t-shirt press

in 7th grade i stayed after school
to use the t-shirt press.
i don't remember much about
that time other than feeling
like i no longer had a body. 
i scratched myself out of mirrors. 
ate less & less. 
there was a soda machine
behind the school
which i fed a quarter for a sprite
whenever i could.
the t-shirt press was a rusted machine.
i sat at the computer dreaming
of all kinds of images i wanted 
on shirts. i printed a warped 
flyleaf album cover & stretched out 
still from buffy the vampire slayer.
it was only me & two other kids
also sifting the old internet
for fragments of a self. the images 
always came out in squares.
televisions to our bones.
the t-shirt fabric was coarse
& the fits were all boxy. i loved the shirts anyway. 
i was a size large then
but i wore extra-large to have room to hide. 
steam from
the press.
touched my hand to the still-warm designs.
i always put them on before going home.
layer after layer. my blood 
somewhere between fabric & running. 
the teacher was an older man
with a bowlish haircut & wiry glasses.
we said few words to each other. 
sometimes he would print a shirt too
when the rest of us were done 
& packing up for the afternoon. 
a phish band image or song lyrics.
smell of burning teeth or rubber. 
i would cross the soccer fields to get home.
that autumn there were
always vultures. huge black birds 
with their mouths full of guts.
i was scared of them. convinced that
i might be small enough
to be carried away. i can see one now
with a t-shirt in its mouth. 
i stopped going. i don't remember why. 
the sun turned into
a doorbell. i was often furious with myself.
why was i so hard to be? even when
i didn't make shirts i would lay
on the floor upstairs sometimes after school.
staring up at the dusty ceiling
dreaming of designs 
to make a body out of.