Made - Chris Callaghan

MADE: that word keep flipping its M upside down and substituting the d and the e with spare tiles from a scrabble game, making itself into WANT. But I’ll give it a shot.

I made a life; stubbornly, continuously raking through the debris of my childhood, looking for pieces of my family stuff I wanted to stick back into my existence. In between the melted black glob of incest and the shattered ceramic turkey platter that we passed the vow of silence around the table on, I salvaged a few things.

That pile of faded blue sea glass is shards of self-sufficiency, they used to be cobalt, but the color fades with wear. They’ll make a nice necklace. I made the pants of independence out of one-hundred dollar bills; there were some in a shoe-box under the safe. They looked nice the first time I wore them, but they don’t wash for shit. So I switched to this skirt – a cache of silver dollars I drilled and linked like chain mail, wears like iron, but I can’t sit down in it, bites into my thighs.

This old Schwinn bike was my ride, a cross between escape and freedom. I just keep it around for sentiments sake –the tires are rotten. This toolbox was my grandfather’s, I found it way over there in the corner, buried in spider webs and dust. My dad wouldn’t use it, and I never knew why.

I found a cardboard box with my name on it that had all these tools in it: saws, hammers, screwdrivers, pliers, chisels. There was an instruction book on top. I know, it doesn’t make sense to me either – put that black glob next to these useful tools and it seems like they couldn’t have come from the same man.

Well, none of it makes sense. My mother’s NOW buttons and the “Peter and the Wolf” record I used to clean house to, next to the empty bowl I’ve been trying to fill with the hugs I never got. I can’t find any. Or my sister’s old letters signed LOVE, next to a pile of court documents she filed against me. I’m sick of raking.

What I want? Well, that might be easier to say. I want the loving family that has always been just out of my reach.

Notice I didn’t say easier to get.