Mulch: Recess As A Disabled Kid
Mulch
It starts with a steep downward slant, so that if I were to let go of my wheels, the asphalt would send me careening down to the playground below. In the center of the playground, where it plateaus, a giant map of the world is painted, flanked to the south by twin tetherball sentries. To the north is the sea, wide and apathetic, whose waves would batter me for six years, made not out of water, but of mulch. The swings and the slides are there, so the kids are, too. If I was to try joining them, like I did in the early days, the tires of my manual chair would sink into the pellets, and I’d be completely immobile if I moved more than an inch into them. So my home became the shore between the land and the sea, where I spent a half-hour every day watching people play. I didn’t tell my parents that I cried when I got home, and it stayed that way for a while. After a time, I realized that the playground aides were watching me and probably feeling awful, so I at least moved around a little bit every day and pretended to have fun. I didn’t know how much this would prepare me for life in high school, where they took away the playground, but left the mulch.
The first time that I realized that the mulch could move was in third grade, when my elementary school, unwilling or unable to use the money my family had raised to replace the mulch with a rubberized surface that I could access, erected a boat in the corner of the mulch area, a bright red Play-Skool Stonehenge that was accessible by a rickety ramp and could rock back and forth. It really got the blood pressure pumping, let me tell you, and was the talk of the town amongst every tumbleweed on the playground. Nobody populated it whether or not I made the tenuous climb up there. (A special shout-out, however, goes to the guy that wrote “sex” in black Sharpie along the ship’s starboard bow, as if to consolidate all of the things that I could never have into one place.) I could look over the edge of the boat and see no mulch on any of its four sides, but I knew that the invisible variety of it was still there.
The mulch isn’t visible to most people. You see it everywhere, but only if you know where to look. You see it when every lunch table fills up except yours until the seventh grade, when a few kids finally push past it and sit with you. You see it when, in gym class, an otherwise-sane teacher with all the subtlety of a Southern Baptists preacher begs people to pick you for their dodgeball team because you’re “the secret weapon, baby! The secret weapon!” You see it when, after watching a play at Bradley, all of the other theater kids make plans to go to a coffee shop that was two minutes from your house, and nobody asks you even though you’re right there. You see it when small children try to touch your chair at the grocery store, and mothers slap their hands as if theirs tots have just made a covenant with Satan.
You see it, but the problem is that nobody else does. Hardly anyone, while they’re having fun on the swings and slides, or three seats ahead of you on a choir bus while you’re tied down in the back where nobody can hear you, or posting pictures on their Facebook of their homecoming, thinks that they’re leaving you out. I’m sure that the man who put that mulch down had no idea how much it was going to hurt me: in fact, when my parents finally heard about the problem and asked school administrators why the mulch was there in the first place, nobody had a good answer, but nobody was in any hurry to do anything.
That’s not to say that, when kids are forced off of the mulch, they don’t hang out with you. I used to thank God every time snow would come down, and everyone would have to stay inside for recess, when we’d all play games of checkers or build robots out of connectable toy blocks. I’ve somehow managed to fight my genetics enough to be fairly good at bowling with bumpers, and some of the most mulch-destroying moments of my life have been the seconds before a perfect strike, when a tenor who maybe sees me as a little more human than he did two seconds ago helps me set up the perfect angle. But sooner or later, through no fault of their own, everyone who is able to do so drifts back to the more familiar objects, the shinier ones, and there you are on the border looking in again.
I’m back at my elementary school playground. My freshman year of high school had just ended, and I’ve changed in a hundred ways from the last time I was there. I’m in a power wheelchair, for one thing, sitting next to a boy who I think I might like a little too much and another one who I’d have never guessed I’d spend any time with. It’s maybe nine o'clock at night, nine-thirty tops, and Ohio is welcoming the beginning of a storm that comes down like the wrath of God, reverberating off of the cheap pastel plastic of the swings and slides like a ten-pound bucket of ping-pong balls spilled over the perimeter of my childhood. I hadn’t come back to make some grand statement: I’d been at a bonfire where a few friends and I had burnt all of that year’s homework. We’d gotten tired of hanging out in someone’s garage, and Hilliard Crossing’s asphalt jungle was about a five-minute walk from there. But here I was, a question and its answer rising in my head to greet each other in tandem: could I go on the mulch now? Yes.
I skated over it as easily as ice. I paused for a second to taste morsels of a rapturous happiness that had come with the rain and the electricity in my wheels. “This is what I’ve worked for”, I thought, “this is finally what I deserve”. And then, though nobody saw, I cried. Now, yes, I could get onto the place I’d wanted to be for so many years, but everybody else had already moved on to some other place with even more pointless mulch around it. I guess I’ll spend the next sixteen years going after wherever that is. landing in another empty playground.
my neck is a canvas painted rouge by your mouth and i remember yesterday with the sort of sweetness reserved for chocolate and
good weather — on the brink of leaving, the see you soon imprinted against my jugular, you kissed me and it felt like a promise in disguise
/
i remember april like — the gentle dampness of your hair post-shower, the warmth of your palms still astonishing — still overwhelming, the slink of familiar music — getting to know you, bluer than blue — i watched with roses underneath my tongue and hands in my back pockets— dazed, confused, you turned me into a dreamer — nineteen and still so kind — i wanted everything and nothing you could give me all at once
/
i remember may— like becoming, arriving at the curve of your smile with the singular thought — oh this is how i once thought it would go now — i remember if i could, i’d film the inside of me to show you how my entire body twisted for every litany that fell from your lips in the drowsy curtain of that afternoon —
/
and here we now exist in the wanting — the waiting — the sharp knife of believing — that i won’t just have to remember one day — the way my hips turn at the slight glint of teeth — instead, today i think of tomorrow — and how i am falling again at the sound of my own name when you’re saying it.
- I’M STILL FALLING FOR YOU, x.v
lighthouse boy dances in green boxers – backyard suddenly a sea where he shines saccharine wet – (the sky is crying too) – we are 18 and my hands are still warm from the soufflés at our rendezvous – still thinking – romance is tricky and soft sweet – like cream on his upper lip, four hours ago – and now, the curve of his eyes – gentle hollows of a man, waiting, dangerous, alive – skinny dipping is smart until my playlist hits the ground with his shirt – lorde plays boom boom boom boom with my teeth – heart hammering to the time of his laughter – (if the sky was falling, it would look to you) – temptation is an open gate, is the path of water – trees bend and shake – thunder cracks but you stay – in less clothing and lesser light – in the tide flooding ribcage – there you are – lighthouse boy! – with a striped grin – singing along to words which mean surrender in his language – come home in mine – it’s good – it’s sacred – it’s summer.
- IT’S RAINING WHEN HE RUNS OUTSIDE - by x.v, published in The Murmur House
art. art is god. because god is supposed to make you feel something good, she’s/ he’s/ it’s meant to be something tangibly intangible you can taste on the tip of your tongue, not exactly there but just enough and that’s god. God. the thing you can’t remember but always know. i will never call myself an atheist because i have heard you laugh at 3:45 am and i have left my world in your fingertips and seen my entire future in your eyes and i think that’s more than enough proof that there’s something more beautiful than our shipwrecked bodies out there. art is the seashore we fucked on for the first time, and art is the name i will worship until the day you die. i will find heaven and hell in the sand. life is stolen treasure anyway
- DO YOU KNOW WHAT GOD IS ? by x.v
At eighteen, your ignorance hurts more than your fingers (
I still think about what they’d look against cocoa brown, not for myself, but
for the both of us. Impossible tastes like the spit of the girls you want.)
If sex is an illusion, I want to stop waking up thinking about your thighs, about your chest, about the halo of your neck. The sun is a reminder of a rain storm.
It’s a stilted confession from your mouth, your lips blue bitten from her stare, her absence, your inability to let things go and I, eighteen and weary eyed, understand better than anyone. Some moments I catch myself wishing I didn’t get it, didn’t want it, as much as I do, hummingbird dizzy, because darling, you are so much like the vase my mother never bought me, so I keep my flowers tucked in my thighs, saving them for later. It’s always later. You’re hoping I stay.
- QUESTIONS OF A NEW LOVER. (x.v)
ARIES, you are orange and gold encased in maroon skin, sweet as honey. hang loose and know that your best is it’s own reward.
TAURUS, you still make me lose my breath with the curve of your neck, and i’m counting vertebrae to fall asleep, your laugh an indulgence I control my intake of. you are the best screenplay i could never write.
GEMINI, the skyline is trying to kiss the moon, but you’re lucky that you bring her home. be gentle with the kind of starlight you find.
CANCER, you were the first chord of a piano I learned to understand and my favorite poem, my most repeated prayer. we’ve made it this far. tell me that means something, and i’ll believe you.
LEO, to know you is to breathe in the first feeling of tomorrow. you are ceaseless and a shooting star - my night time dream wish. i miss you written a hundred times in blue.
VIRGO, i’m often left asking if this is even worth it, and i think you’re the same. i want to be there for you. it used to be easier, you used to be a reminder of love and now i swallow your silence like a prison sentence. please don’t forget who you are.
LIBRA, we are interlocked hands and ankles swinging in sync; knowing you is a second chance, and i’ll learn for you.
SCORPIO, it’s natural to be terrified of what comes next. call me a lover but i don’t think anything is quite as important as the diamonds in your teeth when you smile. you are my undercurrent of inspiration.
SAGITTARIUS, you are in your moment of nebulae, make it spectacular. rebirth tastes like last year’s champagne and snow.
CAPRICORN, the smooth engine of a car, and a highway of mistakes and constellations. the chase is yours if you want it.
AQUARIUS, your palms say that it’s too late for you but when I close my eyes and swallow the middle name of the girl you once were it’s not sacrifice, but a promise. i will never forgive you if you press pause. an artist is a guttural cry, and you can’t stop.
PISCES, i carry your happiness in a pendant, knowing that some times things do work out, and it can be good. you are the best friend i didn’t know i could have.
- DECEMBER MESSAGES FOR THE SIGNS, x.v
ARIES, keep it together, and keep it clean. i know you can.
TAURUS, i can see you eyeing the stars, so what are you waiting for? fear will only win if you wait.
GEMINI, you’re holding a dozen roses, so enjoy it while it lasts. change doesn’t happen overnight, but i admire your effort.
CANCER , i had a dream your wish came true, have faith in something. i love you to a limitless degree.
LEO, stay warm this winter and keep on growing. the soil will never be cold enough to stop you.
VIRGO, believe in yourself. we all do.
LIBRA, i’m glad you’ve made it so far. it’ll only get it better from here.
SCORPIO, work hard but make sure to have some time for yourself. you are a gold champagne feeling, my definition of content.
SAGITTARIUS, dare to be yourself even when it’d be easier to hide. you are something to watch for.
CAPRICORN, square one isn’t a failure, but rather a chance. don’t waste it.
AQUARIUS, you’ll be the first person to breathe underwater if you get through this. hold on.
PISCES, continue the drive, this highway doesn’t end for miles. i’ll always be in the passenger seat, whenever you need me.
- NOVEMBER MESSAGES FOR THE SIGNS, x.v
ARIES, you don’t have to believe in love to believe in yourself. love died for me in the chlorinated conscious of a swimming pool, but i’m still here. you can be too.
TAURUS, tell me how the sun tastes like because you look at me the same way. you don’t even know it, but you’re my warm memory this winter.
GEMINI, go on picnics and laugh in the bathroom stalls because this will never happen again. you are my every other sentence.
CANCER, you are so unbelievably incredible. it’s been years, but there are some things not even heaven or hell could wash away when they came and brought the apocalypse to our front door step. i am so happy to have survived with you.
LEO, you are the hardest thing to live without, and how glad i am to have what i do. i hope the trees are as beautiful as you wanted them to be, and that fall holds your hand when i can’t.
VIRGO, missing you is second nature, first being loving you senseless. you work hard, but please don’t forget to take care of yourself. and i’m here. i’m here, i’m here, i’m here. for you, always.
LIBRA, it’ll be okay if you close your eyes sometimes, the world will still spin when you wake up. rest easy, it’s your month after all.
SCORPIO, you are the strongest vein i’ve ever known. write what you can and feel what you do, create regardless of your temperament. it’ll be good, i promise.
SAGITTARIUS, harvest the ebullience in your fingertips and make the most of what you can. it was never meant to be easy, just enough.
CAPRICORN, find your own constellation and remind yourself of your own brilliance. you still have it, i cross my heart and believe in you.
AQUARIUS, bitterness is purple like the spit in your bathroom sink, so flush it down the drain with your eyes wide open. when your body feels like it’s falling apart, grab the super glue and keep on going. this is not the end, baby, it’s just the very start of something spectacular. see this through, i’m begging you.
PISCES, you are the reason why i can stand on a broken back and smile at the same time. you are moon stars, lipstick on glitter wrists, and my honest comrade. do what you need to do, and most importantly, get it done. i am so proud of us.
- OCTOBER MESSAGES FOR THE SIGNS, x.v