two nights ago was memorabilia; last night’s dream was yesterday; three was a mistake

two nights ago was memorabilia 
Me and a teacher’s student pitch masks 
on the beach in Long Beach Island,
under slapped water there are orcas, 
I’m floating in spongy dark blue 
midnight lines through it like conduction
waves in loose cerulean tomato soup,
ghast: the robotic camera lowers into
platform swimming pool abyss,
farther from sand, closer to tile generates
mass white and black killers that slip
through the glue and into my arms
not unlike spontaneous generation; no
sunlight hits their backs and returns
opalescence – I’m enclosed. My
teacher’s student sells masks with
animal faces, submerging oneself in

water is a common indication of journeying
deeper into the subconscious same as when
killer whales and sharks seen in crashing
translucent white the doctor worded in
his comment when you needed to unearth
Roman ruins from full-eye-pupiled, banana-
to-the-head synthetics before the after
prom, yet without gravity (which requires
a center of mass) waves don’t collapse
caverns dug by memorabilia, and in those
milliseconds the doctor can’t see you
because he “lived” through the void while
English class convinces objective fact is
subjective so maybe the ringing is her 
curiosity under the ray of pale algae
transcendence and we really need to look down.
– I awake.
last night’s dream was yesterday
I saw last night
inks of red slipping from narrow slits
across my brother’s body
except it wasn’t him at first it was another woman with the same eyes
with skin that was a few shades lighter
kind of like mine
until she turned into him
deep crimson soul escaping onto his clothes in a room he calls home.
afterwards my mom didn’t believe him
so I ravaged through the trashcan sitting
under his desk for a shred of proof
but all I found was bright burgundy string
that blew away with a blink
of my thinning eyes.
 
the night before I read
about someone else with a slit in her
back, feathers dispensing flying through the
air the only indication tainted maroon
of the encounter,
I closed the article
but the cover must have opened back up
sometime past midnight when
their eyes released
their willingness to hold
their steel framed locks closed with
their hairs.

she warned me of the dangers that lurk outside those windows:

one day they’ll come after someone a bit younger,
who still bathes in blame
painted onto them and the people that look like me.

Maybe I was the one trying to hurt him.
Three was a mistake
all the best times start as little lies,
balconies like fire escapes on the side of Soho
and tiny red plastic gloves with cranberry juice,
if they don’t even know
where they are
how can
you.
don’t bother calling, by now they’re too busy forgetting
the guys dancing in tight circles
and tomorrow’s fluorescence rings
and their new family
and wet mornings in new york city
and closeness that makes them recoil
and how they’re not meant for touch on Tuesdays.

now there’s bottles and bottles of blue on the table
that crack with bubbles when too close

and tubes of foam on the floor made for
guns that bend and break under soft hands.

everyone’s seen people’s arms so close
as they spill rocks in defense of their cravings for the right.

you wish that they could forget
about their fathers too

because they’ve all gotten used to the force of
one another on top of them

and never laid fingers on
waking up in the morning with their friends.

so many people have lost everything for me to be here, and I’ve 
already forgotten that two hours before I was afraid someone
would call me sin with a good look on their face. but tonight
it’s not me it’s them and they obscure pandas to make shorts
feel better. the brush of wind against daisies is foreign but
warm flesh is even more. I thought this life would make me
glow but turns out hanging from light posts makes it
easier to fall into magma. no one knows that light
isn’t bathed in hormones like it is for them. my leg
kept brushing against hers but she talked
about someone else in the car.

Photography Credit: Jason Rice

Frances Cohen is a student, artist, and poet from New York City.