When I was twenty-six, I gave my body away. But also at nineteen. And maybe twelve. Details are unimportant and have already been documented through ripped skin and hollowed tongue, so instead, I’ll make a mix tape of the trauma:
- Do I Move You?—Nina Simone
- Another Lonely Day—Ben Harper
- Colorblind—Counting Crows
- La valse d’Amelie—Yann Tiersen
- Burning Bridges—Chris Purkea
- Cleaning Apartment—Clint Mansell
- Change of Address—Marina Marina
- Fjogur Piano—Sigur Ros
- February—Gregory Alan Isakov
- The Rip--Portishead
- Dumb—Nirvana
- I Bleed-Pixies
- Son’s Gonna Rise—Citizen Cope
- That Moon Song—Gregory Alan Isakov
- Wake Up—Arcade Fire
- Home Again—Michael Kiwanuka
- Red Dust—James Vincent McMorrow
- The Winner Is—Devotchka
- Remember Me as a Time of Day—Explosions in the Sky
- Breathe Me--Sia
&
I’ll alphabetically list colors that could create a collage bright enough to illustrate it:
- alabaster
- bloodied knee from fist fight
- cysts
- denim
- exercise on a body after thirty-six years of sporadic movement
- forgotten grapes left in backpack from a camping trip, found six months later
- guitar string—the unplucked one
- how can one really describe purple
- illiterate notebooks, smudged from the rain/ someone left the windows open so now all that is left to read is / mold
- january sky on a friday four hours before snowstorm
- krystal meth [sic]
- left wrist after the breakdown
- marzipan
- nest of loons
- orgasm (the kind that means something)
- pie crust—overbaked
- quetzal
- radish
- something similar to yellow, but more like rubberband
- the inside of her kiss
- umbilical chord left unsnipped until first birthday
- very sour cherries
- what suburban new jersey looks like when you are high
- x-girlfriend’s mole
- your biggest secret
- zest from pomelo
or
perhaps it is even more accurately documented in this transcript which traveled from public bathroom floor to underneath chuck taylors to my hands, raw from ----
X: It meant nothing.
Y: Only if nothing means the carpal tunnel syndrome of wounds.
X: Pardon?
Y: The numb. Knowing there is something there, waking up. Trying to yawn out of skin, but—
X: It can’t.
Y: Nothing means nothing anymore. Everything is found. Known. Cut-up into an argument.
X: But. But it can go away.
Y: Only if away means a permanent disconnection of hypnotized raw. The uncooked symbolism of everything that has been taken.
X: Or given—
Y: Yes…away.
******************
Aimee interviews Anne Waldman in great weather for MEDIA’s latest anthology, Before Passing.
Read more Aimee in her latest full-length collection, meant to wake up feeling