iterations [honey bunches] alanis is visiting again mommy, she's here and she's singing under the suppressive gray drench of a may thunderstorm, she's singing it's full speed, baby, she spins once in the ashes of the tape deck music box, her mouth peals in the wroooooong directionnn, on the floor i watch her sing with a magnifying glass over one eye, you can look at off-white carpet and visualize the spaghetti nest of footprints lain, when she ran around the stage yelling about spoons, she wanted to know to where the knives had snuck away but she kept all the spoons to herself, she hid them in the drawer they're always in she tiptoed back into the cassette tape oilspill roadpaint, i'm sorry mommy for getting distracted when my eyelids bulge to red and cracking, i lose my words and i sit on the carpet like it's the only chair we have, but i have another thing to say about alanis which is that she hid you too, when i was dead still under my horsey blanket the first time i fell asleep consciously, i believed you when you said i will only stop for a little while then i will be right back, and you were right, mommy, i did come back but alanis like i was saying, she crumpled you up in ferric bedlinens so quietly when i woke up it was my own doing, i sang for food or i sang for hugs i sang until my legs took initiative and carried me away, i sang to your bedroom door until it crumbled like an anthill, until i sauntered into your bedroom like alanis with my own songs and my own needs, i decided upon new verses when i found you producing the horrible sucking noise we make when mucus runs away, when i want to kiss my mucus but it boils off my lips like molten plastic, hot and fluid and going zoop-zoop if you put your ear real close to it, mommy you were here all along sobbing and crumpled up screaming under the loud songs, whimpering under the quiet ones, with a child's aimlessness but an adult's prudence and shame, like you felt you should stop breaking apart in front of me or other grown-ups, but you were wrong and it is okay and you do not have to do that you can keep crying every morning for years, just stop hiding the cereal on top of the refrigerator mommy please just tell me where the spoons and bowls are, i can make you breakfast really i can i will toddle into your room so quietly, i will kiss your crows' feet and withering hairline and i will hum like an automobile does when the interior ages and loosens, i will pour me a bowl i will pour you a bowl i will pour alanis a bowl, i will press against the comforter's c-section slit until my head slides out of the world and under the covers with you mommy, i will spoon honey bunches of oats into your mouth between sobs, i will use my hair like a kerchief and be your little tissue box, i will punch Tiffany's number into the little cupped keys of the touch-tone again and again until she answers, i will speak crystal with big words and beg her to cover your shift, i will cover it if i have to and you can color flowers and frogs in the smoking section where the men all have their own big pitchers of beer, i will teach you how to play like kids these days play, i will teach you to stare at the game boy until we don't look at each other anymore , i will bathe with you after menarche, mommy i will let you take tiny sips of beer from the mcdonald's cup in the center console, i will make you steer the car while i fix my eyeliner, i will offer you meth when you're older, i will crawl inside you like a hole, i will sleep until i forget how to come back