Only in Visitation Only in the Shock of Truth Unzipped

(after The X-Files)

There are so many days I can’t remember        moments locked in a drawer
that I can’t find or open.       My own stories are alien.        I have swallowed
a pill and whispered to myself              This is not happening.        Often.

But it usually is.    Happening.       Still I can’t trust what I’m told.     Where you
see the glowing red of hysterical madness       I see      the planet Venus bright
in the sky.     Ms. Scully, you know enough about the human psyche to know that

perception is reality.      A social worker told me this once and I could not
hold inside me        the truth that we all experience the same event differently
and that makes everything true.       If perception is reality       where I see

the planet Venus          there are millions of perceived UFOs.     And there are
a thousand wild stories falling from my mouth.          They are true.
Do you believe me?         I try to tell myself I’m fine.       This is not happening.

Another year has passed since my body would not die—       somehow it knows
to panic tonight, hot.          Dana, I need a Xanax.       I need to be a hoax for you
to carve up on a sheet of aluminum.      I want to breathe in November quiet like

I used to.       This is not happening.      Perhaps you can document it        my
little catatonia as much perceived as it is real.       I assure you that I exist,
Doctor Scully.       But memories stolen by villain or medicine         may as well

have never happened           and there is no closure.       The well-dressed men come
for all of us in the end.     They tell us what to believe.      I write myself onto paper
to discern what might have been       in missing moments.      Agent Scully,       I want

to know—       how can any of us close the door on ourselves         without swallowing
a perfect paranoia           some sort of uncertainty with which to warm ourselves
when we hang up our coats             taste the disquiet       heavy with ghosts.

E. Kristin Anderson is a poet and glitter enthusiast living mostly at a Starbucks somewhere in Austin, Texas. A Connecticut College alumna with a B.A. in classical studies, Kristin’s work has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including The Texas Review, The Pinch, Barrelhouse Online, Washington Square Review, and FreezeRay Poetry. She is the editor of Come as You Are, an anthology of writing on 90s pop culture (Anomalous Press) and is the author of nine chapbooks of poetry including Pray Pray Pray: Poems I wrote to Prince in the middle of the night (Porkbelly Press), Fire in the Sky (Grey Book Press), 17 seventeen XVII (Grey Book Press), and Behind, All You’ve Got (Semiperfect Press, forthcoming). Kristin is an assistant poetry editor at The Boiler and an editorial assistant at Sugared Water. Once upon a time she worked the night shift at The New Yorker. Find her online at EKristinAnderson.com and on twitter at @ek_anderson.