Pocket Host
I was born in a sensitive body. It’s soft. Not just because I never do crunches, but because feelings sink into me and make themselves comfortable. I’m like one of those couches you have trouble getting out of. A funeral last weekend left me quiet, agitated for four days. I was absorbing it all, letting each thought and sentiment live with me for awhile. What will it be like when it’s someone in my immediate family? I can already feel my hot chest and the way the tears won’t dry even when I’m watching Conan O’Brian. I don’t want to write that speech when they won’t even hear it.Some people had hats on; ties with tiny pictures of other ties on them. What a weird fucking thing it is to do your hair and make sure you don’t get deodorant on your black dress for a funeral.
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We had a babysitter we had to let-go over the summer. Scott says he’s thought of the situation twice in the three months since. I think about her everyday.There’s medication for this, or meditation, some people would say. For feeling so much. I know, I swallow a tiny half tablet with sink water in the morning after I put on face moisturizer. But I don’t know, sometimes I think these feelings are the best tool I have.Since second grade I went to church and took a tiny Host of communion on my tongue (mostly on holidays). It’s dry-ass bread. A shitty cracker. When I was a kid sometimes I would take the host and stick it in my pocket instead of my mouth. Blasphemy punishable by guilt of biblical proportions. I’d hold onto it until I felt ready for it to dissolve on my tongue. It felt sacred, empowering and a little delinquent.Maybe all these feelings are like tiny, flavorless hosts. They’re something I keep with me until I’m ready to let them go.I throw them into the spray of a backside hack. I pound them belligerently across a page. It’s a deafening pleasure.Good-bye and thank you for eating all the chili and not pitching in for beer.I needed you even though I didn’t ask you to visit.
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[photos Chris Grant / Scott DeMint / Elise Crigar]