Take my heart. Take it out of my body. It is too big. I can’t swallow.

I put him to bed without a bath. His feet are dirty. I should have cleaned his feet. What sort of Mother puts her sobbing child to bed with dirty feet?  What if it always feels this bad? But, it never does.

We jitterbug the sun down. It sinks between the sidewalk cracks. We race across the grass. My hand has been missing yours, he says. He presses his small palm flat against mine. Do you know that there are red blood cells in your body? They help you breathe, Momma. And, I know. I do.

I breathe deep. My lungs expand. Contract. This love it flattens me. It fills me up.

She has to push the cat off the kitchen table before she can put down her plate of fried eggs and overcooked toast. The cat likes to put his paw in her cup of milk. She would be bothered by the cat if she actually planned on drinking the milk.

She doesn’t like milk. She wishes the act of pouring cold milk from the fridge into her cup could stave off the osteoporosis she imagines is creeping across her bones like a silent thief. By the age of 60, she fully expects to be contorted into a right angle.

She sits with her breakfast. The milk grows warm on the table. It has a solitary black cat hair floating it in.

She opens the paper. Reads the headlines. It is all carjackings and kidnappings. Just like every other paper on every other day. She looks at the picture of a bomb exploding in a place she will never travel. She notes the agony of strangers’ faces before she looks away. She doesn’t bother to read the articles. Her horoscope says a financial burden is going to be lifted. All her bills are already paid. She closes the paper. Horoscopes never impressed her anyway.

There are crumbs of toast on her sweater. She picks one crumb off her collar and puts it in her mouth. She tastes butter. This reminds her that the morning light filling the room is perfect for painting pictures. It also reminds her that she needs to clean the linoleum floor. Neither of these things interest her.

The phone rings, but she doesn’t pick it up. She doesn’t feel much like talking. Instead, she turns up the small radio she keeps on the kitchen counter. She finds a station that plays unstructured Jazz. She turns the volume up loud enough to wake the neighbors who are most likely sleeping off a hangover in the apartment next door.

She taps her feet in an awkward rhythm. She wriggles her hips. She swings both arms above her head. She dances across her small dirty floor in a pair of wool socks. Today, I will be happy. She says. And, she is. At least until the end of that particular song.

I stand quietly and watch Merce Cunningham blink on film. This is all part of Tacita Dean’s contribution to the Haunted exhibit at the Guggenheim.  As I watch, I know that Merce Cunningham has already passed away. I think. There is a particular sort of poetry in watching a dead man breathing.

So, I put on a ridiculous dress and drink Heineken beer. I make myself dizzy on some ballroom dance floor. I tell stories. I hug friends. I eat a cheese sandwich as tall as the Chrysler building. I ride the subway. I take a cab. I sit on the bus next to a woman with a jar of pickles in her purse. I sing along unabashedly with a shirtless man playing an acoustic guitar in the middle of central park. I blush easily when he winks at me. I carry his smile for three or four city blocks. The skyline becomes punctuation for the conversation I have with a dear friend on a gorgeous New York Night. I laugh with my roommates while taming runaway split ends or slipping on high heel shoes. I spend an inordinate amount of time waiting for the elevator. I feign interest. I clap politely. I use an entire box of Band-Aids. I eat croissants and shop for perfume. I corner women in the bathroom just to thank them. I regret some mistakes. I repeat them. I make a point of going alone to the museum.

Tacita Dean’s work is on the sixth floor of the Guggenheim. Merce Cunningham sits in a chair projected by memory and light. Countless people pass this light and become projected into the art’s frame. We become these beautiful silhouettes against the stillness of the old man. We come in and out of focus. Nothing is permanent.

I have spent a lifetime holding back. I want to use my body. I kneel at Cunnigham’s feet. I brush my shadowy hand against his cheek. It is not enough for me to simply observe. I also need to participate.

People who eat too many onions have terrible breath. Onions seep through your pores so you walk around all day smelling like dirty feet. Basically, onions render you completely unfuckable.

Oranges are beautiful to look at. They are delicious to eat. I once loved a boy who rode a bicycle the color of a tangerine. I have a pretty dress that reminds me of a citrus field. There are places on my body that are like oranges, soft and circular. Peel me apart. Bite down. I drip across your chin. I taste like fruit.

Frederico Garcia Lorca wrote a poem entitled, Song of The Barren Orange Tree. In the poem Lorca writes, Free me from the torment of seeing myself without fruit.

I was in the supermarket the other day. I was standing in front of this huge display of onions. Just letting my hate percolate. Onions make me want to punch someone in the face. I said this to no one in particular. There was, at that moment, a woman who was five fingering a Vidalia. She moved two steps back, fearful. Not you, lady. I wouldn’t punch you. I am a crazy-threat in the produce aisle. I should not have to explain myself.

Elaine Sexton wrote a poem entitled, Onion Field. All the lines stun me quietly. Especially these, Only a small thread of me kept snagging and unraveling as crops turned, and miles and miles of fence framed beauty like something lit by a match….Did I know even then…That I’d actually risk not coming back to this place. Again. And again.

Next time I am in the supermarket, I am going to put one onion in my basket. My refrigerator is filled with oranges. Left untouched, they grow mold.

I stand out in the backyard in the middle of a storm. My white nightgown soaked sheer by the rain. Cotton clings to my hips and thighs, the wet heart of my pubic hair, the slope of my breast. The neighbors peer out of the safety of their window. They believe I am a dream or a ghost. They lack the imagination it takes to understand a middle aged woman bargaining with the tight fist of an angry sky.

My body is a blue flame lit by moonlight. I wait. I wait for hours or maybe days. It is a lifetime. Lightning strikes the earth approximately 100 times every minute. I raise a rusty golf club above my head. My thin arms shaking like a dare.

The sky explodes. There is a sharp flash. A sound like bones breaking. My mouth fills with ash. There is this perfect moment where I believe that I have been struck.

I open my eyes to find devastation. The oldest tree in the backyard split clear in half. Its body contorted like a sobbing widow at a funeral. The tree’s bark scorched and weeping. The grass around the tree burnt in a tight circle. The air is smoke and sadness.

I turn and walk calmly back to my house. Inside, I use a soft towel to dry off my body in the familiar dark of my bathroom. I climb into my bed, pull the blanket tightly around my shoulders. I sleep deeply without dreaming.

She takes a sip of her coffee.

He checks the messages on his phone.

She thinks: Love me like a thin line of sweat against a collarbone, like a bare foot propped up on the edge of a plastic baby pool, like two wet lips sucking on blue popsicles, like the dream you had of Christmas on summer’s hottest day.

He thinks: I’d like to take my right hand and grab a fistful of your hair, while my left hand does things to your body that would only sound polite if I spoke them aloud in French.

She turns the pages of her novel.

He uses a tissue to blow his nose.

They never once make eye contact.

And so it goes…And so it goes…

This morning, I saw a woman sitting alone on the front porch of a beautiful house. She was sobbing. We made eye contact as I passed, and a part of me wanted to turn away. I did not want to be intrusive. I stayed my eyes. There is something powerful in being a witness. I wanted to honor her pain. For a moment, all that existed was the rattle of my dog’s leash, the rumble of a distant train, my empathy mixed with this woman’s sadness.

I’ve been angry. Last week, my son was diagnosed with Autism. This was not a surprise, and still I was not prepared for it. I feel like I am walking around with my heart exposed,  all meaty and raw. I chafe every single time something touches me.

Every thing is heightened. I find myself overwhelmed by simple things like the way my son looks in his alligator backpack. I drop J off at his new school, and I wander the neighborhood completely unmoored. I enter a bookstore as a means to compose myself. I am awkward and clumsy carrying a stack of books. An elderly man stoops to pick up the car keys I keep dropping. I am wrecked by this kindness.

I am stunned by kindness, like tender replies to my awkward e-mails, or the person in the supermarket who remarks that my daughter’s eyes are a particular type of dreaming.

The world is filled with sad women and beautiful houses. I am reminded of the importance of eye contact. I find such grace and almost unbearable heartbreak in being human.

Like a Wiliam Carlos Willam’s poem, you are the empty icebox I discover while fumbling in the dark for the deliciousness of plums.

I teach middle school. If you ask a class full of adolescent boys and girls about theme, it is highly possibly someone is going to mention a cliche. Love Conquers All.

This morning, I opened up the newspaper. A 22 year-old boy from Elmont signed himself out of rehab, bought a vial of heroin, and over-dosed in his parent’s basement, a 45 year-old mother of three was gunned down. E. coli has been found in our drinking wells, and our oceans are polluted. 35 people were killed in another suicide bombing in Pakistan. Millions are still out of jobs. Love in this type of world is more likely to cause syphilis than it is to save us.

As writers, we are suppose to avoid cliches. How can we avoid cliches when we are so busy living them?

Cliches are ways we simplify the world so that it makes sense. We like things neat and orderly. Cliches are like pop psychology. They are easy answers that make ordinary people feel safe. Strip malls and gated housing developments all spring from this same fucked up ideology. We have the need to suburbanize everything that is untamed.

While the world is tearing itself apart, we sit here making noise, destroying the internet and the act of writing with false adorations, self-pity, and unnecessary concerns.

Is the shape of my ass authentic enough?

I do not care if you love me or you hate me.  All I ask is that you stand here and witness me writing. What I would really like is for you to get dizzy with my words and maybe, if I’m lucky,  share some confusion of your own.

I once saw this impeccably dressed woman stick an entire ham into her designer purse while food shopping at the supermarket. I was intrigued. I followed her around the store as she continued shopping. She filled her cart with expensive organic produce and imported cheese. I followed her straight through the checkout. She laughed and made small talk with the high school girl who was ringing up her items. I watched her sail through the doors with her shopping bags full and that stolen ham still inside her purse.

When I was in college, I was a thief. I use to steal drugstore cosmetics, department store tank tops, and the boyfriends of other girls. This does not make me a terrible person.

We are all flawed. It is these flaws that make human interaction both frustrating and beautiful.

I woke up, yesterday, to find a surprise e-mail in my inbox. It was one of those e-mails that had the potential to make me feel ashamed. I stared at it for a good five minutes, fingers poised over delete. In the end, it really does not matter what it said. The point is that I read it. Things change every single day.

People surprise me. I surprise myself.

I once saw a woman steal a ham in the middle of an afternoon in a crowded supermarket. She stuck it right inside her bag and continued her grocery shopping. Our modern day system of morality demands that we be disappointed by these things. I am too curious about people to have proper outrage.

When I drove away from that supermarket that day, I thought about that women sitting alone in her kitchen. The cooked ham sliced in front of her on a plate decorated with blue flowers. I imagined her taking a thick slice and dipping it in spicy mustard before she took her first bite.

I wonder how it tasted.