"A Confession" by Kat Giordano
There was this one guy in high school my friend
and I used to laugh about, the kind
who has something off about them
but not anything pathological or diagnosable,
so it felt okay at the time that he became
kind of a meme to us. His online presence
was the main object of our ridicule, his
Facebook feed boasting every goddamn detail
of his life. We watched the rise and fall
of a dozen different relationships with dark-haired girls
with just first and middle names who were also
a mess. My friend or I would begin online chats
in hysterics, and the other would check, validate
the cringe-inducing spectacle that was his life:
an amalgam of multi-paragraph confessions
of love, rants about billiards, walkthroughs he made
for whatever first-person shooter was popular
at the time. I wasn’t ashamed enough
when one day, he called me out for liking too many
of his posts in a row, which I did often and didn’t mean
one-hundred-percent ironically, because
I did like them, in my own snarky way. Instead
I scoffed at his bold accusation, took a screenshot,
and sent it to my friend so we could
laugh. We don’t do that so much anymore
but I can’t delete him. I’m still interested
in his daily life as a Sears sales guy, his
nebulous attempt at professional wrestling
for a living. I absorb every detail of his dumb life
and graft it, pathetically, to my own.
Leaving work today, I logged in and saw his latest
update: he slept 18 hours, had some complex dream
about one of the many dark-haired women
of his past. Gently, he reassures the audience
that later today he’ll post a video summarizing
each gut-wrenching moment. I convince myself
I won’t watch, but my phone burns a hole
in my pocket as I’m walking home.
"New Year's Day" by Kat Giordano
i haven’t cried at all this year
and please don’t tell me what day
it is. i don’t know how long
it will last, only that today
is not the usual unmade bed
i wake up cried-out and sore in,
that what you need must be
begged from some brink or another
into existence, a punchline
at the end of pain, like
being waterboarded by your own life.
i don’t know what i’m saying except
i’m in love with everyone and afraid
of the weight of it, how when my body
vibrates at this frequency it so easily
turns me on. what would it mean
not to wait this time for what’s
after sadness, to steal the map
and fold those coasts closer
together like my own god?
i think i should just go to bed
more often. i think i should rip open,
turn the camera on the animal
i am. i think i should plunge myself
face-first into the tub now, stop counting,
let my lungs engorge as they will.
"Relatable Memes" by Kat Giordano
when you wake up every morning
in a glue trap that you laid yourself.
when the waitress asks you what you want
and you say, i want the days to stop
hiding behind these increasingly heavier curtains.
i want those i’ve deemed responsible
for protecting my heart to feel
guilty for sleeping on the job. i want everyone
i love to bloom but not this much
quicker than me, not all at once, not
if I end up by myself,
and nobody laughs
because nobody but you
is in on the joke.