the sky has shed its coat, blooming gray before me. someone is releasing the rain from their palms, sliding down their knuckles, melting off of their fingers. the water is clingy, and it hits the ground with a full-body slap, quivering the life out of it, sending it up to the stars. the lightning extends, three thousand arms reaching, afraid of all that it will touch. the thunder growls, a cat with its toy, a stomach that has not been fed in weeks.

      it cries, bleeds, a thrashing wave of terror, a living creature storming. my hands begin to shake. outside the rain whips through the screening and throws itself onto the porch, frightened.

      i look upwards, try to throw my hands there, toss my palms and let go of my flesh. it doesn't work. my skin stays still, quiet, hushed, stuck solidly to my unforgiving bones. something in my elbow snaps and i close my eyes to feel it out. the temples of my cheeks are smudged with pink fingers, sliced with pink blades, touched. i shiver.

      the sky is on its knees, caps leaning down, gripping me. i will not come undone.



      "i will take you to mystical, magical, wonderful places that you have only ever seen in the curves of bronzed ship-bottles, the salted faces of bubbles, the wine in the corner of your father's eye, the ocean when it is faraway and will not let you touch it. i will take you places you could never imagine, would barely even dare to. i will take you to your favorite place in the entire world, and i will take you somewhere you have never been before."

      no, you won't.

      "sorry."



      my voice. my voice is inside your mouth, swimming, clawing at your tongue and begging at your teeth. my voice is inside your stomach, giggling, drinking up all the whiskey and swallowing all the ash you have been accumulating. my voice is inside your heart, listening in on pounding drums and spindly spider bleats, trying to find the source. my voice is inside your lungs pressing its fingers against the glass and trying to breathe, making wordy impressions with its lips.

      you raise your digits and run a palm over your face, tripping up your nose, aching your cheeks. my voice is inside your chest, pressing, holding. it never speaks, not once.



      "that's not a circle."

      what?

      "yours doesn't close."



      CBN news wants to know what is next for israel. they are showing the headline in big white letters all in capitals, and the question mark on the end stares into me, one square white eye. WHAT IS NEXT FOR ISRAEL?

      they are showing it on the channel i am on. i wonder how much of a coincidence that is. it watches me, contemplative, expecting. a man from the jerusalem bureau talks in muted, silent language, a language i cannot comprehend. i turn my music up louder. WHAT'S NEXT FOR ISRAEL? it asks, and i wonder where the apostrophe came from, if this is something they decided, if they think it makes them look cooler, more hip, because they are now willing to contract their sentences.

      a man who looks like george w. bush if you glance at him very quickly comes on and speaks silence, his mouth open and his eyes half-closed. he looks tired. two more people come on screen and they hold their microphones to their lips like they want some ice cream. i decide i should translate sign language when i grow up, because i am good at interpreting these things. WHAT'S NEXT FOR ISRAEL? i don't know, i say. i don't know. stop asking me. leave me alone. WHAT'S NEXT FOR ISRAEL? his shirt is blue, thick blue collars coming up to suffocating him, leaving him no piece of neck left. WHAT'S NEXT FOR ISRAEL? what does CBN stand for? acronyms, i think. i am not good at acronyms.

      WHAT'S NEXT FOR ISRAEL?

      leave me alone, leave me alone, i don't know anything about israel, when i know something about israel you will be the first to know, leave me alone leave me alone leave me alone leave me alone leave me alone leave me alone leave me alone leave me alo

      mccain and obama are speaking. money comes on the screen, a gas pump, a handful of calm twenty dollar bills, some percentages. israel lasts two minutes, three, and now israel is over, and now we are worrying about our economy, our gas prices. they don't want my opinion anymore. i have failed to deliver. it is off-screen, bush is sitting in a fancy desk, and everyone is clapping for obama. israel is no longer of any concern.

      the screen says: OBAMA—IS HE READY TO LEAD? my breath hitches. i don't know. i don't know. i don't have an answer. leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone. i turn the volume all the way down. i cannot escape it. they want to know. they are asking me. obama is wearing a fancy black suit and his forehead glistens in the sunlight and he smiles at all the little children who pool at his feet and i don't know anything, not anything at all.

      suddenly, an old pale man with slits for eyes is wearing a tie and talking about god. there is a quote on the screen—a woman's leg was healed by one of their televised praying sessions. no questions come up, no white capitalizations. they no longer need me. now they have god, and his reassuring, betraying silence. i bite my lip, open my mouth, turn up the volume, just enough that i can hear his shivering, gentle murmuring, god and heaven and jesus. i hesitate, breathe through my mouth, and i begin to speak.

      i'm ready to talk about israel now, i say.

      no one responds.



      "you there, god?"

      no.

      "my mistake."



      i have hands like spiders. my fingers are long, clawed and chewed-down, dull and pointed. my knuckles cast tiny shadows, falling down on top of themselves onto my skin. my flesh is composed of interlocking lines, little scratches, a grinning scar at the bottom. i make my fingers dance and curl them around a rubber band, catching a thin, yellow fly, curling it up inside my palm and squeezing down.

      the visual comes: my hand, coated in black fur, two beady eyes sprouting at the base of my index and ring fingers; my rubber band, morphing, black and buzzing, stealing the blood from inside my palm, beating against my bony fingers, rupturing all of my veins.

      i close my eyes. i take my spiders and i sit on them, under my thighs, squished. i pray they cannot breathe.



      "name your children after planets, trees, chrysanthemums."

      why?



      your mouth is a tiny womb, and every day you will burp up daises, dandelions, and tulips from the palm of your tongue. they trip down your fingers and fall onto your bed, and in your sleep, you roll on top of them, until they are mere tucked and dried stains on the nervous flesh of your shoulders.

      in the morning you wash yourself off in the shower and little petals leave your bare back with fingers trained not to touch. you close your eyes when they hit the sewers, yellow centers blooming with big bold hands all the way down, reaching out from some hidden inside. you reach for the soap and scrub your lips, hard, looking desperately to pry the smell off with your cold dead fingers.

      take the rubies from my hair when you are done; my arms will feel too long, busy skyscraper streets running down my elbow, and i will slowly leave my eyelashes in places they don't belong like on tables and paper and your palms, and the sun will exit through a door made of red burgundy orange and yellow, and the red diamonds will strip from my skull like cats slinking down the alleyway garden.

      i will need someone to take them back.



      "i miss you."



      someday i will balloon up, i will be so fat, with arms like trees steadily enveloping the countryside of my skin, the valleys and crevices and corners that dot my topographical face, my chest, my legs. i will be so huge that doorways will cease to exist, that i will lie outside in the grass and squish all the ants and no one will be able to breathe.

      but i will be so big because i am full of air, empty air that you place inside caskets and dead babies' mouths and cupped inside your hands, because this air belongs nowhere else, nowhere else but shadows and holes and me. and because of all this air, i will float up, up and up and up, and my voice will be like a little girl trying to impersonate an old man, and i will call out to you, and i will leave, a speck swallowed by blue and sun and clouds like cotton and wire.

      you will hang your clothes out to dry and you will layer your hand over your eyes and you will stare at me, going away, leaving you, and you will be so startled that you will drop all of your thumbtacks and scream and scare all the birds out of their feather-coated flesh.

      you will scream. you will scream and you will scream and your clothes will billow and cry in the wind and you will scream until your vocal chords are shriveling up and you will scream until you break out in red fingerprints all over your face and down your neck like scars creating a map to the rest of your body. i will be in outer space, touching my fat piggy fingers down onto the edges of a planet, and you will hold out your arm to nothing and the flies will buzz around the scent of your sweaty throttled voice and you will scream and miss me, up up and away.

      someday i will balloon up with air and i will float away and you will reach out your hand, and you will not be able to reach me.



      they are on your doorstep, hesitating.

      when they ring the bell, let them in.

      it's all they ask.