One of these days we’ll both be fine
Yesterday I took the day off from visiting my mother. It’s hard to do, but I have to if I am going to survive putting my life entirely on hold until she gets a bed in a care home.
A friend asked me if I wanted to do a reading while I was in London. At first I thought it would be a great idea, but then I canceled in the middle of the night when I woke up in a panic.
I’m barely functioning. There is no way I can read in public right now—especially not in London where there are so many ghosts I can’t even count them.
The ghosts are swarming me like the hundreds of geese who stopped me in my tracks in Harris Park and forced me to stare at the park where I have so many memories—one of which I wrote about in my first book, Onion Man.
Although this park looks quite different from my youth (they’ve recently added benches and lookouts and a new lawn) the bandstand shell looks pretty much the same as it did when I was a teenager. Who knows though? Maybe they put in a new bandstand too.
My first book, Onion Man which I am recording as a podcast this summer, was novel-in-verse about being a teenager in London and working at the Pillsbuy Factory, living with my alcoholic mother, having a tumulus relationship with a high school boyfriend, and watching my grandfather fade away from Alzheimer’s.
It was my first foray into autofiction—although I just called it poetry.
Excerpt from my first book Onion Man
Me, Clinton, and Stacey drop a hit of acid each, hang out in the food court at the Galleria. When the security guards kick us out because the mall is closing, we go to Harris Park where we find boxes of creamers, leftover from a free concert.
We stomp on the thimble-shaped containers until our shoes, socks, pants, shirts are covered in cream.
We laugh to the point of gagging. Stacey is thirsty, drinks the creamers one-by-one. She squirts a creamer in my face and says it looks like cum.
A cop car pulls up.
We run down to the river, lie beside the water on our backs in damp grass. Stacey tells us about being molested, and Clinton comforts her in a way that makes me tense.
Then he tells a story about his dad, a belt, his sister, and blood. And the stories meld into each other like rainwater and dirt.
They are bonding, but I don’t share anything about myself, although these two know more about me than anyone.
The words nervous Jesus repeat in my mind.
This high won’t go away; acid’s just not fun anymore.
This was how the poem was laid out in the book.
Read more from One of these days we’ll both be fine
Kathryn Mockler is the author of Anecdotes.
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