How To Ruin Everything

First, you'll need to study this handout on emotions.

Second, you'll bombard your intimates with new vocabulary.

Next, teach a stubborn six year old how to tie his shoelaces (bunny ear, bunny ear, wrap? Loop,

swoop and pull?)

After that, cut all the sleeves off your shirts and use them as rags (that way your heart will

become clean).

Next, relive your traumas during coitus.

Vomit in front of your students and really show them who's in charge.

(Originally, in this manual, a note here said, apology with a meat tenderizer, but it seems to have

been redacted to say apologize tenderly. Surely one of those is a mistake.)

At the pharmacy, speak loudly of your ailments, ask pertinent and impertinent questions, check

your phone, ask about all of the side effects and what those side effects could indicate. Gasp at

your neighbors and inhale their superiority.

Next, cut your nails below the quick. This will hurt. And you will remember never to do it again

because it will hurt later, too.

Introduce a giant, burnt sienna rescue dog to your stunningly innocent cat. Lock them in the

bedroom till they make friends. (This is a metaphor, the footnote here reports.)

Keep your washing machine door closed. We don’t want anything untoward happening. Gas

ovens remain off even while baking.

Afterward, take all your amateur abstract paintings and pictures of the baby off the walls. Say

you'll redecorate, but don't. Do the same for the refrigerator. (Clutter proves you are, at the very

least, alive. When you are dead, your options shrink.)

Blink once if you are apathetic.

Pick your scabs. The body is bored already.

Teach your stubborn seven year old how to tie his shoelaces (loop, swoop and pull because

bunnies are no longer cute).

Text all of your ex-boyfriends and possible lovers a snap of your naked breasts. Wait just a few

seconds. Now delete.

Go to the beach alone. Bring an old boombox and some Wallace Stevens on cassette.

Change your sheets once a season. (That would be four times, clarifies the manual. Color

unspecified.)

Write a fucking poem for fuck's sake. Fuck.

You will ruin everything you touch. (You are Queen Midas.)

Even Smirnoff seeping through your pores can't throw the scent.

Did you drink before or after the job interview? Both require dexterity of the lips: for drinking

and for not smiling while lying, but I knew you could handle it.

Here's how you ruin everything. You play a game of chess. You calculate the tree of possible

moves and counter moves. You calculate three candidate moves per move. You recalculate

because the first two calculations were hard. Clear your throat. This time calculate like you mean

it and quit vacillating. (The woman with the annoyingly straight spine from the temp agency told

you to quit vacillating. You thought vaseline was for cracked lips.) It's your turn, but you lost on

time. You can never win a game if you lose on the clock.

Jessica Era Martin graduated with her MFA in poetry from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She is a mother, a chess teacher, and a ping pong enthusiast. Her work has appeared in Oberon, The Vital Sparks, Sheepshead Review, and Poor Yorick.

Twitter: @JessEraMartin

Instagram: @madzetetic