Doorbells

I want to ring the doorbell of kindergarten as though the world is about to end,

and express my condolences to my mother for the six-year old styled truth that I am growing up,

and come to an agreement with the alphabet that it’ll just have to stick in my mind

as I recontextualize construction paper and crayons in a new class where I have no friends

and render invisible revolution on the playground of my mind

which means that now I sit on the bench

and I’ll scribble your name madly in binders with unicorn stickers until

I learn to pickpocket books from cars and library shelves,

sniffing the old librarian’s fingers and binding glue off the pages,

see myself wider in the mirror

so that I flip off hunger and set it to music,

negotiating with yogurt cups and the fingers around my wrist,

then insincerely apologizing to my mattress for the punk albums I stow in its chest.

I offer obsolete garbage talk to my father as a sacrifice to his mediocrity,

moving blocks of text around with my fingers until it looks like I live on a stage,

feigning interest in the common as I drink cachaça on the side,

I’ll act utterly terrified of applications, going slowly in legalese as I can,

but for the sake of the child in me, I cannot lose my train of thought,

or shove a heaping pile of recycled words onto a page,

for I can no longer incorrectly gauge the emotional state of the future I want,

I can no longer borrow voices from my parent’s closet,

I want to ring the doorbell of university as though the world is about to end,

and write papers about Sartre using way too many adjectives,

idly sink into debt while my neurons turn into infectious weeds,

for tiptoeing was never my sport, though I bore it well,

I will shout into infinity in the Romance languages,

and transcribe my resignation to the pretend,

for today, I no longer repeat, nor recite,

I ring the doorbell of life as though the world is about to end

while drinking cachaça on the side.

-anna sluder