Sarah Kay [Kay - No Matter the Wreckage

N O M ATTER THE W RECKAGE No Matter the Wreckage
Sarah Kay 2014; interior illustrations Sophia Janowitz 2014
All rights reserved No part of this book may be used or performed without written consent from the author, except for critical articles or reviews. Kay, Sarah
First edition
ISBN: 978-1-938912-48-1 Cover art by Anis Mojgani
Proofread by Philip McCaffrey
Edited by Derrick Brown, Cristin OKeefe Aptowicz, and Jan Kawamura-Kay
Interior illustrations by Sophia Janowitz
Interior layout by Ashley Siebels Type set in Bergamo from www.theleagueofmoveabletype.com Printed in Tennessee, USA Write Bloody Publishing
Austin, TX
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writebloody.com To contact the author, send an email to MADE IN THE USA

L OVE P OEM #137 I will wake you up early even though I know you like to stay through the credits. I will leave pennies in your pockets, postage stamps of superheroes in between the pages of your books, sugar packets on your kitchen counter. I will Hansel and Gretel you home. I talk through movies. Even ones I have never seen before.

I will love you with too many commas, but never any asterisks. There will be more sweat than you are used to. More skin. More words than are necessary. My hair in the shower drain, my smell on your sweaters, bobby pins all over the window sills. I make the best sandwiches youve ever tasted.

Youll be in charge of napkins. I cant do a pull-up. But Im great at excuses. I count broken umbrellas after every thunderstorm, and I fall asleep repeating the words thank you. I will wake you up early with my heavy heartbeat. You will say, Cant we just sleep in, and I will say, No, trust me.

You dont want to miss a thing. S UBWAY Next time it rains, come with me to 96th and Broadway. The subway station there has a grate with no roof and the rainfall slips between the grating up above and hits the tops of coming trains so that it flies back up in all directions, splattering the platform like a painters palette. Or else, come with me on a night without rain and stand with me so that we may peer through the cracks in the grate and see the soles of New York pass by the strips of dark blue evening streaked above the whir of metal. Raising a baby in NYC is like growing an oak tree in a thimble.Manhattan Mini Storage Billboard T HE O AK T REE S PEAKS Do you know how many ways there are to die in this city? 1. Speeding taxicab. 2.

Open manhole cover. 3. The man breathing so heavy at the bus stop. When I was a teenager, the boy I loved would pay a homeless guy ten bucks to buy him the cheapest bottle in the liquor store. My love sucked the glass til his teeth were marbles. Waited. 4. 4.

Jealous wife. 5. Brooklyn Bridge. 6. Fire escape. Only once, he let it get so close I screamed.

I had never made that kind of sound before. He turned, his face a prayer wheel atop his neck, a smile so foreign I could not speak its language. Like water running in reverse, he spilled himself up to safety. When the train hurricaned past, the fist of air rattled my branches. 7. 8. 8.

The barroom brawl. 9. The West Side Highway. 10. The wrong street corner. In New York, when a tree dies, nobody mourns that it was cut down in its prime.

Nobody counts the rings, notifies the loved ones. There are other trees. We can always squeeze in one more. Mind the tourists. Its a nice place to visit, but I wouldnt wanna live there. 11. 12. 12.

Central Park after dark. 13. Backpack through the metal detector. For years, we wouldnt watch movies where they destroyed New York. The aliens never take Kansas, we joked. They go straight forthe heart. Poor Kansas.

All cornfields and skyworks. All apple pie. Nobody to notice if its missing. Just all that open space to grow in. T HE T OOTHBRUSH TO THE B ICYCLE T IRE They told me that I was meant for the cleaner life; that you would drag me through the mud. They said that you would tread all over me, that they could see right through you, that you were full of hot air; that I would always be chasing, always watching you disappear after sleeker models that it would be a vicious cycle.

But I know better. I know about your rough edges and I have seen your perfect curves. I will fit into whatever spaces you let me. If loving you means getting dirty, bring on the grime. I will leave this porcelain home behind. Im used to twice-a-day relationships, but with you Ill take all the time.

And I know we live in different worlds, and were always really busy, but in my dreams you spin around me so fast, I always wake up dizzy. So maybe one day youll grow tired of the road and roll on back to me. And when I blink my eyes into morning, your smile will be the only one I see. N EW Y ORK , J UNE 2009 1. The man loading mannequins into the back of a truck in the rain. There are sirens somewhere uptown, and the mannequins hollow necks are becoming teacups for rainwater.

He is holding her around the waist, rolling her down the sidewalk. The rain is not letting up, and he hurries, trying not to topple the hourglass. They stand patiently on the curb while he lifts them one by one onto the truck bed, the dirty leather of his palms like gentle tiger paws. And despite the rain, they do not slump, but stand tall like dancers: their perfect postures reminding him of so many places he would rather be. 2. The man sitting on the fire hydrant at 39th and 8th.

You are not old enough to be my grandfather, your wrinkles tucked neatly into your plaid collared shirt. Your face offered upwards, eyes closed. You are collecting sun rays to take back with you into the air conditioning. You are as still as a gargoyle, as frail as a praying mantis. The traffic and passersby are just whispers in the folds of your ears. 3. 3.

The last time I apologized. It was warm and I did not need a sweatshirt. We stopped in the middle of the block, a woman with a stroller pushed a pink bundle past us. You planted your feet firmly when I said your name. A truck on the street rolled over a grate, and the metal clanging filled the air like a speech bubble between our faces. My fingers found my elbows, my neck bone, the hem of my pants.

Down the block, a man in a dirty apron came outside for a smoke, wiped his hands on his lap and lit a cigarette, calling over his shoulder, S, claro. Pero un momento por favor. T HE F IRST P OEM IN THE I MAGINARY B OOK If it were me, when the book arrives, I would immediately start scanning pages to find any trace of me. My name, references to my body, my secrets, moments we shared. I would pretend to be horrified if I found evidence of myself, but really I would pray to find even a single mention. You may do nothing like that. You may not even crack the spine.

You may place this on the bookshelf, or worse, under a stack of papers. You may forget it and regift it later to someone as a Secret Santa. I will never know. But just in case you are like me, just in case you do still think about the way your hands used to piano-key my spine, the way you would whisper spells into my ears when I was napping, the way I slipped notes into your jacket pockets; just in case you wonder if all those winks ever meant anything at all, I will tell you. You do not need to look very hard to find your shadow here. Your fingerprints are on these pages.

So many of your footsteps in the snow. M RS . R IBEIRO I was visiting a school in Northern India when I heard it for the first time in ages. It was barely audible above the shouting of childrenthe squeals and laughter bubbling from the schoolyard through the classroom windows. But it was there: the swish of silk saris and the jingle jangle of bangles on thin wrists like wind chimes. This is what learning sounds like.

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