comenzadas

i was concieved, like so many others, in a generic bottle of whiskey. I've always known, from that very moment that I was alone. Later I knew I would be marked for life. I was born in the white tiled bathroom of my parents tiny apartment on a cold night in august. my father was drunk and banging on the door. my mother was pissed, cleaning, scouring the floor as I bled out of her, cursing my father and what he had done to her and me, cursing me. that night, in a move completeLy counter to her temprament, perhaps spurred by her undying devotion to her plants, she buried the after birth in the garden she kept on the roof. the next morning my twin sister blossomed out of the sprouted sapling that had grown overnight from what was left of me. we could never be more different, my sister and I. I hate her and I love her and I don't know how I feel about her. at least she lives far away. happily married of course, cute little kid and a white picket fence and smart and talented. bitch. we keep in touch, because we can kind of read each others minds in this weird and sometimes upsetting way. when someone has unregulated access to your brain you have to keep on their good side. luckily this is a reciprocal relationship. she knows I hate, envy and am jealous of her and I know she pities me and is repulsed by me and at the same time is relieved that these things happen to me and not her.

but this journal is supposed to be about me, the hell cat, the loca: my life stories, como naci y como me estoy muriendo. muriendo. muriendo.

me estoy muriendo de amor por ti.
bienvenidas

I am equally disgusted and satisfied with myself. I plan to unravel the threads of my life here, to purge and expunge my past deeds. I need a space in which to recall the old days with the lyricism that they deserve, thereby making them prettier and grittier than they really were.

Once upon a time I was a little girl. I am a man now though I kept the many trappings of a female body. I don't want editorial change. Someone once accused me of growing a dick and a beard because it would be easier for me to get laid. No matter how pissed off I can admit when someone has touched the truth a bit. But its not that.
It isn't that she left me, it isn't the tragic way children look right into my eyes as they pass me on the street or the strange awkward hang of my large hands when I wear a dress. Its all of the old unsaid words that stuck and rotted in my mouth, coating my tongue with an acrid film that seeped out onto my skin, sucking up the moisture and leaving laugh lines like cracked earth.
I listen to the sawing of these fiddles, the sad moaning of the women's voices blending together into a caul that hangs in the air, waiting to trap me and squeeze me until stale tears glom out of my dusty eyes. I have sat in this small concrete box of a bar for more nights than I care to remember this past year. I don't talk to anyone, I just listen. What I've heard never stays, the words fall over me like they are just the edge, the outline of the music. The sound licks out in waves from the tiny stage, low, loud and reminding me of the relationship between thunder and lightning and how stupid it is that people say lightning doesn't make a sound.

Ibeginagain. I begin again.
the story of my life has many beginnings. that means I don't know where to start. I like to begin with the hands. for me hands are the beginning. something about them says "start here" or "origin"

I have large hands with a roundish scar, a bit smaller than a dime, at the bease of the back of my left hand, not quite down to the wrist. My veins are visible but not bulging unless I've spent a long time typing or playing the piano. I don't play anymore but that was one thing I liked about it. It surprises me when I look in the mirror and my face is not the color of my hands.

Although my sister was not born this way I sometimes imagine her hands sticking up out of the ground like plump stemmed flowers. Instead she was a hunk of writhing flesh balled up in some leaves. a cabbage patch kid before her time. my mother cooed at her, removed me from my crib and stuck me in the underwear drawer to give my sister a place to sleep. for years after that no matter how my mother tried to separate us she always woke to find us sleeping together, huddling into each other as if conspiring. eventually she gave up. she had to dress us alike since we were so close in age, though when we went for trips (Ive seen picutres) she dressed me like a boy. eventually we moved. I don't think she had the heart to go through with it.


I have many beginings and no ends. I just trail off when things start threading into that high pitched noise inside my chest. I can begin again. anywhere.