Jessica Ballen

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Whole House

To come home you take
Sunken Meadow Parkway.

Outside Dad’s high
on the roof

cleaning the gutters gloveless.
For a moment you pray

he trips and splits his skull
on the driveway,

but you know better than to wish
for home improvement. Instead

you congratulate him
and hold your breath.

A few days later, while reading in bed,
a tree limb snaps from its trunk

and falls against your windowsill.
Its gnarled fingers point at you

like this disaster was intentional.
You lean forward and bite the sticks,

swallowing sharp criticism
that could deflate your thin intestines.

While everyone sleeps,
you soften the pain

in the kitchen. Get loaded
on loaded mashed potatoes.

Fill an extra-large tote
with what your stomach wants to hold.

Once, in Al-Anon,
you heard about family roles.

You resonated with the identified patient
dressed as a scapegoat. Dad blames you

for breaking
the computer. But it’s Y2K.

It’s dial-up. The internet,
an exhausted animal.

You and your sister freeze
shoulder to shoulder as Dad says

you better find husbands
with some goddamn tech skills.

You bow your heads, scolding
the princess decals on your nightgowns.

Better to teach them young
not to fuck around

on AOL or chat rooms.
Forget the mirrored faces in Snood—

red lips, blue faces. Too many teeth.

But you get it—you’re also a hungry rectangle
with an unlatched jaw. Your body, an accordion—

expanding. Collapsing.

You’re the lost child during hide and seek,
back against the pantry shelves.

Your stomach betrays you,
groaning. You hold

your breath.
Suck in your fat.

Nobody finds you.
Nobody’s looking.

You taught yourself how to vanish—
but your toes get in the way.

Slam the door on your feet
till they become stubs, then liquid

pooling beneath the frame. Bone
and sinew, blood and skin.

A puddle of sugar-free popsicle,
like the kind nobody enjoyed

on Dad’s birthday,
ten days after the Fourth of July.

Your whole family runs
on the same computer,

the same cracked motherboard
wired with the same belief:

that you belong in here—
forgotten,

pinned between rows of food
you cannot reach.

You’re too large for this lineage.
Too large for the shelf.

Just an overweight mouth
coated in expired Slim Fast.

Fur grows across the tongue.
Evolution. You saw it

on the Discovery Channel once.
Your stench

joins the dead
pantry mice, like birds

of a feather. You eventually
ingest them because

you can’t contort
for cereal,

can’t bend for baked goods—
you eat them and their love feeds you back.

You keep slamming the door
until your toes

become your knees,
your chest. Your face.

Your body liquefies
and engulfs the remains.

Spills from the pantry,
floods the living room, washes

over the computer—
it sparks inside you.

You don’t stop.

Your face breaks through
the upper floor,

inhaling roof tiles,
your father

as he yells
about the stolen Vicodin.

You take the whole block—
Randolph Drive,

neighbors gardening,
Rolling Hills playground,

Commack High School,
their tennis courts,

no Benz or BMW
on Village Hill spared.

Your lemon VW from ‘02.
Mario’s, La Scala—the two

competing pizzerias. Then the mall—
it tastes like Cinnabon and Yankee Candle.

You stretch from town to town,
Babylon up to Kings Park—

wet and unstoppable,

folding each exit sign
into yourself,

until finally your body surges
towards Sunken Meadow Beach,

past the tollbooth
(you get in for free), the boardwalk,

and like a cracked egg
joining her sister in a bowl,

you merge with the Sound.

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Banner Art:
Bill Beckley, Roses are…, Violets are…, Sugar are…, 1974 – 1978, Staedel Museum