Notes from a Nothing

If my name were Tomassina Tomaselli, that would be different. The famiglia would have a place for me, with yummies and a plan of action. Beautiful young girl, then get as fat as I can, bitching and moaning with the signore who meet at the corner café. Sit around, spin my wheels. Turn in three babies, or more, if no boy.

You say that I am not that ugly mess inflicted on the world? Two eyes, two ears, a few flaps and strings. Buttons. But what’s your word against mine? I defend my stand, and always stand down at the nearness of another heart and lungs. What made people so important to my clockworks? They seem real. They scream and smoke, range about on their own pins, and somehow they always find me, with my open eyes and dull-witted smile.

The problem started with not being a you. And only filling half the sleeve of an I. Even as a they, my entity melts, squirms, foams, dehydrates, gets sucked under the fridge with the dust and unmentionables seen but a few times in a century. You are a you. You are an I, and you are a we. For a they, need a third. 

Roll out the narrative now. Roll it out. The world is too interesting to me, and there’s too much in it. Each thing takes time, time for the eyes to rest on it, to turn on its axis. A thing is masterful: person, place, and time. Finger it, or taste. Have I ever been in a field of vision? No, but also yes. I have a name. I come when called, although shocked each time I hear it. Is this my coordinates, my ring tone, or a curse? See how fast it devolves? Don’t try to stop me. Sometimes I ask myself, can I take another breath of sister air? Yes you may, and no you may not.

When I was born in summer’s heat, I looked like a monk or cocoon: eyes shut, fists clutched to my elemental tube, a look of pure agony on the front of my skull. And an encapsulating