Any Man

by Amber Tamblyn

Yes, I am still breathing. No, I am not living.

We sink to the bottom of each other’s oceans, drowning in shared silence.

I want to reach out and kiss her lids, run my thumbs over their creaminess and remember what delicate feels like.

I want to pull my hand away from hers and never be touched again. I want to take off all my fingers like pen caps and write blood all over this room.

Her touch is a broken mirror in every room of my mind.

The rest of me will exit our picture’s future. I’ll go somewhere warm, black, and waterless, touching nothing, until she forgets my name.

“Do you have any clocks in your house, and how many clocks do you own? “Have they ever all simultaneously stopped?

“Have you ever heard wolves howl in a place where wolves do not reside?

I’ll have the fish, please, and Camilla my dear, can we swing by the bar on the way home I think I left my body there

Donald got into an argument with the moon and died instantly. Donald revealed how much he could love and died instantly. Donald met his friend for a beer after work and died instantly. Donald has to explain to his children what happened and will die instantly. Donald will touch his wife’s thigh and die instantly.

Donald now dreams of nothing. For he is a no one.

He places the photograph on the carpeted floor of the bedroom. Donald takes a wallet out of the hospital bag and puts it in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. Donald removes the reading glasses from the hospital bag and drops it out the second-story window. Donald takes out a watch and places it in the shower. Donald is settling in just fine.

Sometimes I’ll arrive at an appointment three hours early just so I have time to stare out my car window. I watch and try not to think. Everything is a film: a fly on the windshield trying to get in, a delivery truck parked in front of whatever to deliver something I will never savor, a plane carrying flesh messages across the sky. The movie is wonderful to watch when I’m not in it.

My eyes are no longer a part of my body. We do not know each other. I see them, but they do not see me.

The shape of my mouth my neighbors and colleagues desire to set them at ease. It makes others feel safe with my story. I practice this smiling, this mouth’s shaping, in the mirror. I do it for them.

A cereal bowl is a pillow is a trash bin is a knife is a fistfight on the street.”

My best friend is Rotty my dog and he always listens to me whenever I am sad. I can be your Rotty if you need one.

I’d grow extra mouths to swallow all his confusion and sorrow.

It’s not your fault. But healing your own pain does belong to you now.

I know despair. Known it for years. I’ve introduced it to my family and spent holidays with it. I argue with it about how to load the dishwasher. I watch TV with it at night. I take a shit in the morning by its side. I go for long walks at dusk and let it spew its foul thoughts in my ears. I take it to the doctor when it’s not feeling well.

I thank despair for keeping me honest. For never lying to me. I take it up to my place for a nightcap. I fuck it to feel better. I wake up a bitter man.

I’m fucking nowhere right behind you

I cry harder than I’ve ever cried in my entire life. I cry until I evaporate.

“How can you go on living when you’re now being lived in? When you’ve been invaded?

and the rest is, as they say, herstory.

If you’ve learned anything it’s that snow can’t be trusted. One day, your daughter’s angels. The next, a predator’s footprints.

I felt like a sun in a perpetual state of setting.

My whole life had turned into impending nightfall.

Everywhere I looked, I saw skin.

For lunch I could have as many tablespoons of mustard as I wanted, but I could only have one teaspoon of ketchup per day.

Water was very safe.

Her voice wasn’t even in the room. Her voice was coming from inside me.

Speaking of which, it is my wish to be cremated. Please place my remains in a Coca-Cola cup and leave me under a bleacher at Fenway Park during the next World Series. I mean it. Don’t take me out after the game. Leave me there and just let me be swept away with the empty beer bottles and hot-dog wrappers. That trash always made me so happy. Made me feel like I was in a place where people were really living.

My demons went from renting to owning. I gave in.

I am an earned epilogue.

People who live through sexual assault are a crash on the side of the road, and the American media is nothing more than cars slowing down just long enough to take a peek.

We are a country that capitalizes on the fetishizing of felonies.

And though I am estranged from the sun, I am a brightness, lit from within.

This is my favorite time of year. When everything begins to die without choice. When the great mother begins her grand death-sentencing. But I am the greatest mother of all. And while I’m not a murderess, I do love a good ending to a man’s mind, especially if I’ve written it. It’s not revenge. It’s not payback. Nothing was done to me. It’s just something I like to do now and again.

Any man will do.