Sneaking Back Inside, and: We Live on a Foreign Planet This One

Abstract

Sneaking Back Inside, and: We Live on a Foreign Planet This One Christopher Citro (bio) Sneaking Back Inside And with the new organizational systemfor the closets we're finally going to getour act together. I'm not looking so I'm notseeing all the good stuff—my stuff—you'rethrowing out in ways that make you feelbetter and lighter and like you're livingthe right life and which make me a littlesad because it's just more of things goingaway never to return and if I get any lighterI won't even be able to stay here on this planet.I barely feel like I can right now, which iswhy I love trees and dead cars in driveways.We kept them on the edge of our driveway.I don't know what the neighbors thoughtand I don't care. I knocked a window outby accident (sort of) playing with a slingshotI shouldn't have. I snuck into my bedroomwhen no one was looking and pretendedI'd been there all day. I lived in fear andwhen nothing happened I stopped living in fear—at least about that window. We taped it upand on summer afternoons I'd lay acrossthe back seat reading novels listening tothe rain on the roof and basically what I'msaying is do what you want with the closets.I don't care. But if you see me later at theside of the house going through the trashit's because when I went to pull it downthe drive it felt so unusually heavy. I thoughtthere might be a body in there. Maybe mine. [End Page 121] We Live on a Foreign Planet This One It's sunlight eventually. They figured this outlong ago. The flame on the candle. It all ties in.The trick to relaxing is to accept yourself.After all you can't be that bad can you?Just talk together with friends. Don't also siton top of your head listening to everythingyou say and second guessing it right then,later that night, and here and there the next day.If a good day is simply a state of mind, thenstand naked in your front windows, wave helloto the snow crusts along the drive and resolveto improve. Physically first if you feel up to it.We built a sort of little gym in the basementnext to the cat box. We let go drops of sweatwhich fall onto the concrete which hasn't seenthe elements since this house was built umpteenyears ago. They come from the food we eat,the wine and seltzer and tea we drink. Theycome from rain and the sea before that. Theycome from clouds and those little puffs you seefrom people's faces when the mercury dropsand the air outside our houses wants to kill us. [End Page 122] Christopher Citro Christopher Citro is the author of The Maintenance of the ShimmyShammy (Steel Toe Books). His awards include a 2018 Pushcart Prize for Poetry and the 2015 Poetry Competition at Columbia Journal. His poetry appears in Ploughshares, Crazyhorse, The Missouri Review, and Best New Poets. Christopher lives in Syracuse, New York. Copyright © 2018 University of Wisconsin Board of Regents