The time in Los Angeles when Kim Gordon & Kim Deal performed “Little Trouble Girl” from Sonic Youth's album Washing Machine on Netflix's Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney March 19, 2025*
Help me to keep real, not to fawn, because I see myself doing it already, not really saying how scared I am post-op, pretending non-embarrassment about the altered walking, hearing.
Like I’m alone in a cave, like a body of water stretching the depth and length of a cave, that is how heavy and fully I’m grieving the death of my godmother, too, alone in a cave post-op, fawning that I’m okay rather than saying that I was scared of dying, that I was terrified I wouldn’t come back to consciousness, that I would lose me, that my daughter would lose me, that I would orphan her, that one of the reasons why I was here on this earth hadn’t had a chance to happen yet, my daughter and that are all that can really matter now just in case there will be little time left, just let her be okay, just let the manuscripts turn into books of gold for her, just so that I can buy a house near a sandy ocean beach set back upon a hill safe among fir trees for her, just let us be okay.
Alone in the cave, that someone said is of my own making, I think about identity, how I’m just a poet, just a girl poet who became a mother, how I’ve never been anything but happy about that, never been worried before about irrelevance, disappearing, never been terrified before of low grade fevers, medical devices not holding up, not waking up, lonely from not being primary in anyone’s life anymore, hiding how it can not matter if I never get to marry the man I love.
When someone says it’s your fault this happened, or, it’s your fault this happened given the decisions you made before this happened, or, if anything was going to happen, it was always going to happen to you, I can follow their anger from a quiet distance to their idea of just punishment, make believe, too, that good things happen to good people, bad things to bad, spend parts of my week Swedish Death Cleaning, racing to get the manuscripts published, telling myself it’s okay to sleep for thirteen hours, to not go out to restaurants, to not listen to music, to not be able to take escalators, to not be able to run again like I used to, to not be able to work again like I used to, to not wear high heels and boots, not to dance.
I’m not having any fun, doing one thing a day exhausts me, somebody says this is what happens when you run past yourself your whole life, you run yourself into the ground, who did you think you are? I’m thinking about identity, how we know who we really are when we run ourselves into the ground, we know who we are really, especially when we run ourselves into the ground.
Somebody said there’s nothing that I can do to help you, that they have their own things going on at home, so I try not to be needy, try to dream the future out loud, so that my mother doesn’t worry -
maybe you will find a way to travel around England for the very first time next summer
maybe you will be able to take your daughter and her cousins to Italy next winter for the very first time -
maybe I can try to let go of interdependence, hold onto quantum entanglement instead, listen down low, with the captions on, to Kim Gordon and Kim Deal perform together live, for the very first time, Sonic Youth’s "Little Trouble Girl" from 1995, decide fawning’s not for me, black leggings w/ holes are & maybe learning how to play guitar
*
Little trouble girl (what you doin'?)
Little trouble girl cross my heart and hope to die,
Little trouble girl I can not tell a lie
Little trouble girl ah-hu
Little trouble girl ah-hu
Little trouble girl ah-hu
Little trouble girl ah-hu
Little trouble girl ah-hu
Little trouble girl ah-hu
Little trouble girl ah-hu
Little trouble girl ah-hu
