GONE TO STATIC

From FINAL GIRL Copyright © 2003 Daphne Gottlieb. Used by permission of Soft Skull Press, Inc.

it sounds better than it is,
this business of surviving,
making it through
the wrong place
at the wrong time
and living

to tell.
when the talk shows and movie credits
wear off, it's just me and my dumb
luck. this morning
I had that dream again:
the one where I'm dead.

I wake up and nothing's
much different. everything's gone
sepia, dirty bourbon glass
by the bed, you're
still dead.
I could stumble

to the shower,
scrub the luck of breath off my skin
but it's futile.
the killer always wins.
it's just a matter
of time.

and I have
time. I have grief and liquor to
fill it. tonight, the liquor and I are
talking to you. the liquor says, "remember"
and I fill the rest. your hands. your smile.
all those times. remember.

tonight the liquor and I
are telling you about our day.
we make it out of bed. we miss you.
we were surprised by the blood between
our legs. we miss you. we made it to the video
store, missing you. we stopped
at the liquor store

hoping the bourbon would stop
the missing. there's always more
bourbon, more missing.
tonight, when we got home,
there was a stray cat
at the door.

she came in.
she screams to be touched.
she screams
when I touch her.
she's right
at home.

not me.
the whisky is open
the vcr is on.
I'm running
the film backwards
and one by one

you come back to me,
all of you.
your pulses stutter to a begin
your eyes go from fixed to blink
the knives come out of your chests, the chainsaws

roar out
from your legs
your wounds seal over
your t-cells multiply, your tumors shrink
the maniac killer
disappears

it's just you and me
and the bourbon and the movie
flickering together
and the air breathes us and I
am home, I am lucky

I am right
before everything
goes black