​ii. the library

SUSAN
​during the days
​i’d drift through the rooms of my grandmama’s house
​scuffling through closets and cupboards
​excavating her mad collection
​of knickknacks and relics and oddball curios

​the house was packed
​with hoardfuls of jewels and junk:
​nautilus shells
​metal matchbox cars
​pamphlets and puzzles
​and peculiar pastry tools

​and a stunning exhibition
​of devil and dragon and demon figurines
​disturbing little icons
​gathered from all around the world
​there was this one cute green dragon that i loved:
​a pūķis

(a light shines on sadie’s cabaret table, where sadie has discreetly pulled out a beautiful serpentine dragon puppet. this is POOKIE; she is friendly, mischievous, and a little sinister.)

POOKIE (SADIE)
​pook pook pook!
SUSAN
​a latvian household dragon that steals and hoards treasures for ​her master
​legend said if you didn’t feed her for her services she would ​burn your house down
​i named her pookie and put her on my nightstand

POOKIE
​hello miss susan!
​i have such wonders to show you!
​sweet precious trinkets and treasures!
​look here, look here, look here, look here!

SUSAN
​vinyl!
​a cobwebbed closet full of stacks of dusty vinyl
​and a technics sp-10
​i filled the house with music

​i can play music
​as loud as i want
​there’s no one to tell me to turn it down

​i danced and screamed:
​i’m alone!
​i’m alive!
​i’m alright!
​hank williams and patsy cline
​nine recordings of winterreise
​billie holiday, blood on the tracks
​and rumours—

POOKIE, BECKETT & WOLF
​listen to the wind blow

SUSAN
​a curated collection for a broken heart

WOLF
{howl}

SUSAN
​and books
​my god, this woman’s books
​every room, floor to ceiling
​with stacks and stacks of books
​have you ever fallen in love with someone
​by looking at their books?

​but they were totally disorganized;
​just chaos everywhere
​my little ocd brain lit up
​and i became a little librarian
POOKIE
​mmm yes please miss susan!
​tidy tidy tidy!
​pook pook pook!
​tidy tidy!
​pook pook pook!
​tidy tidy!

SUSAN (sorting books)
​fiction, fiction, non-fiction, non-fiction
​fiction, fiction, non-fiction, non-fiction
​latvian, latvian, fiction, non-fiction
​fiction, non-fiction, latvian, latvian
​latvian, fiction, fiction, fiction
​non-fiction—

​non-fiction?
​non-fiction is harder than fiction

​after the first few days
​i had them separated by room
​and then
​it was time to alphabetize:

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
​nothing beats alphabetical order!
A B C D
A B C D
A D G K J J H N M U

​atwood, austen, bronte and bronte
​didion, jackson—
​so much good stuff!
​butler, lessing, murdoch, morrison, oates
​wharton—
​and a surprising number of trashy romance novels
​by danielle steele

​there were men too
​mostly sci-fi guys, beats, and poets:
​bukowski, cummings, bradbury, kerouac, simic
​poetry got its own section:
​six solid shelves of thin modernist volumes
​no collected works, always the original editions

​in some of the books
​i would find newspaper clippings of obituaries
​on raymond carver’s she had written “a sad day.”
​“a sad day”
​in green sharpie

​plays—not that many plays

​but non-fiction, oh man—
​grandmama’s interests were all over the place
​certain themes started to emerge:
​landscape architecture, interior design
​animism, trickster myths, and fairy tales;
​including several lavishly illustrated editions
​of the three little pigs

​erotica and polyamory—grandmama!

​jungian psychology
​drugs and disease
​mental health

​autobiographies by people who’d tried to take their lives
​and biographies of people who did

​depression runs in my family
​depression and addiction

POOKIE
​miss susan?
​what’s this?

(she holds up a huge bag of weed.)

SUSAN
​i suppose i should also mention here
​that during this time in latvia
​i had with me an absolutely atrocious amount of weed