PLASTIC DANCE
waking up to a twisted middle finger, i try to make out the time. 1pm. again i slept on my lower back and my favorite pose of a dislocated shoulder forward, under chest. today i’m trying to be someone to be proud of. you leave for uber and step on the dancing plastic egg on your way out. the cat is chewing on my ankle and the plastic egg dances further and further till it’s banging on the concrete edge of the kitchen counter, constantly and without hesitation. i stare at it till the simulated turkey feathers are a blue of a stale bush fire.
i’ve decided to be an artist today. i’m searching for the right amount of melancholy and childhood angst in the faces of the right amount of girl on google images. i quickly comprehend that i can’t draw faces. i whiteout all features resembling a failed cartoonist’s first hopeful attempt at meaning after a fifth divorce. i’m better than this which means i need to stop. i stop all activity. i close my laptop and just sit on the couch for a good 11 minutes. i try to remember the last time i felt so useless at something. i look at the armrests and faded chocolate stains remind me of menstrual blood that i gifted your parents’ latex mattress the first night i spent at their house.
i’ve made quite a few friends since i moved to the middle of nowhere america 2 years ago on a one year adventure. girls your age disappear all the time the first friend i made said to me. i thought about it constantly after that. it’s no fun to disappear when there are no parents to beg on tv for my return, exasperated and just enough of a minority to divide public opinion on whether i ran away due to religious oppression or was an opportunistic abduction. i prefer chatting online with best friends i’ve never met than meet a stranger face to face. it seems i can never stand up straight when i meet someone in real life, when i extend my neck to align with my back, it retaliates by sending currents of pain throughout my body.
the first friend i met in real life and online was in a green cafe. she wore red and yellow feathers on her head. death by art deco. i asked casually about murder and if flesh can be sinful. she smiled and it looked as if she was stifling laughter. her cheekbones reminded me of apple cores and succulent bones of fragile birds. a floating dark cloak took our order, sunflower oil and vanilla essence when she said will that be all. we laughed at santa heads and ate vegan naruto rolls. we were friends and became best friends online, never meeting again as our real selves.
my online persona is standing in the corridor with sunglasses on and craving 80’s phone sex in my previous life.
when i was younger with a flat body, i was an exotic choice for a friend for all the prepubescent girls in my grade. two sisters, one year apart but in the same grade befriended me. they had light hair and skin so translucent i was scared it would fall off. when we fought they called me baby pig and i felt hurt because pig’s not kosher and i wanted to be eaten without prejudice. we went to lakes a lot, more than little girls should. i stood up on the baby swing in the park and fell on my head. one of the sisters recorded it on her phone. we met sarah, a new girl in our school one grade above us and during recess we cornered her and asked what her favorite pair of panties was. mauve polka dot. sarah joined our group and i felt less exotic. one day the sisters were out sick so sarah invited me to her house after school. big dog the size of someone’s father hugged me and i cried. we went for a walk and an older boy on skateboard whistled at me. my heart beat faster and i felt small and rough. sarah told him to fuck off and that’s when i decided i liked sarah the best. one summer afternoon i was over at the sisters and i was in the bathtub with one sister, we were giggling like girls and comparing hands. her’s was short and soft, almost transparent like the water around us except for the broken blood that barely moved inside her palm. mine was longer, darker. exotic. baby pig. i wondered if all of this was kosher, if i was kosher. the other sister came and sat on the toilet next to us, the sound of her pee deranged, spilling. she giggled and my mouth burned under the weight of my fuzz.
when i met you that was a form of friendship. it was right after i came to terms with the difference between blood and brown. i was suffocating under winter and clogged pores. your friends thought i was hot through the computer screen and i needed more control in my life. when i saw you i thought you looked like a small boy, pointing at life facing the pitch black screen with lingering subtitles from a previous scene. i wanted the credits to roll and greys to mute our skin. we became friends that didn’t know how to kiss each other.
we never learned to kiss and when we moved to middle america soon after we didn’t need to. being friends and existing in physical bodies simultaneously was draining. we didn’t know each other or ourselves. we needed the other to exist side by side so we didn’t have to find ourselves and see the truth of our bodies.
i want to be an artist. i want to paint trees and girls with perfect sadness before the epic realization as the credits roll and the audience murmur, envying the sad girls. they get an end to their sadness they know when they see their names on the screen they don’t have to be sad anymore. ideally one sadness needs to end for another to begin, otherwise it’s a tragedy and no one can bear that in 2018. i want to paint my friends as they exist in pixels, in newer versions of iphones and controversy and public deceit. a green egg, plastic and dreaming of flight, skinned with only a few feathers to entertain. dancing dancing with each hard knock never bowing to cat or human unaware of the tiny metal screws in place, tightened to keep the body intact for pleasure, for yen, caress tightened in all hands, paws.
i’ve decided to be an artist today. i’m searching for the right amount of melancholy and childhood angst in the faces of the right amount of girl on google images. i quickly comprehend that i can’t draw faces. i whiteout all features resembling a failed cartoonist’s first hopeful attempt at meaning after a fifth divorce. i’m better than this which means i need to stop. i stop all activity. i close my laptop and just sit on the couch for a good 11 minutes. i try to remember the last time i felt so useless at something. i look at the armrests and faded chocolate stains remind me of menstrual blood that i gifted your parents’ latex mattress the first night i spent at their house.
i’ve made quite a few friends since i moved to the middle of nowhere america 2 years ago on a one year adventure. girls your age disappear all the time the first friend i made said to me. i thought about it constantly after that. it’s no fun to disappear when there are no parents to beg on tv for my return, exasperated and just enough of a minority to divide public opinion on whether i ran away due to religious oppression or was an opportunistic abduction. i prefer chatting online with best friends i’ve never met than meet a stranger face to face. it seems i can never stand up straight when i meet someone in real life, when i extend my neck to align with my back, it retaliates by sending currents of pain throughout my body.
the first friend i met in real life and online was in a green cafe. she wore red and yellow feathers on her head. death by art deco. i asked casually about murder and if flesh can be sinful. she smiled and it looked as if she was stifling laughter. her cheekbones reminded me of apple cores and succulent bones of fragile birds. a floating dark cloak took our order, sunflower oil and vanilla essence when she said will that be all. we laughed at santa heads and ate vegan naruto rolls. we were friends and became best friends online, never meeting again as our real selves.
my online persona is standing in the corridor with sunglasses on and craving 80’s phone sex in my previous life.
when i was younger with a flat body, i was an exotic choice for a friend for all the prepubescent girls in my grade. two sisters, one year apart but in the same grade befriended me. they had light hair and skin so translucent i was scared it would fall off. when we fought they called me baby pig and i felt hurt because pig’s not kosher and i wanted to be eaten without prejudice. we went to lakes a lot, more than little girls should. i stood up on the baby swing in the park and fell on my head. one of the sisters recorded it on her phone. we met sarah, a new girl in our school one grade above us and during recess we cornered her and asked what her favorite pair of panties was. mauve polka dot. sarah joined our group and i felt less exotic. one day the sisters were out sick so sarah invited me to her house after school. big dog the size of someone’s father hugged me and i cried. we went for a walk and an older boy on skateboard whistled at me. my heart beat faster and i felt small and rough. sarah told him to fuck off and that’s when i decided i liked sarah the best. one summer afternoon i was over at the sisters and i was in the bathtub with one sister, we were giggling like girls and comparing hands. her’s was short and soft, almost transparent like the water around us except for the broken blood that barely moved inside her palm. mine was longer, darker. exotic. baby pig. i wondered if all of this was kosher, if i was kosher. the other sister came and sat on the toilet next to us, the sound of her pee deranged, spilling. she giggled and my mouth burned under the weight of my fuzz.
when i met you that was a form of friendship. it was right after i came to terms with the difference between blood and brown. i was suffocating under winter and clogged pores. your friends thought i was hot through the computer screen and i needed more control in my life. when i saw you i thought you looked like a small boy, pointing at life facing the pitch black screen with lingering subtitles from a previous scene. i wanted the credits to roll and greys to mute our skin. we became friends that didn’t know how to kiss each other.
we never learned to kiss and when we moved to middle america soon after we didn’t need to. being friends and existing in physical bodies simultaneously was draining. we didn’t know each other or ourselves. we needed the other to exist side by side so we didn’t have to find ourselves and see the truth of our bodies.
i want to be an artist. i want to paint trees and girls with perfect sadness before the epic realization as the credits roll and the audience murmur, envying the sad girls. they get an end to their sadness they know when they see their names on the screen they don’t have to be sad anymore. ideally one sadness needs to end for another to begin, otherwise it’s a tragedy and no one can bear that in 2018. i want to paint my friends as they exist in pixels, in newer versions of iphones and controversy and public deceit. a green egg, plastic and dreaming of flight, skinned with only a few feathers to entertain. dancing dancing with each hard knock never bowing to cat or human unaware of the tiny metal screws in place, tightened to keep the body intact for pleasure, for yen, caress tightened in all hands, paws.
NOOKS KRANNIE is a Palestinian/Persian female writer from Montreal, Canada. Her work has appeared/is forthcoming in Hobart, The Fanzine, Cosmonauts Avenue and more. website: nkrannie.com insta: @nookskrannie
