Sylvie Visualization Exercise
Nights doomscrolling in my van
with the curtains drawn, I learned
more about the world than I did
when I was living in it. All these girls
parked in the driver’s seat, filming themselves
telling the stories of their victimhood—
I’d hit Replay, daydreaming
about the gorgeous moral clarity that had to come
with knowing you’re never the victimizer,
always the victimized. It got to be too much,
the endless parade of plaintiffs
weeping their way up
to the witness box, and eventually
I ditched them for the psychology forums
instead. Barely better, but
yeah, better. Did you know that not everybody
can picture things in their minds? Think apple:
some of us see it in glorious 4D
turning redly under a spotlight,
others an outline, badly sketched.
Those like me see the absence. Say apple
and I picture only the place
where it should be. Say Cal
and I can’t see his face at all. Say Springfield, say
where are you from, and I don’t think
about the fairgrounds, wet and empty,
waiting for August’s Ferris wheels and 4-H tents
to clutter them up, about the Chili’s
and Fridays and Applebee’s in a neon-lit row
down the street from my high school, the Meijer
where my friends’ moms bought their groceries,
the Whole Foods where my mom sent me to get ours.
And soon I’m narrating it out loud to Knox
like I’m telling him a story: look,
that’s the Barnes & Noble with the Starbucks
where I wrote all my papers, that’s
my favorite Jimmy John’s, that’s the road
to my house, the house my mom orders
stacks of packages to, where she does Pilates
in the yard and makes out with her living Ken doll
and doesn’t call her daughter who could be anywhere
on God’s green earth, dead in a ditch
for all she knows, and when we pull up finally
to the post office where I can pick up
the credit card I use to spend her money (don’t you know
that I know I’m a hypocrite?), that’s when I realize
that I’m back to not seeing anything at all.