slurpees
coca cola slurpee brown,
the green on an apple flavored candy,
like the soda but with small pieces of ice,
the slush stays in your mouth for a bit longer;
cold against your lips,
tangy taste coating your whole tongue;
premier blue like the ocean on its brightest days,
the harsh lights of an excitingly luminescent crystal,
frozen liquid that you really shouldn’t drink again.
I see the same emptiness by the hotel exit,
I don’t know whether I’ll stay outside and wait inside for you to come back from the darkness;
creeping in every morning when you lay in the undone bedsheets,
pull it to your face and pretend like you don’t need it to be so fucking complete,
hands on a soft mattress trying to imitate the feeling of air conditioner on hotter skin;
for a few moments when I open the blinds,
the light splits across my hindsight,
I feel the guilt easing on me like blood from a wound;
a few moments after,
I feel my dimmer self in the shade,
hidden in between the shadows of a lamp and a radiator,
I’m unaware of the weight of the world.
do you make your bed each morning,
do you clean your room from the mess,
do you put on your good clothes;
an actress starring in the most tragic play,
do you start to wear make-up again?
colorful coldness,
frozen homemade lemonade in a cheap plastic cup;
ice packs against my mouth after a major surgery,
pressed against my mouth before I take oxycodone,
after another flare-up,
frozen pebble thrown against a table,
loudly,
found by the teenage babysitter,
in a childlike eagerness to crack glass before mom gets home,
sharpness to the ears;
purple popsicles,
fake sense of nourishing grape juice,
a funny feeling of frost against the roof of your mouth,
flavor draining before any brain freeze kicks in-
sensory problems present when I try biting into the corner.
do you make your bed,
do you clean up your room,
do you get up as early as you used to,
do you put on your good clothes,
do you go to every birthday party,
do you start to wear make-up again?
sugar
camping out on the couch;
limbs are so weak,
food next to the golden still of the movie,
ginger ale and soup,
is time mine when there is a lack
of it?
a month has never been so short!
отсутствие (otsutstviye);
an absence of,
an absence for-
gray dims into my line of sight,
I become a frothing creature to the daylight,
the living room is my new reality,
the TV only plays old shows;
Max & Ruby,
bright colors fading into simpler pro-
problems;
Gumball,
crazy situations and flashy blue
skin;
the pressure of earlier seasons and memories,
hold my tired eyes,
I have energy at soup hour and before we go to the book store,
I want-
I need ice cream and energy drinks and sugar,
sugar,
sh-
sugar at the mall and at the candy store,
colorful specks that fall in between my fingers and stain my tongue blue,
sweetness at its optimum,
sugar,
sugar,
sh-
the carpeted floors are my safety,
otherwise I feel the weight on my body;
tiredness seeps into everything;
I am tired now and all the time,
when I watch my favorite TV shows and before it’s time to go to bed again.
sh-
sugar;
Hershey’s sweet milk chocolate,
melting into your mouth,
s-
so sweet;
twix caramel wafers,
rip apart the pieces like che-
cheese,
candy falls into my tongue,
so sweet,
sour like tangly bits of overwhelm,
sour belts,
rush like red
watermelon,
sweet,
sweet;
candy like energy coming straight from the source,
I deserve it because I’m weak,
sick,
and fucking tired.
naw3
you visit new places like roughness in the back of your mind,
I am somehow standing next to you when you think of me in different languages,
a whole different sound and feel to the linguistic concepts of knowledge;
tactile feel to this sign at the park that has dividers for the parts in different languages,
where the Russian one looks like a stranger to my eager eyes,
but I can recognize the letters now;
I pretend that I can read it when all I’m doing is comparing words,
with my little knowledge of the difference in grammatical systems.
for them,
the letters must mean something else,
when I look at those letters they just look like a more electric form of my understanding;
bursts in front of my eyes,
they remind me of a different part of New York,
something new that I want to take in and feel.
it’s too late to disconnect the juice from the trigger;
for English,
something else is felt in each utterance,
these organizations are more than just a-
they are a hallucination,
have they become alive and sentient for me?
I can’t look at the letters and see them as what they truly are,
I can’t look at the letters and see them in the way someone who speaks Hindi must see them for their lack,
stupid indistinguishable squiggles.
what would it feel like to know Arabic like a sister,
that type of feeling where I live in a different place,
maybe I would have grown up in Lebanon instead of the US,
I look at all of that connected calligraphy and I just know more than-
it’s so pretty and there are so many different ways for it to look.
it would be too late to disconnect the juice from the trigger,
these fucking squiggles look like something now;
they are something in all my textbooks and all my conversations,
in all my poetry and all my nonsensical daydreams;
they are family and they are friends.
I see them at my job and at my death bed,
at the recitation of all my pain and suffering-
for them,
the latin alphabet show up for a half-possible,
transliteration;
they use letters for numbers that have no English equivalent,
and we forget about the untranslatable sounds all together.
—About the Author—
Riley Fable is a poet and writer whose work explores neurodivergence, queer identity, and disability. They are especially interested in the structural and sensory elements of poetry. They have been published in several literary magazines. Riley is currently working on their first book titled Deadwood.