Annie Kight
There was a point when you hoped that it would end. There were so many times when your thoughts could rattle inside of your skeleton and fill all the emptiness with noise. There would be a day and then another and then you feel everything is emptied from you and there is nothing left for you to leak. And the days don't care about your budget of misery. They just keep coming. And the winter doesn’t stop. It doesn’t care enough to stop. Because cold can be like the very end of a movie when everything in the theater goes black. When there are no more credits. No more action. Even the attendants have stopped cleaning the aisles. And you can sit there in the darkness, waiting for what's going to happen next. But there is no next. Cold is like that. There is no next. There is a point when you realize despite all the steeples and the sonnets and the racing of planes around the planet, you can die. Being human is no exemption from the cold. And it's in those days when the white sheets of winter simply unravel from the spindle and fill the workroom floor, and you start to think about all the letters in the words you want to use. The winter is not a reader. And when you say your words you realize that it's simply too cold to speak. You imagine the ancient Greeks with their lyres and their memories full of songs, and you think about how warm it must have been at night when with a candle they could sing to their people. But all of your people are locked up inside. All of the ears who might hear you have stuffed themselves with cotton because listening can be daunting when your teeth are chattering and your eyes are frozen shut. And with the snow piled up against your door, there will be no leaving. And you are stuck being you. Because when you wander into the center of the town with your antique tales of love and death and war, How many times did you leap from your life and live inside the wounded eyes of someone who was listening? You could escape the wounds that spread across your body and be fresh and clean inside the body of another. And he would let you wander the dirty hallways and the empty bedrooms of his body, and he would let you be the thing that he wanted most. And all you had were words. But you had him with your words. And even though your home was empty too, you didn't have to pay the rent. You could live in his. And he would pay the rent with his tears and his past and his desperate need for stories that could steal away all his hurt. Push it all out the back door where it would make a fire in the yard near the hyacinth bush and the birds who felt obliged to live there. And he could take on all of you. You could weave words inside of him and build a hammock with a blanket made of your pain. And all he would want is to cuddle inside of you and feel the vibration of your speech as you told him tales to help him sleep. And that would be his first sleep in a long time. And every night he would sleep this way with you. And you would wake up before him and notice that he slept like an angel. He looked like a statue. And in the morning when the weather was good you might have a wisp of memory of the things that you had left behind in the home that you had left behind. And for a bit you might get nostalgic or afraid. And that's when you would return to him and wake him and feel him fill you and listen to his happiest words that sometimes you could understand but sometimes were completely obscured.
I live high in the sky. I live close to the birds. And not so long ago I attached a small bird feeder to the window of my sliding glass door. It's a simple contraption. The suction cups hold it up, and the little trays are where I pour their food. Within a day the community of birds descends upon my home. I don't get a wide variety. I don't know much about birds. I don't know if there is an issue with the height. I don't know if there's an issue with the birds who are bold enough to come. Or if they keep other breeds of birds away. But I know the birds enjoy what I give them. I suppose for them it's like going out to eat. If I never placed the bird feeder on my balcony, I know the birds would find a way to eat. But there it is. All collected together. In three little mounds for the three little compartments of the feeder that probably cost me $12 on Amazon. In a heavy storm, the feeder was knocked down. But it didn't break. And the suction cups still work perfectly. Most of the time the only problem is when the feeder is empty. And then they go missing. They're nowhere to be seen. They don’t say “thank you.” No "I just came by to say hello." They're animals after all. While they clearly are enjoying the balcony for which I pay a considerable rent, they couldn't care less about me or my problems or my life inside. I'm sure if I open the door and pile bird seed in my living room, one or two might venture in. Maybe it would be easier to engage them if they saw that I had Netflix. I don't want to assume that they only watch shows about birds or wings or nesting. I could listen to music that talks about birds. “We're birds of a feather and we stick together.” My guy. Only I don't have a guy. I have a girl. A little gray girl. A gray little smudge that runs around the apartment, complaining about almost everything. She's smaller than your average cat, And I think that’s why she feels so vulnerable. I don't think there's anything that doesn't scare her. I can scare her just by putting her food in her dish. I can scare her by going to sleep. How do I know? Because I know she's scared of everything. So if the bird came into our home and sat on the couch with me to watch a movie, I know she would be scared. But something takes hold of her when the birds fill up the balcony. I pour seeds on the ground as well so that there are always birds hopping around in circles and semi circles, bouncing from the ground to the feeder. When they're all out there, it becomes theater for her. She makes this silly face and she places her feet left and right, left and right, like a batter in the batter's box waiting for the pitch. She stares. She sits on my laptop and inevitably downloads something. (sometimes rewriting a story with nothing but a string of nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn’s). Or she'll take several steps back and eye the little critters. Tension fills the room like you might find when you pull back the string of a child's spinning top. And wait. And in that moment she will sit perfectly still with every muscle in our body ready. And then she leaps! And she hits the glass! And the birds scatter. You can hear the wings like the clapping of an audience. Bravo! And once the birds have fled, she always comes to me with her little trot. “Good girl” I tell her. And I pat her side and scratch her head until she has had enough and walks away disinterested. Of course it's not long before the birds return. I imagine since the birds can fly, they just circle because they know the bird seed is still sitting there. They won't abandon us until it's all gone. And if somehow I coax a bird to sit on the couch with me, I know she wouldn't stay unless I keep feeding her a steady diet of millet, sunflower seeds, and cracked corn. That’s the only way to get a bird to be your date for the day.
All I ever wanted to do was bake. You think it would be easy to find somebody who would accept that simple gift, but it turns out that most men want more. Fresh bread. Chocolate cake. These aren't enough. They want attention. They want love. They want sex. They want to build something together. The only thing I want to build is a pile of croissants that rivals anything you can find in a French bakery. Now I've never been to France, but I've tasted my croissants. I can't imagine there's anything better. The last man was an eater. I remember the first time I came to his home. I knew right away that I was going to do everything I could to win him over. He had a kitchen. He had two ovens. One was convection. He had a double sink. He had six burners. He had an island the size of an island. I'm sure there were women who loved his Tesla car or his second home in Aruba. These were not things that interested me. He bought me several wonderful dinners for our first several wonderful dates, but I knew all of it was pretense. I was like the magician who had an elaborate setup but in the end all he did was hide a card between his fingers. Sleight of hand is what they call it. I understood this very well. Because that's what I was doing. That's what I always do. Because all I want to do is bake. Now I understand there are things you have to do to reach your goals in life. I gave him sex. Despite my love of baking I keep myself in good shape. You have to be. Moving around a kitchen can be taxing. And even though I tasted everything I made, I usually didn't keep it down. I didn't want to take up space for the next thing I tasted. And so when I was undressed I knew he was aroused. He was excited and interested, but I pretended he was a donut. Well more like a bagel. Considering his religion. And when he was inside of me, I imagined my KitchenAid. I could see the beaters spinning around the stainless steel bowl. Watching a new KitchenAid was always better than spending time with a vibrator. It was better than spending time with a man to be quite honest. But it helped me to get through it. And usually I orgasmed. But I could cum in the kitchen if I wanted. And to be honest once or twice I have. So the man felt that he had found the right person and that was exactly what I wanted, too. And I would slip the coin into my other hand so deftly and with a flourish that he never knew. I can cook anything. And I cooked him many good meals. I found the recipes that would keep him quiet. Because when he ate good food he drank good wine. And good wine would always shut him up. And most nights I could avoid the sex but sometimes there was no avoiding it. Now I never argue. I don't fight. Loud voices will make the souffle fall. That's what I always tell myself. But one night there was a mix up. You see I was teaching a class at the local community college about baking and cooking and keeping the world happy when one of the students had a seizure. Now I'd like to think that maybe my burgundy sauce or the crepes that I taught them how to prepare could have sparked this violent reaction, but it turns out he had epilepsy. Class was canceled since it was rather traumatic to see this young man flailing around the middle of the kitchen floor. And when I came home that night, I found my man in the kitchen. I was surprised to see him there because I didn't think he remembered where it was. I had kept him far from it because it had become mine. I had even ordered a plaque that had my name and hung it up above the backyard door. Imagine my horror when what I found was that he was rummaging through my cake pans because he was baking an apple pie. Now I don't keep my pie pans where I keep my cake pans but I can understand why somebody might assume that they are in the same place. He had the ingredients mixed together in the bowl and had already rolled out the crust. I don't think I teach a student at the college who could have done a better job than he was doing. It wasn't clear to me how he had developed this talent. And so I asked him. I demanded that he tell me what he was doing. He shrugged his shoulders and said "isn't it obvious?" I normally didn't mind his Semitic humor but at this moment I found it incredibly annoying. "No. I mean yes, I can see that you're baking. But I want to know why? What on Earth are you doing in my kitchen?" He took a step back and then looked down at the crust he was rolling out with my favorite rolling pin. "Your kitchen? I'm pretty sure that I spend 10 hours in an office looking at a computer screen helping companies around the world earn money on things that should not earn money so that I could buy this house. My name's on the mortgage. So I think the kitchen's mine. Yes?" He had never in the time that I had known him been so glib. Despite my credo, I could feel something rising up in me that wasn't going to collapse. It was anger, and I was going to let him know that I was mad. "I say it's my kitchen because I'm the only one who works in here. This is where I do my baking. This is where I cook your dinners. The decorations now are mine. I know where everything is on every shelf from the far side of the kitchen to to the cellar down below. I Just want to know how you wound up in here baking a pie tonight when you thought I would be at school?" He put his hands on the island and he looked up at me with his piercing blue eyes that had never made much of an impression on me until just now. "You never asked if I knew how to bake. And there was never a chance for me to tell you." He laid the crust into the baking pan that he had eventually found while we were talking, and he filled it with a golden mixture of apples and raisins and dates. He covered the pie with another sheet crust, and he nimbly pinched the edges. When he picked up the knife he did it in a bold way and for a second I thought maybe he was going to attack me. But instead he just slit three little slots in the top of the pie before he turned around and slid the pie into the oven. He told me to set the timer, and I knew exactly for how long. And then he came from behind the island and approached me with the knife. And again I thought I was a goner. But instead he snipped the straps of the apron that I was still wearing from class, and the thing dropped down around my body and made a small pile on the floor. He put the knife back on the island and reached into the middle of me, pulling me closer to him. He said, "there are things that can't be made in an oven. You can't bake them no matter how good you are." And then he kissed me and it felt like the first time I'd ever been kissed. It felt like I'd never been kissed before. And without a thought of the soufflé inside of me, I kissed him back and made a noise that I didn't think my throat knew how to make. And that was the first night that I knew I wanted to marry him. And that was the first night that I didn't care if the pie in the oven burned.
There are many things I do to prepare for a bath, but first I like to make a pitcher of Martinis and grab a very cold glass from the freezer. I set that on the toilet next to my phone. All the while, I'm filling the tub with the water that needs to be as hot as I can take it and then just a little hotter. I'll drop a bath bomb into the middle of things or I might use some Epsom salts. Taking a bath has almost nothing to do with getting clean. If you think about it, if you're dirty the water will be dirty almost immediately and then you're sitting in your own filth the whole time. So I take a shower before I take a bath. A shower is a job. Showering is a task. I have an indefinite number of rituals that I need to follow when I take a shower. But the only ritual I have in a bathtub is to get drunk. And that's what I do when I take a bath. Because taking a bath is on the other spectrum of therapy. In therapy I have to unravel myself in front of a human being who's supposedly trained on how to put me back together. More likely she tries to help me find the way to put myself back together. But a bath is indulgence. A bath is a chance to sit and tweet or chat or watch some horrible TikToks. A bath is a time to soak. It's a chance for me to have imaginary conversations with almost all of my exes. One of the things about ending a relationship quickly and early is that there's still a lot you wanted to say but you had to get the hell out so you had to cut yourself off. And now I sit and I talk to Todd. I tell him why I left him. It wasn't for good reasons. As always the relationship was complicated. Todd had a girlfriend and so did I. Everything was open. Everything was on the table. It wasn't the type of thing where we would all get together. In fact I'd never met his girlfriend and he had only met mine once. He drove us across the country to Michigan where the pot was cheap. He wanted a chance to get to know my girlfriend. She laughed at his joke. He has only one joke. And he bought her the pot. And who doesn't like a man who buys you in your pot? And so they got along just fine. Which was good. Until the night that we spent in the hotel that he paid for. There were two beds. Now we are not at a place where the three of us were going to sleep together, anyway. This was the first time he had ever met her. So he graciously offered to let the two of us sleep in one bed and he would sleep in the other. Apparently in the middle of the night he got upset. He woke up early and left the room and found his way down into the lobby where he promptly pouted and tweeted and posted on Instagram. By the time I got up to find he was gone, I quietly shuffled down to the lobby and found him. It was annoying that he was upset. I wasn't interested in hearing the story. But I listened carefully because that's what I always do. Because I know how to pretend to be a good partner. I have to. I wanted things from him and he would never give them if I told him the truth. If I told him that I didn't really love him. If I told him that he was just my obsession. If I told him he was the only answer to a question that my girlfriend could never give. And that made him valuable to me. And I cared about him very much, but not enough to put up with this. But still I listened. He was hurt. He was hurt that I would choose her over him. Even though he was the one who encouraged the sleeping arrangements, he was still hurt. And he was hurt for the rest of the trip. And when my girlfriend in the backseat pretended to be asleep, the two of us whispered an argument. He spoke endlessly. But I wasn't going to back down. You see now I was angry and I was having trouble pretending to be the good and quiet partner. There's only so much you can do to keep up the facade when you're angry. You start to tremble and everything falls apart. And that's what happened in the car. Now by the time we dropped off my girlfriend and drove the two hours to our place, we were quiet. Something we never do is sit in silence. I went to bed before he did and he made himself busy with his cell phone. And that's when it hit me. The neediness. Sex would solve this problem. So I reached out my hands and wiggled my fingers and beckoned him to join me in bed. He didn’t hesitate. And for a while sex did solve the problem. But I know seeds were planted, and seeds are what makes pot cheaper, so I was hoping to avoid the seeds. But there was no avoiding them. It was clear that he was leaning towards something monogamous with his girlfriend and his girlfriend had been secretly jealous of me all the while. So when I sensed that this plot was hatching, I ducked out faster than they could complete their deal. I told him I was moving out and I drove the hundred miles back to my girlfriend. I offered very little explanation and found a way to make it his fault. I did what I could to destroy his relationship with his girlfriend because I knew things that she did not. And the quiet me was no longer interested in being quiet because I was done. Speaking freely was my truth. And so I told her the truth. And he was truly alone because she left him as well. And so I sit in this tub and I talk to him. I've had the same conversation with him many times. I think about the things that happened from the beginning until the end and I recognize my pattern. I don't want to be left. It sparks something in me that turns into a fire that destroys. And it destroyed our relationship for sure. And so I think about what I would say to him if he would unblock me and read my text. All I can think of is how much I still want to sleep with him. How good the sex was and I remember the reason I got into the whole mess wit him. I want to smile and be quiet and tilt my head as he speaks. And I want to reach out my arms and wiggle my fingers once again but there isn't a way to do that when your ex-boyfriend won't take your calls.
I was born during harvest on a farm just over the Pennsylvania line. I was actually born on the farm because my mother never made it to the hospital. My father tells me that the only reason she didn't go was because she knew she was having a girl and she couldn't bring herself to stop doing work just to give birth to a girl. It was an inauspicious start to a life that turned out to be somewhat of an effort. Now I like to tell people I was born on Halloween, but that's really not the truth. I was born the day after which is the day for saints. All the saints apparently. It seems like it should be one heck of a huge holiday, but really most people don't know about it. The people where I come from don't know about it because they don't know the difference between Halloween and October 30th. Every day is a day to work basically except for Sunday. And of course I was born on a Sunday. My mother had gone to church that morning with incredible discomfort. She told me later that there was no way she would let me be born at the church. That would have made me some kind of saint as well. And it would have been a story that everyone would tell for years to come. They would all remind me (and her) of that "blessed day." So she held me in until she got home and started making dinner, and then it was all over. I was born on the kitchen table that was made by my grandfather so it was incredibly strong. It was a big one too because my mother had come from a large family. You had to have a lot of room for all those kids to find a place to eat. They did the old trick of hot water and towels and it didn't take long. I was her first girl and it seemed like she was going to get me out of her uterus as fast as she could. My father says that when I came out I wasn't crying. In fact he thought I was rather happy. I made a noise that sounded to him like talking and that's why he called me Libby. Not Elizabeth. Just Libby. He thought that maybe what I had mumbled was an oath. Some kind of promise which is perfect for the name. My mother thinks all I did was move some gas around inside my body And then belch. Whatever it was, it not only inspired my name but it inspired the strong riff between my mother and my father. Now the two of them had never actually gotten along. My father was best friends with my mother's oldest brother. My uncle Dan. My father was at the house day and night it seemed until it felt like he was a part of the family. It was suggested by my grandmother that maybe my mother should marry my father because he was so close, but the only reason my mother married my father was so she could get the blazes out of her house. You see his parents had died young, and he had inherited the house and the farm. She knew if she could get over there, it would be hers. Not like she was looking for money or possession, but she was looking for something she could run. She was the youngest girl of eight children, five of whom were girls. She was the runt. It's not just that you wind up with hand me downs. What runs out in a family that large is patience and love. My mother got neither of those growing up and therefore brought neither of those with her to the house of my father. Now, I don't have as many siblings, but as I said I was the first girl And it turned out, the only girl. I have three older brothers. They were all men by the time I was born. I don't know how it happened that I was conceived. My father tells me that it was a very cold winter. Regardless, I was made and baked and born in a house that had seen many generations before me. My older brothers used to argue about who would get the house, but it turned out that none of them did. They all moved out for one reason or another. They rarely confided in me, but I guess because I was so good at music, my middle brother thought he could tell me that he was gay. Of course it didn't bother me because I didn't really care for him much anyway. I didn't like any of them to be honest. I don't think I like anyone in the whole family except for my father. I think because I made the noise when I was born he felt that I was special. And maybe he could tell that I was trying to kick my way out of my mother’s stomach during that day in church, and so he let himself believe that I was that miracle baby that everyone would have thought I was if I had come out in the middle of “The Old Rugged Cross.” As I grew, I became useful to my mother, and while I don't think she ever really liked me she seemed to hate me less and less. I paid close attention to the things that she did in the kitchen and in the house and in the fields, and I could tell that she was appreciative. One day she was sitting at the large table having a cup of coffee and a cinnamon roll when she looked up at the window and said almost to no one at all: "having a girl child is not nearly as bad as I thought it would be." I was the only one at the table but she never looked at me or acknowledged that I was listening. She got up from the table and put her coffee cup in the sink where she washed it carefully, putting it in the drying rack. She wrapped up the rest of the cinnamon rolls and put them back in the bed box where we liked to keep them. I didn't get up as quickly as I normally would because I didn't think I could. I felt the weight of that statement on my shoulders and in my lap and on the bottom of my shoes like I had lead for heels. Now we weren't the type to cry. It was as if we had inherited a condition where our tear ducts had been sealed up. But I wanted to cry. I wanted to reach out to her and be inside of her again like a baby because I thought that maybe this time she wouldn't mind it as much. I thought that maybe this time she would have let me be born in the church because it would have given her a source of pride. Because if I had to guess anything right now I would have guessed she was proud of me. I wasn't going to stay on the farm either. The last thing I was going to do was repeat any of these chores whenever I got old enough to leave. Luckily my mother died before I had to break her heart with it. Because I think that's the only thing that could have broken her heart if anything that could happen on earth. And I thought about her in heaven which is where I know she is, and I wondered if she would bother watching me or if the fact that I had moved from the farm and left that lifestyle behind would have made her angry. It would have upset her because she might have felt tricked by me. One morning when I was visiting my father in the much smaller house he had bought much closer to the city, I told him what she had said. And he told me that she had told him that she said that to me. And I wanted to dispute the fact that she had said it to me because she had not said it directly to me. She said it to the air. To the window. But he could see it in my face. He told me that she couldn't say it to me because it would have made her cry. It was the greatest cross she had to bear: the fact that she did not want me. And the only relief she got from this guilt was the fact that I had turned out to be so much better than she had thought. In fact I was better at working that farm than she had ever been. He told me even though we all left the farm, the farm was hers and on that morning when she told me she was leaving the farm to me. And we prayed on it. And when I left I gave him a hug because he didn't mind it when I hugged him. And that’s why I used to hug him all the time.
The worst kind of anger is righteous anger. It's anger you can't walk away from because you have every right to keep it. You have every right to feel it. And sometimes it can become like a veil that makes everything difficult to see. And when you breathe through the veil, you can smell the anger. And when you touch something through the veil all you can feel is the roughness of the fabric. The veil becomes a virus. It's a mask that doesn't protect you from pain, but holds it in. And you breathe your own breath which comes from lungs that are all full of wrath. Now there are things we can be angry about, and we can all agree are horrible and treacherous and despicable. Mass murders. People who have been robbed or spoken to in ways that were hurtful and mean. But for me there is no worse kind of anger than the anger provoked by betrayal. You lied to me. You told me things and made promises and then quickly you turned around and you ripped those promises to pieces. And once or twice I bent down and I picked up the pieces with scotch tape, and I put it all back together only to find that you had burned those patched promises. You later crumpled the promises and put them into bins. Separate bins that make it hard to put it all back together. You told me you loved me. That's a promise, you know. I did not provoke that. I did not ask you to make that promise. In fact I was prepared not to hear that promise until you made it. Until you said those words. And then I believed you. And maybe the worst part of betrayal is being made a fool. And that's what you did. You made me a fool. You opened me up like a can that's been closed for a long, long time, and you scooped me out and sorted me and spread me on the counter. And you went through every part of me until you knew all of me. And you told me you were going to put me in a safe place. But here it is all these days later and I'm still spread out and turning crusty. And it's all I can do to try to get myself back in that can, but everybody knows that's not possible. I won't be able to return to who I was before I met you or before you made your promises or before you said you loved me. I won't be able to get back to that. I listen and I listen and I listen again to the things that you told me, but I didn't record them. I can only find them in my memory. And like all words, they're only as honest as the person who speaks them. But I can't remember. They have a tendency to jumble up. They are like a tape measure that's made of cloth. If you don't stretch them out, you can't measure a damn thing. And that's how I have them. All of your words are just a scrum in my hand. And I can only think of the words with edges. I can only think of the ones that were jagged and dangerous and pressed into my flesh until I saw the bright red bloom of blood. And so these were the words that literally stuck in me. But as I looked down into my hand and I saw all the sentences jumped up together I wondered if there was something else. Had you said something else that I didn't hear? Could I put these words together in a different way? Could I stretch the tape measure out and get a different story from you? I looked for the words where you abandoned me. I wanted to find the words that were cracked and broken because that's what you had done to me. But they weren't there. I looked on the floor where we had argued. I checked my pockets because I had scraped up the words from the floor. But there wasn't a single sentence that ended our relationship. You talked about your needs. You reminded me that you had told me that you were coming out of a painful place and that you weren't ready for something new. You told me that you had fallen for me and you wanted to try but your life was coming apart. Once again you were finding a way out of things by swimming through a bottle of gin. And every good thing you were doing for yourself to survive your past was disappearing. Because everything you were was disappearing and becoming me. You were leaping over to me and finding meaning in me and finding life in me that meant you didn't have to find it in you anymore. You didn't think you would survive it. You wanted to plant yourself in the ground so that when I leaped up to hug you, you would not fall over. But at this moment the only thing holding you up was my love. And that would not be enough, you said. So you needed space and time. Space and time. Now I'm not good with space. And I'm not good with time. I want to be close. I want to be super close. I want to be subcutaneous. And I hate time. I don't want there to be time. I want everything now. You saw that. I wanted you now and I got you. Right? And so what are you supposed to do? If you sacrifice yourself for me, there will be no you for me. And if you push away and turn off your watch, there will be no me for you. And so you laid the words out carefully and stretched them so I could see them… but I would not. I ripped them from your hands, and I treated them like poison. And I jab them into my wrists and hoped that they would kill me. Only they didn't. The words did not kill me. And as I sit here reaching into the bag of my memory, pulling out the actual words you said I wonder if I made a mistake. I want to see your art again. I want to see the things that you make again. And so I have a little window that I left open, and I sneak into you and I see you when you don't know I'm seeing you. And I look at the things that you're making and I think that they are magnificent. And I realize that every single one of these things you're creating has something to do with me and nobody knows it. Nobody but me. And so at night when I'm alone and sad on the floor of my home, I finally put all the words together. I scotch tape and glue and spit. And I create the sentences that you said. I chant them like a monk in a temple that has been there for a thousand years. And for the first time in my life I teach myself to pray.