Von Radics - In a Dream You Saw a Way to Survive

also by clementine von radics Mouthful of Forevers For Teenage Girls with Wild Ambitions and Trembling Hearts Contents Ive polished this anger and now its a knife. Cathy Linh Che In the dream, I cut open my own arm and out poured a river that snaked its way through Oregon. Out poured each dead friend, now buried in the fall earth which smells always of rot. The blackberry stains, the unswallowed medicine, the face of each person I love and hope to never see again. Out poured each grief I have named and each grief there is no language for. In the dream, I saw a way to survive and I did.

This is how I remember it. I lost a whole river. I stayed standing. part i The first time I knew I say to my best friend This love has become an endless game of cat and mouse. She says Baby, I love you But why are you always the mouse? Storm. The week
after I found another womans fingerprints all over my home.

After the storm of begging
and bended knees
had passed a tornado hit the coast of Oregon. The wind howling like it had something to grieve. Back home, a tree branch crashed through my mothers window. and isnt that how
it always goes? You spend years building a home just to watch it destroyed in seconds. In the time it takes to say Im sorry, I didnt want you to find out like this, but she loves me. O, Love.

Please convince me of the storm that grew between her mouth and yours. Convince me of its worth. Please, one last lie, I mean gift, I mean
reason enough, please, convince me
to forgive you. Now you speak and just like that there is a paintbrush in your hand. Just like that you paint this girl into all of our memories. You say I love you and she is forming the words and turning your neck.

You say Im sorry a howling thump unrelenting against my front door and she is kneeling beside you, uncurling your fist. There we are, sleeping in our bed. You reach for me tuck your body into mine and she stands in the corner. A graceless smirk. Sweet, thick, drenched in the truth. and wasnt this always my worst fear? My love in glittering pieces all over the floor.

My trust just another mess that ruins the carpet. Your girl, a madness haunting my home. She smiles
and a bitter shroud
falls across the bathroom mirror. She says your name and cockroaches crawl inside the walls. I tell you to leave and it is so cold here now. The wind keeps howling against my window over and over and over.

As if to tell me one more thing I dont want to hear. You apologize for your mistake. But the mistake was mine for trusting you. You apologize like I havent met a stranger on the train, followed them home, let them ruin my skin on the carpet. The question was in my mouth too, love, I just kept it there. For the last five nights Ive had dreams
about the woman he left me for.

In these dreams, I am always scrambling to take care of her somehow. Offering her a warm meal, a soft blanket, a sturdy pair of shoes but of course, awake, I have done nothing or worse. When he said I made a mistake, let me try and come back to you I said Yes. I said Come. I said Leave her bed cold. Come home to me I will become the kind of woman who can forgive you.

I said that. As if it could ever be that simple. There is a better version of this story where we both leave him. Instead of loving him so much it felt like church. Building a cathedral inside his crooked mouth. Tossing our crooked prayers inside.

We are so alike, she and I. What do we know but devotion? She hates me now. And I respect her for it. At least one of us has the sense to stay the hero in her own story. To name someone the wolf in the parable. To take his teeth from him, leave their bloody business to my mouth.

I asked for this after all, then asked for it again.

I say your name,
and the audience shifts in their seats. I say your name, and Ive raised the dead. O you, reckless anarchist. Arsonist of our lives. I say your name and become the dead.

This grief opens my mouth and speaks your name. Listen, to say it wasnt all bad is the truth and a disservice to the truth. You, untamed flame. My whole face is a white flag. Ill hold it up for you. Only you.

The Fear All my friends are tired of knowing what it is Im going to say before I say it. I am afraid I will love you forever and we will never be in the same room again. I swear, next time I see you Ill be funny. I will make jokes at my own expense,
be charming as a surprise.
I will ask about your new life
and Be Cool About It
and I will not mention Memphis.
Or how your hair feels in my hands. I will not mention the last time I saw you.
My mouth, so far from yours, I said
I am afraid I will spend entire years
trying not to need you.
As if I wasnt certain.
As if this wasnt my confession. Ever the optimist.

He tells me he does not want to think about the past, only the future. What a short life the bullet has
compared to the wound. What I would give
to leave the past behind
and have it stay there. Confession: By the time you gave me a diamond necklace, I loved it more than my own throat. Somewhere in Oregon a scattering of men
are smiling despite what they have done. I pull their names out of my skin Like strange, poison strings.

I lay them on my sheets and the bed opens like the mouth of the strange beast. Each bottle in my house starts to rattle. Everything I have ever buried eventually started to dance. Post-term. That winter I stopped being your wife and became a pregnant hollow. A swelling brood of Absence.

Why ask so much of an empty heart, love? All the longing I do is for a dead thing. I open my mouth her hands fall out. To the protester outside of the clinic
who called me a murderer: If I could have kept her, if shed have been born a girl, I would have called her Jane. As in Austen. As in my sisters middle name and my grandmothers before her. I would have taught her to be kind.

To be good. To love the Beach Boys even and especially after Brian got weird. I know you dont want to hear this. Prefer to think me faceless and bloodstained, another statistic on cruel, thoughtless women. But like everyone else, this was never going to be my choice until it had to be. When I fought for the right to choose, I thought I was fighting for other people.

Thought this right necessary but rough-edged. And ugly. And never for me. But that was before the missed blood. Before the days spent bent and gagging. Before the doctor said Youre about four weeks along.

And why wasnt I more careful? Didnt I know what the medication I take can do to a baby? And that is how you and I met. Me walking into that clinic to do the hardest thing Ive ever had to do. You. Finding a hundred ways to call me a killer for it. Do you even remember my face? Because I cant forget yours. I think of you.

Constantly. Want to snatch the scream out of your mouth. Want to wrap my hand around your hand. Lower the sign that called me a killer. Tell you that my body was not a safe place for anyone. And even if it was, I wasnt ready to love a person the way they deserve to be loved once you build them out of nothing but your body and promise to protect them forever.

If I could have spoken to you that day I would have told you that the thing I want most in this life is to be a mother. But I know now thats not true. The thing I want most in this life is to be a good mother. And I wasnt ready. So I said goodbye. I thought that was the kind of thing a good mother would do.