T-shirt. The one where she leans over the turntables, arms covered in tattoos. The geisha,
that is, not the girl. Though she does want sleeve tattoos someday, the day she fools
herself into thinking she’s willing to spend that much money. I can’t believe
people pay to go through that much pain, she ponders. Random thoughts run through
her head of justice and her drama teacher’s kid sister. She wore overalls and had black roots
too, come to think of it. But she’s probably married now, dreams on hold, sorting through piles

of laundry. Maybe she thinks back to past relationships that didn’t involve compromise or piles
of clothes to hand-wash. Maybe she’ll find lipstick on her husband’s collar, deep red like a geisha’s.
Everything jerks. Our girl barely remembers how she got on this train or scrolled to The Roots
on her iPod. It’s full, both of songs and the cough syrup she knocked over on her nightstand. Foolish
of her not to stand it up once she noticed the bottle had fallen. But the iPod still works, and she runs
through songs on shuffle. Some remind her of him, none remind her of her, and it’s unbelievable

how many songs have swearing. In high school, she wrote a “This I Believe” essay
supporting edited music. Why pay more to buy something the way it’s marketed to you? People pile
onto the train and a woman steps into a puddle of spilled coffee. It runs
across the floor beneath the seats, milky, but no one’s crying. A man eyes the geisha
on her shirt, or rather, her breasts. The girl’s, that is. She folds her arms, wondering how this fool
thinks he can ogle her so shamelessly. He averts his eyes to the map of the train’s routes

mounted on the wall. Strange people take public transportation. Like the woman quoting Roots
who says she knows her Malcolm X, her eyes desperate with doubt, like she can’t believe
in sound advice because it goes against her principles. Like the boy who thought our girl had fooled
him. It was in Biology class. And she’d told him lobsters scream as they die before diners pile
butter sauce onto their tender flesh. He’d thought it was a lie and refused to fall for such a “gay”
lie. Words like “blatant” and “outright” are above his reading level. He writes in run-on

sentences and is the type to leave his windows up if in a car during a tornado. So she just ran with
it, too exhausted to protest and too naïve to be offended. Because she prefers root canals
to confrontation and prefers ideas to people, but she loves aesthetics the most and wants the geisha
to really exist. Whether she wants to look like her or be with her she’s not sure. But she believes
she’ll one day meet the person who’ll make her trust in love. She bumps into a stranger as she piles
off the train two stops too late. This is the third time this week. She doesn’t know who she’s fooling:

she’ll never be served runny eggs and turkey bacon in bed by a hip-hop loving geisha,
her foolish heart will never find the one—it will settle for the time being, only to grow like roots
firmly anchored into soil, and she’ll compile a list of ways to happy, but won’t believe enough to try.

Nighttime.
Less like
time for sleeping.
I think better in
darkness.

II.

Collage.
Claimed, spliced.
Cutting, placing, pasting.
Cover the blank spaces.
Self.

III.

Hello.
We fake wide smiles
effortlessly. Sore cheeks.
This isn’t going anywhere.
Goodbye.