in the splits because she’s a gymnast, or

  used to be, or wants to be, or something, and

  this is why you love her. Because she’s a go-getter.

  Because she picks you up in her Chevy Silverado

  and she keeps her tandem bicycle in the back, and

  a blanket, and she knows the shortcut to the ravine.

  In my town there are no ravines. In my town they named

  the street that runs through the viaduct under the train tracks

  Covered Bridge Road, and I believe this to be intentionally

  misleading. One time I told this to a friend, but all she said

  was, Is that the end of the story? Was that even a story?

  It wasn’t the end, but I didn’t like her tone so I said yes,

  all sarcastic, and then I stopped returning her phone calls.

  A good girlfriend waits up for you when you’re out

  starting fires. A good girlfriend would help you steal

  a car. In other words, if it means buying a blonde wig

  and a fake I.D. and never going back to Sioux Falls,

  never looking back over her shoulder at what could

  or might have been for fear she’ll turn to a pillar of salt,

  even if it means living in sin in Tijuana, okay, yes,

  sure, I will help you steal that car. Because I remember

  when you asked me to help you love me, and I think

  this is what you meant. For nineteen years we were like

  two ants from different hills whose paths would never cross

  because it was not predestined in the stars, but now

  you ask how long I’d wait if you were in prison and

  I hold out my arms to indicate that I love you

  as much as polar bears love ice floes because there aren’t

  enough anymore and the polar bears are drowning.

  I didn’t even know what a chlorofluorocarbon was

  until I met you. When I was a young girl

  in Sunday school at the Universalist Church

  we often made Native American drums

  to pound the rhythms of our hearts’ secret desires,

  but sometimes we made macaroni jewelry, and

  in the spring the cicadas came we got snow shovels

  and cleared the shells from the sidewalks under

  the old elms, singing, Let beauty, truth, and good

  be sung, through every land, by every tongue.

  I remember Tyler found a live one and plucked

  its wings and was reprimanded by the same woman

  who told me when I asked what I should believe in that

  I could believe in “anything.” I found out later that what

  she meant was that universalism means God loves me

  so much that he wouldn’t create me if He thought

  I was unsalvageable, but at the time I thought, okay,

  of course I believe in Beatrix Potter and Millard Fillmore

  and trees, but what if I grow up and decide that insects

  have no souls; what if I grow up to be the kind of girl

  who throws away the drums she made and disregards

  the law and finds herself in the backseats of cars

  with someone’s hand in her hair and she likes it

  so much she decides to become a girl who asks

  for such a thing. What congregation would open their arms

  and their hearts to her? Where could she go to learn the songs

  she’d have to know before she could even go to where

  the congregation who was going to open their arms to her

  met each week? And which of these stories will I tell my children?

  Will I tell them to believe in anything or will I specify,

  will I buy them butterfly nets, will I buy them rackets,

  will I dream at night that they’re taken from me,

  will I teach them to swim or hire someone or drop them

  in the water and see if they drown? Maybe they’ll walk.

  Maybe I’ll have no children. Maybe I’ll miscarry and

  take up oil painting and brew iced tea in the sun while you

  are out collecting cattle skulls and when you come home

  to me we’ll stare at the map on the wall and throw darts.

  IV

  The distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

  Albert Einstein

  DISPATCH FROM THE FUTURE

  In the future, I’m your mother.

  My name is Carol.

  I hold you when you want me

  to and I don’t ask

  questions.

  I never call your name

  when I lose sight of you

  in public.

  In the future, we’re discreet.

  We live forever

  or seem to.

  We upholster our lives with secrets

  and our holsters are concealable.

  When you want me

  to, I hold you

  like a wife

  in Valparaiso.

  You say, Tell me something

  else, and I do

  all sorts of tricks.

  DISPATCH FROM THE FUTURE

  In the future, we are all about safety

  and its sister, schadenfreude.

  We stay in our houses

  and sell our selves on the Internet.

  We no longer refer to it as the apocalypse.

  In the future, those who can afford to feed themselves

  on sun. We eat with our shoulders. We run

  towards the past, where we buried our fear,

  just in case we missed it in the future.

  I miss ignorance. I miss caring less.

  I miss hope’s stubborn blindness.

  Every single man I’ve ever loved is walking down the aisle

  on Sunday. Which aisle is mine? And where is my husband?

  Maybe a dingo ate my husband.

  SIMPATICO

  What I left I left unfinished.

  Take care of yourself, it all said;

  we’ll be fine, we’ll finish

  in your absence, but fish

  cannot find their way out

  of water: that’s the hitch

  of this illness. My hypnotist

  suggested a horse

  for fastest departure.

  I said ship. At the end

  of the day it’s your odyssey,

  she said, and then brought me back

  to wakefulness, this room,

  this view of the sea, a little ship

  tethered at the fence like a willing

  animal, and I thought yes, this

  wishful thinking works:

  I’ll be a believer and leave.

  REVISIONISM

  Going to the airport, opalescent sky,

  dawn dragging its feet through the river, I’m

  thinking that anyone who says I’ll make it up to you

  is a person aimed for future let-downs,

  is a person who forgets anniversaries, but

  I’ve forgiven worse. I’ve driven to Amarillo

  in one day and one night, through St. Louis

  and Cuba, Missouri, where an old Coke facade

  hung like a stage prop above the gas station,

  through Miami, Oklahoma, where there were birds

  and cottonwoods and Do Not Drive Through Smoke

  signs and we wondered what could be burning

  along a highway with so few exits, but by then

  we were half-asleep and so when I say birds

&nb
sp; I am inventing them. I am a revisionist.

  I am giving my life back to myself, only

  better, brighter, faster. Everything happens

  at dawn for a reason. At night I find myself

  reaching for a light switch that isn’t there.

  Or reaching for a song. Reaching for a shovel

  so I can go back and plant magnolias

  along I-44, give the girl in the passenger seat

  a silk scarf for her hair, and unleash doves

  above the road like wedding rice,

  like a flag of surrender. This version

  of events is just as true as any other.

  Ask me when I’m older. Ask what I remember.

  TRAVEL BROCHURE FOR THE FUTURE

  We have this lush AstroTurf here.

  We have these incredible windows.

  Forget what’s left to do at home.

  We have sky.

  We have what you miss about the past and

  we have masks so you can dress up

  like the person you wish you were. Name two

  things you’d rather do than be here

  with me, now, in the hinterland.

  When the river floods, we’ll swim

  to safety.

  When the river floods, we’ll start

  an ancient civilization.

  Let’s call it Egypt.

  Everything anyone has ever loved

  about you has come from the future

  in the form of a vision, a wish, or a sympathy;

  that’s why they say I knew you would

  do that, I knew we would end up