Aja Monet: I know how to reach difficult places. I know she lied about where we lived, so we could get into good schools. I know good schools saved me. I know teachers helped raise you. I know recycled water ~ tear ducts ~ remind me of clean bathroom floors with the toothbrush, until the bristles flatten and the tips yellow from Bleach. I know how to bathe and wash a dish in steaming water. How to break one and glue it together with crazy glue. How to be broken and put together again. I know my arms are long and my hands remind me of violins. I know laughter, sometimes, sounds like bubble rap and it’s my favorite part of unpacking boxes. When I smile, I squint my eyes. I know cloud formations. I know spiderwebs sparkle like diamonds after rainshowers. Weather laughter is forced or organically born, E.T. has the power to release chemicals that relieve stress. Space isn’t the distance between two variables, but more like an empty chest or, rather, the absence of objects, the lack of furniture in a room, or, better yet, the reason why people separate into different Homs, States, or countries, sometimes, into different arms and into different beds into different futures. I know abandonment. Hospitals smell like spoiling bodies. I know blood scabs under the sun: I know a casket is expensive. Funeral Homs remind me of my Uncles. I know Schizophrenia tears apart Families. I know you could be moor than one person at the same time. I know anyone could be driven to insanity. I know insanity, sometimes, means coping and is also a safe word for ‘No one understands me.’ I know we’re all afraid of being misunderstood. I know honey is sticky. I know a holy ghost, when I see one. I know a boy in a halfway house who stutters, when he reads poems to his grandmother. I know he taught me to look at Garbage differently, how to be strange, flamboyant. I know I don’t know outside of what I know, but this is the [ineffable].
