Choral Streams
by frankie bruno
My lips were chapped and wearing a puffy, red coat was not the answer.
I had eaten too much protein again; it hides in things like pitas and I wouldn’t describe this as nausea but as an “overbloatation” of those two syllables (pro-tein) inside me. Too much to not want to throw up. But I can’t throw up because I’m not a cat anymore and letting go has always been hard for me. Or maybe it hasn’t, since leaving is always my verb. Remembering verbs over and over and over and over.
My pill problem is shaped like a pill. Rather, half a pill, my dose. Rather, half a pill with a jagged edge since I split them with fingernails. The pill shape is oval. Ovals with a center divot and etched in number, letters. The problem with the shape is that I think maybe it should be bigger, as in an entire oval. But all my problems are shaped like ghostly roots; you can’t see them because the tree died a long time ago and now, you’re living in the bark as it rots.
Thank you, tree.
Please feed me less protein and more carbs.
More minerals.
My lovers are shaped like ice-cream cones because they are ice-cream cones, especially the twisty custards with two colors. But there is no protein and too much sugar. I won’t eat ice-cream cones. I don’t like ice-cream and I’m lactose intolerant because I will throw up.
Who knows? Not me. I’m only a humble bryologist. My brother, a mycologist, would say that no one is humble if they say they’re humble. But what does he know? He studies fungi.
I knew a con-man who was really a con-woman, they studied conchology. Their studies were incomplete because they were bad at conning and thus poor, and because they were raising a bryologist and a mycologist who kept getting lost in the shell collection. The con-woman was my father and they could only hear our voices inside the shells. My favorite was the Conchiglie. The bryologist would ask the con-woman a question but they’d only hear a mumble in the swirl of a snail.
The bryologist would ask for food, but this was before he had his striped cat; he had no one to be hungry with and no one to vomit with. You can eat some mosses, brother, and you can play music anywhere you want, provided you have talent and a brother.
I can’t play music, but I have talent. The problem is tree-shaped, but I don’t have any trees left to play with.
When dad would say goodbye to me or I would say goodbye to dad, or, like last night, I would say goodbye to my brother or my brother would say goodbye to me, it was only ever for a minute. But some minutes are made of minutes and some minutes are made of much larger geographies. But not mom. Mom never says goodbye because she is dead. Dad said life killed mom.
Sometimes I still talk to Mom. This morning she told me that shoulder pain never goes away. She told me over steaming syrup and waffles with a melting face. Soft things are nicest when they are hard to acquire, like a rabbit’s foot made from fescue, or playing-jacks made from muslin.
Why would I tell you what you want to hear when you’ve already left me at home? I’ll tell you what I want to hear but hurry up hurry up, you’re too slow to say it first. Always winning the race is bad for my feet.
Yesterday I was tiny but the day was larger and I still didn’t have enough time to build breakfast. Where will I pretend to sleep now? I ate cheerios all day but no breakfast, just pink milk poured onto compacted soil.
Pink bunny ears are for writing papers, but I left mine at home. Teacher gives me a gold star and says, “I’m not your teacher anymore, I’m a mugger, give me your grandfather’s wallet.” I oblige and cry, “have a nice day,” to the teacher running away, covered in flesh-eating gold stars. My favorite television show is gone forever, but I hate television, not my dad though; he used to be shaped like a semicolon but now he is shaped like a dash. I want to know what it means but his silences are too long to follow—unending minutes.
frankie bruno currently lives in Rochester, NY. When he's not gardening, daydreaming, or practicing headstands, he works at a local farm market. Someday he hopes to have longer hair and a pet cat.
