excerpt of “literally show me a healthy person”

By - Feb 1, 2017

in third grade when everyone cool had glasses like arthur from arthur i faked having bad eyesight at the eye doctor’s but i wanted to be sure that they thought my eyes were bad enough to need glasses so i said i couldn’t see colors and they stopped the test and i had to wait in the waiting room and my mom went to cry in the bathroom and they guilted me into confessing the truth and i had to retake the whole test and then they dilated my pupils so i really couldnt see and it was so scary and they gave me fake glasses that i was too ashamed to ever actually wear and now my mom is dead and i have astigmatisms

grammar question: do you wake up “with terror” or “in terror”?

in rehab we did a meditation we lied down on the floor and closed our eyes and our shrink said we walked around a pond until we found a kid sitting on a bench and we talk to the kid and we take the kid around the pond and how is the kid and my kid was limping from a gash on her foot and our shrink said this was our inner child

what if banks was yahe mommy and you have to vosit and say i love you and then have to one day bury

once my dad bought me a plastic bill clinton mask that covered my whole eight year old head it was heavy plastic with no ventilation and i couldn’t breathe and would cut my neck sometimes but i put it on and wore a suit on halloween and went as bill clinton and whenever anyone opened their doors they would laugh or were horrified but i didn’t understand i was eight and no one told me what the lewinsky scandal was or that it happened that year

that picture of the dead rat on instagram w caption ‘i just crushed its skull’ – the guy who posted that photo – i had sex with that guy

plan b is kind of a party drug

friday night imagining everyone i know dying

starring at the wall thats fucking my wall im starring at my wal

people moving to Los Angeles is my least favorite thing i can think of besides me being homeless or my family dying

i guess what im saying is single people aint tickled enough, maybe integrate tickling into the office more

whenever my dad would drive me and my brother up the fdr he would point at the water under the bridges and tell us to never go swimming there because there are cyclones under the bridges and we’d die. he also, when we were crossing the bridge into marble hill, told us to never cut our tongues off because they don’t grow back

godiva is my least favorite regular spam email i went there once to get my grandma a nice birthday gift today is her birthday again and i missed her call because i am playing music from my phone in the salon today but when i bought her chocolates the guy behind the counter asked if i wanted to be put on the mailing list and get a free piece of chocolate and i specifically asked i remember very vividly asking if they would do this and they said no so i said my email at gmail dot com and i picked whatever disappointing chocolate that i didnt enjoy and then pretty soon afterward i got godiva emails every single morning at 9:18 am and sometimes it says it’s sent from piper, which is a name of a kid i babysit so i’ll think she’s emailing me and i’ll get super excited and i’ll even open it and it’s not her it’ll be this chocolate peddler. ive unsubscribed several times and marked as spam even more but i still get messages

1 cat = 14 rats

in film school i opened my netflix on a projector and it recommended MOTHER-DAUGHTER TEARJERKERS FROM THE 1980s in front of everyone

crazy girls are just quirky girls who’ve maybe seen their parents try to kill each other

one Tuesday morning i called my dad to say hi and i asked what he was doing and he said “buying life insurance. you’re welcome”

when i was ten i helped a holocaust survivor in my building sell pottery every saturday morning on the corner and i would set up her table and break it down at the end of the day and one day there was a baby bird that was on the ground i didnt know what to do and thought that my mom would know what to do and she might come downstairs to visit so i didnt do anything but my mom never came and i was taking apart the table and i turned around and the bird was dead the bird’s belly was flat and laid in a pool of its bird blood and intestines and heart i had stepped on the bird i killed the bird i told the old woman and she said “oh no,” and laughed it off and now when i visit she doesn’t recognize me in the hallway

steve did you ever love me

when i was young i played a game where i was plastic and delivered pizza and a game where i was real and died forging a river and a game where i lived in a house and swam in a pool with no exit

saying “awesome” on work phone calls is just another way to stay punk

on the first day of fifth grade my dad walked me to school and we stopped at a bodega that is now a store that sells dog collars and dog leashes since the bodega was shut down for selling the cigarettes to teenagers but it was maybe the year 2000 so it was still open and he brought me there and he bought me a twinkie and said to me in my face “when i was your age i would get a twinkie for lunch every day” i took this to mean “eat a twinkie for lunch every day to earn my love” and i tried but we couldn’t leave the school for lunch every day so one day a week i would eat a twinkie for lunch and the next year we were allowed to leave school for lunch more often and i gained a lot of weight that year

i will do your taxes

one birthday i was on snack duty and convinced everyone we should buy six pounds of shrimp and a birthday cake. madeline made us buy two bags of pretzels we left unopened around the shrimp. emily said her mom only ate pretzels and when she pulled out the parking lot started projectile vomiting

seafood allergy

i angHave to be Pretyyty

i want everyone ive had sex with to fail

how come “put me out of my misery” only really means one thing

in dunkin donuts i asked dad if he knew we’d hang out again after he met me in the hospital after i was born and he said, “i think i had an idea but you know: i don’t ask your brother about his relationships, i don’t ask you about your relationships. but i want you to know that no matter what happens and what you do or don’t do you won’t turn into a pumpkin. i was 28 when i met your mother.”

I’d be a bad wife but a good ghost

he said i already told him about killing the bird and we were having sex the first time too

im reading “27 people harry styles dated in 2013” the only phrases i’m letting myself be allowed to use this week are “no substitute for a mother’s love” and “i cant even hear the noise anymore,” alex asked me how long i thought i could go, dead, before people found out i said three or four days. he thought two months

two weeks after malt liquor monday the condom fell out

baby poodle backflipped/fell on his noggin and i laughed out loud and the man at the pooch and poodle shop gave me eyes like i the goofball!

not everyone has hair, teeth

list of my dad’s advice: stand by the wall or someone will push you on the tracks, never cut off your tongue, if you fall on the rink make a fist or ice skates will cut off your fingers, avenues go north/south, never stay in a relationship for the sex, never cook bacon naked, never make a right turn going over ten mph, only say that stuff behind their back, don’t touch the third rail, drugs and alcohol just slow you down, put bacon fat in old cans in the freezer, never get married because you think it’s something you should do, and, at the hospice ATM emptying my mom’s bank account: more than one way to skin a cat

yall hear that everything on the internet will be deleted thursday? fucked up, right

 

***

literally show me a healthy person, a novel by Darcie Wilder, available now from Tyrant Books