the thing I appreciate about rape

Is a sentence I never thought I would write. 

But the thing, in hindsight, I really appreciate 

about rape 

is how fast it was.

Five minutes

Fifteen

Maybe an hour

These were tiny flecks of my life.

Nothing to scoff at for an unwanted part 

of someone else’s body being inside me,

But I never appreciated 

The brevity 

Of those violations 

Until now.

Clearly I trusted these men 

Enough to be alone with them.

One in my bedroom at my parents house,

Me too blacked out to consent or remember

Yet still conscious enough to participate.

I woke up and vomited.

He cleaned it up then had sex with me again,

Or so he told me the next day.

The nice thing about that one was

The lack of memories, their abscence.

I trusted them as strangers,

But I didn’t know them

Didn’t decide again and again,

Day after day, month after month,

Fight after fight, didn’t continue 

Deciding to keep going deeper, 

To say yes and yes again.

I said yes to spending time with them

Yes to going into their house, 

Their room

Their yurt on the playa

At burning man 

After doing Ketamine.

Yes to some degree 

Of fooling around,

But it was all 

So fast

In hindsight.

And once! 

Just once.

That is a luxury, 

In fact.

I never knew 

How good

I had it.

With you, 

My love, 

My liar,

100% of our sex 

Was non-consensual

Almost a year,

Almost daily, 

Sometimes more.

Non-consensual in the sense 

Of having told you 

Directly

In English,

the language 

we both speak

That I couldn’t be with a liar

That that would be the

Worst thing you could

Do to me, especially if

It involved another woman

And I didn’t want to be 

Involved with you

If you were still on anyone’s hook

If there was anyone you’d go back to 

After we broke up

If there was any unfinished business

And you said no, 

Definitely no, 

You swore no.

Non-consensual 

In the sense that 

When I asked

“Does she know you have a girlfriend”

And you said yes 

And yes 

And yes 

When the answer was no, 

And you knew that

Because you aren’t delusional, 

just devoid of integrity!

You knew I wasn’t 

Asking casually,

That I wasn’t ‘just curious’

That any old answer 

Would do

You knew if you said no, 

She didn’t know

I wouldn’t carry on 

About my business

Washing my face, 

Putting my clothes 

In drawers, squeezing 

Your cum out of me

Making your food

Saying I love you

Your lying lips on mine

Your arms wrapt around me

Your body pressed

against my nakedness

Every night.

You knew that 

If I knew

I would leave

So you lied

And enjoyed access 

To what you knew 

I would not have

Freely given

If I knew the truth.

I looked it up, and it isn’t rape, 

Though it feels like it should be

Feels like it is in my body

That I still have to live in

That you helped yourself to

While manipulating my reality

To get your way.

The best I could come up with was 

“Sexual violation 

By deception”

Such a weak phrase

For such a stiff crime.

Almost effortlessly I recall 

You pumping inside of me

The whine you’d make as you came

Your facial features squeezed 

Into what I called 

‘Monster face.’

My boyfriend, my love, 

My partner who said 

He was all mine,

That if I wanted to claim him

I might find some wild country,

But he was mine to claim.

If I could take a knife and 

Carve out every bit of me 

That you touched I would.

I’d pile my flesh in chunks 

On the patio table I bought 

And we never used, you 

Too grumpy to carry the food 

Ten feet outside, complaining

About the weather, 

The dust,

This or that, and that

As you were wont to do.

Why isn’t it stealing 

When the giver is tricked?

Why isn’t it rape 

When you lied 

To gain and maintain access

To what you never 

Should have touched 

In the first place?

Take my lips, my breasts 

That you loved, 

The darkness between

My legs

Take my smile, my laughter

My loving gaze and caresses

I’ll pluck my eyes out for you myself

Take the furniture I bought to 

“Make ‘our’ house a home”

After those other violations

(years later I still 

can’t call it rape)

I blamed myself.

I shouldn’t have been drinking

Or doing ketamine

Or alone with a man 

I didn’t know well.

I shouldn’t have said 

Yes to kissing

When I wasn’t a yes

To everything.

It was my fault, I thought.

This time it was all you,

So clearly you

You started it

You pushed it forward

You made the promises

You told the lies

You kept me in when I tried to go

You came to get me back when I left

You said what you had to

To get what wasn’t meant to be yours

You took what you wanted

Then you ran back to her

When I took it away.

the great pain

Over and over I imagine the blow of a shotgun. The click of a trigger then the explosion in my chest that will obliterate flesh & bone as it ripples through first me and then the air. It would be a relief from The Pain that sinks then sits, settling on top of my gut. 

Later a scalpel hovers delicately above the pain. It splits my skin, nerve endings reeling. I am peeled back. The Pain is like a lump of lead, heavier than it should be, prime to be plucked. The Great Hand is above me waving chopsticks, but before it descends I am resealed, flaps roughly pulled together with a rough black thread.

Someone takes a peeler to my back & starts unfurling me strip by strip. I am stripped of my shame. Tiny buds of myself strain upwards towards the light. They believe we can rebuild. My core is on fire & my lands ravaged. A wiser voice reminds me to approach the world with a soft belly, but The Pain has its own gravity & the rest of my being folds inwards towards it, limbs askew.

What do we do with The Pain? We love it. We say “I love you pain” and breathe into belly until it puffs out. Acid rains down around me, leaving a smoking, searing streak of burnt flesh where it has fallen. “We love you, Pain” through gritted teeth. 

The Great Hand slips fingers in below my rib cage then curls them up to where my heart used to be, knuckles grazing The Pain. I’m full, overstuffed, but The Pain isn’t muffled. In fact, it sings. 

This is the last pebble, the core, the lump under my mattress, in my shoe. “I found it! I found it” life sing-songs & cheers. My swan wings fold in and over it, or attempt to, anyway. I can’t cough it up, can’t cut it out. Below & behind it there is a primal scream that never ceases, needs no breath. The wail goes on so long we can’t hear it until something disturbs us deeply enough to awaken The Pain. 

Right now I’m advanced degree burned, road rashed, hanging chained by the feet & skinned, blood ticking into a bucket like an old clock. This won’t last, it can’t. Eventually I’ll dry out like a husk thrown in the corner of an old store room, desert dedicated, mercifully decaying.

Is this love is this love is this love is this love I ask The Great Hand. I’m rolled flat like dough, like fresh oozing asphalt, pressed into submission, my rough spots rounded out. 

The Great Hand puppy-pats my head, unconcerned. 

Does it love me? Or is it clinically going about its business, conducting the great symphony of karma and awakening, playing us each as cosmic figurines, immune to our pleas for mercy, our suffering, welcoming of it.

dead bird

I hear a thud from outside

Then the empty crash of a metal 

baseball bat hitting the driveway

I run outside, alarms raised, curious, scared

I see you walking away

Your body receding 

as the space between us grows

My eyes drop to the bat, discarded 

Then I scan the yard till I see 

The nest, fallen, felled

The bird

The broken bird lying on the grass.

You are gone. 

I run to the bird and scoop 

its battered body in my hands.

My thoughts rush & rage

What did you

Why did you

How could you

The lifeless bird in my palms, body broken

Where did you go, will you return, 

I can’t know

I kneel on the grass, 

cupping the bird in my hands

My mind races through possibilities, 

eventualities, explanations, motivations

The bird is dead, 

days pass, you do not return

I stay in the yard, turning its body over 

and over, pressing the places 

where the bones used to meet 

What did you

Why did you

How could you

The bones don’t heal, the bird remains 

dead, explanations don’t come and 

I am as broken as our life, 

my memories,

These tiny, hollow bones

husband dick

I wasn’t sure if I could make it work

It wasn’t what I wanted for myself

It didn’t fill me up

Or hit me in the right places

And while I appreciated it’s 

Ernestness and enthusiasm

It didn’t do what I wanted

And needed one to do

This, I told myself,

Is the compromise

I’ll make for a man 

I could trust to always 

Be honest with 

and devoted to

me.

I lovingly called it 

‘husband dick’

Because that was what 

I thought you’d be.

It was my way of accepting

You and your 

Shortcomings

and focusing, Instead,

on all the things 

I was getting.

Perhaps I was wrong,

Clearly so, for being so

Willing to compromise on

So much, as the things

I was giving up or

Putting up with were 

Hard as concrete

And the things I was 

Hoping to get, thought

I was getting, were all

Hypothetical, existing only

In your spoken intentions

And, in the end, completely

imaginary.

reasons you should date someone else

I sit down to make make a PowerPoint of reasons you shouldn’t be with me.

To set the mood the title side has a few unflattering photos and a casual headline like:

“What’s Wrong With Me”

"Why This Is A Bad Idea"

or

“Reasons You Should Date Someone Else”

On the first slide I’d write DISORGANIZED ATTACHMENT in a bold font and surround it by a looping circle graphic. Words appear and fade in a dizzying pattern.

Fight

Flight

Freeze

Fawn

"Fine"

Fictitious

Feigned

Foreign

Fantasy

What do I need from you? Easy. Whatever you are not giving me.

The photo of my mother in the background of the next slide is an apparition behind a hazy word cloud.

sharp     unimpressed     guarded     

vicious     unpredictable     entitled

selfish    petty    disdainful    mean 

I pause the presentation and pull out a photo of myself.

Every year my face looks more like hers.

My head shakes with resignation.

I can’t help any of it.

Next slide.

Romantic History.

The following frames are formatted alike with a circular photo of one of my exes in the upper left hand corner and several lists below. Column A is bad behaviors of theirs that I ignored or tolerated. They wanted me to accept their flaws and I would not.

Column B is the things that annoyed them about me, like how I asked for what I wanted and that implied they weren't already doing everything perfectly which threatened their ego and I should have been more considerate and just pretended I was excessively satisfied.

Column C is bullet points of the things they did that annoyed me. You know those things people do where they just, like, exist? Tsk tsk. The atrocities I have endured.

The audio behind these slides is me gasping for breath as I remember what it felt like to be shackled by love & my commitment to these men who quickly became a quicksand of disappointment, a burden I crumbled under instead of carrying.

Do you hear that?

(I start quietly crying...)

Is that really what you want for me?

I thought we were friends.

Next I include a list of the awful things I said to them that I felt they deserved.

I'll let you use your imagination...

Think of something truly terrible.

What I said was worse.

Not just what, but the way I said it.

It’s hard to explain. Here, let me show you.

This section concludes with the things that have already begun to annoy me about you.

The list is unflattering and really says more about me than about you, so I spare you the details and just feature a tally counter which has gone up three clicks in the time you have been sitting here, a fact I now suppose you wouldn't have known if I didn't just tell you.

Sorry about that.

Next slide.

I find a photo of a crystal ball and map our future out around the perimeter.

At one o'clock we are drawn in Disney. My smile is impossibly wide. My eyes are a seductive squint, yours are plate-sized pin wheels, totally entranced. The animated trees sway around us. A whale leaps in the background. The cheerful clouds thunder applause on this joyful union and it rains in rainbows.

At two o'clock we are magnetic cake toppers, me in a poodle skirt and you in a powder blue suit. I lean towards you as you lean away and when you lean in I lean back. And if we touch in the middle isn’t it exciting? Repel and attract. Attract and repel. Couldn't you play this game for hours and hours and weeks and years?

At three o'clock we hold hands and stare ahead 59 years, imagining the park bench that cradles our aging bodies just as you have mine all these years. It is a nice story because love triumphed and love was all we needed and love was better than ice cream and love meant our lonely days were over and life was like a song.

At four an X marks “you are here” and shows a live stream of you sitting here viewing this presentation. Really. You turn and scan the room for the camera. You are confused by your staring role and sense a turn of tone. The dread that rises from your gut tastes like bile. You are starting to understand that I’m not, in fact, selling you a timeshare.

I'm leaving you.

Well, trying to, anyway.

You can thank me later.

If we push on past five (don’t worry, I won’t let us) the cards flip one by one.

Six

Could you teach me to loosen up?

I’m more uptight than ever.

Seven

Can you show me how to be free in my body?

I sit with arms crossed glaring at you from the corner of every room.

Eight

Can you help me be messy?

I chase you with the dust buster

I make you shower before getting into bed, wash your hands before touching me

I recoil from your beard with a mask of disgust

I refuse to get in your car, tip of my nose lifted

A waterfall of disapproval beats down on you from my mother's narrowed blue eyes

Nine

Everyone you tell me you’ve been with is kindling under the log cabin of our fantasies. We are adults. Why should your history hurt me? I proudly rode in on brilliant white mount, mane and tail flowing, now I lead yellowed nag to a back pasture with a fraying rope. That's my way of saying you have been irreparably sullied in my eyes. Good luck looking in the mirror now.

Ten

Occasionally I call you names as we fight like fire.

These are the best of times.

Eleven

I make comments so underhanded that you spin, fists up, unsure where the punch that just landed came from as I raise my hands, pleading innocence, smirking privately as you lick your own wounds.

Twelve

Most often my body slightly stiffens beside you. Subtly as a light breeze I drift away, never to fully return. Soon there is little more left of me than the puppet strings you help pull. My head is flopped to the side, square jaw occasionally cracking the nuts of my scripted lines.

Aren't we happy together? Are you happy now?

You, precious, delicate you.

(You poor, unfortunate soul)

At this point in the presentation I stop myself from reaching forward to cover your eyes, to shelter you from the dark tentacled thing that rises from the corner and quickly fills the screen, drawn by the scent of the the tiny sea scum that I reduced you to, sideways glance after pointed comment.

Run, you fool.

(You were warned)

Does everyone have such a sea beast lurking in the depths of their heart?

Mine relishes this release.

The water dripping from the corner of the screen onto the keyboard widens the crack and breaks into a steady flow. The floor floods as the circuits cackle their death rattle.

You are shocked.

Now that the dam of your illusions has fallen I can breathe again.

Fully animate and larger than life, I slither through the frame of the computer. With my tentacles now unfurled I can easily crash down the walls around us. There’s a happy gleam in my eye. A slimy, suctioned muscle wraps around you and tightens. My mantle arches in ecstasy. Your feet kick jubilantly. This time for sure you were wanted by me.

Radula exposed, I feed freely on you. Sex was always a cheap substitute for this. I cradle your head as your body convulses, your wide eyes taking all of it in. You taste like freedom. Not a drop of blood touches the ground as I gorge.

"Do you see me?" I probe at your glassy eyes.

"Do you love me now?" I ask your corpse.

I tremble with exultant aliveness.

Next slide.

Back in my human form, I clear my throat twice and daintily wipe my face, feeling for chunks of flesh. As discreetly as possible I check my teeth for stray sinews, straighten my glasses, adjust my collar, and smooth my skirt. My Mary Janes squish out water as I shift my weight.

Ahem, I continue to an audience of no one.

"Thank You For Coming To My Presentation" the side would have read if the computer was not shattered.

When the stage lights dim I can see the biohazard team taping tarps on the walls. The perimeter is already fenced. Crestfallen, I voluntarily retreat into my cave to meditate for another eon. That's just long enough to believe it could be different next time, long enough to forget the beast that always gets the best of me.

muse

The heavy heat of her sweat creates a fog around her body. Belly down, she pulls one knee to her chest as she pants for air.

It’s a short reprieve.

The next project approaches, taking her from behind, pumping vigorously. There’s no foreplay, no seduction. It isn’t required. She cranes her neck to the side, eyes pressed closed. She digs her fingernails in, pulling herself forward or pushing herself back. Suddenly the silence and stillness around her is restored. She turns to catch a glimpse of it’s back as it walks away.

There’s barely been time to look around or catch her breath when another task flips her over, takes her hard. Her chin tips up as a groan arches her neck. Her eyes roll backward, following her head. Her legs spread then envelope the task that buries itself in her. It rests, briefly in ecstasy, marinating in her juices. The stream of sweat that drips down its torso converges with the pool on her belly and cascades off her hip bone.

She’s extraordinary.

As if to make up for the lost pause, it grabs her harshly, firmly. Suddenly imbued with urgency, it takes what it wants then ends without finishing, making way for the next scheduled event or item on the agenda.

Creativity gathers her mussed hair as she hops down to clean up. She is barely standing when she is approached again, grabbed, spun, pulled over,
pushed down, then passed along. It’s all as clean as a freshly sharpened blade. They don’t care how she feels, what she likes. They just want what they want from her.

At the end of the night, alone, Creativity hums a little tune as she steps out of the shower. She runs a soft towel down her long legs. She strokes her skin as she replays the day, admiring her own handiwork. She moans happily as she settles between her blankets, luxuriously sated.
Today was a good day.
She was wanted.
She was used.
She was the desire and the desired.
She was the fulfillment and the fulfilled.

two rivers

Perched on a rock in the river, the water rushing

on either side of me was too perfect a metaphor

for the two men I spent the past week between.

The unique energy of the streams, how the water broke around me,

the strength of the current, the way it hugged my edges as it flowed.

The river was a longer story I temporarily punctuated,

one that began before me and would carry on after,

Languidly lounging on the slanted rock, my nude body

gleaming in the spotlight of the afternoon sun,

I had placed myself inside the action, but not gone in

deep enough to get wet.

I couldn’t sit still to enjoy it, too excited to capture in words

what I had only briefly stayed to experience. I hopped

off the rock I had just settled on and stepped carefully to shore.

Cradling my phone, I placed myself apart to let inspiration flow.

Instead it sputtered.

In my attempt to capture it I lost it.

What came out was trite and obvious, words like roar

and life force, power and flow. The metaphor was blunt,

too bored by itself to even begin to carry its own weight.

At least I know when to quit.

My friends busied themselves with meditating, sunbathing,

stretching or praying. Rather than parading my newly-claimed

nudity through them to reclaim my throne in the river,

I found another spot just in front of me, set back

from the edge of the water and comfortably on the periphery.

Here I lingered, lay longer, breathed deeper.

At this distance the water flowing through its rocky cradle

was a soft hum. My body was my own.

From here I could marinate in the moment without my mind fleeing to poetry.

At the river we all were who we were.

Separate, but together. Playful, adventurous, shy or stoic.

I did what I always do, what I had just done the week before.

I sat on the side till I captured the sum of it.

I disrobed with newly found(slightly false) confidence.

I eased into the cold water slowly, extending the discomfort,

part in part out, going deeper only gradually.

Once in I called the shy ones after me with comforting coos.

I waded upstream and rode the current to the edge

of the drop just once, tasting the force of the water

without truly letting myself be taken by it.

I sat in the heart of the experience just long enough to say I did,

using art as an excuse to remove myself from the roar of life around me.

Then I basked, comfortably, happily, on the sidelines

imagining what could have been as opportunity after opportunity

was carried, as it always is, downstream by the current and out of sight.

is there anything

“Is there is anything else I can help you with” you say, sales smiling, with a referential wave towards your shelve of wares.

Yes. You can, but I want what’s buried in the back store room, tucked underneath your turtle shell.

Colored hearts dance around your head as if you’d been struck with a cartoon stick. I wish that you’d look roses my way, too. Perhaps only because you seem to look right past me, I want to be a heart shaped blip on your radar.

I’ve imprinted on you, my duck daddy of creative flow. I waddle after you, flattening myself against a wall, casually, if you turn to glance over your shoulder. I wave and stammer some weak explanation. You are bemused, but not moved; unaware or uninterested.

Let me wrap my arms around your rotundness. You are hard to see beyond my illusion of you, yet I bet I could feel you if you let me close enough. I want to scrape below your surface, unearth the artifacts. I want to explore the layer people think they get, but don’t.

I want you, or maybe I just want your courage to jump two feet headlong into what could be knee deep water or a cove of snakes or possibly the pool above long lost treasure room of Atlantis. I, too, want to jump before I know for sure.

I want double wobbly jelly bean hugs that last all night. I want to feel your chest (with what I hope is a normal amount of chest hair) grow sweaty in our heat and for you to hold me still, like a life raft, like the one watery golden goblet you managed to grab. I want you to know if you let go I’d likely fall into the depths to be lost forever and hold on until you get me to shore.

I blow through town like a windy day. The weather will clear tomorrow and go back to being sunny or rainy. You’ll forget all about it unless someone mentions it. You pause, run through your memory, agree yes, it was quite gusty and wasn’t it quite lovely as a point of contrast, just for a day. You’ll go back to whatever you were busy with, unaware that wind is remembering you. She wanted to wrap herself around you, to caress your face and tussle your hair, whisper in your ear. If only you’d have stepped outside, which maybe you might have if you only knew.

if you loved me

If you loved me

you would tell me

and then you’d tell me

you love me again

and again

I would argue with you

and ask why

and for what reason

and still you would say

I love you because

you’re lovable

and I just do

and we would talk about me

and more about me

until you convinced me

it was true

or until one of us died

if I was lovable

you would drop everything

literally

whatever is in your hands

rush to the door

or the phone

or into the room when I’d call

and you’d smile as I sent you away

because I wanted nothing

except your willingness to please

we could play this game again

and again

and again

until you ran back and forth

so many times that your legs

were worn down to stumps

at that point

to prove that you love me

you would scoot

to and fro

to and fro

on the floor

swinging your torso

with your strong arms

naturally I would leave you

because without legs

you’d be useless to me

but at least I’d be quite

sure of your love

and remember it fondly

even though I did not love you

but that doesn’t matter

that isn’t really

what’s important here

what’s important is me 

and you loving me

and me questioning

if you love me

and you, whoever you are,

proving that you do 

and me being satisfied

and feeling loved

for about five minutes 

until we start the whole thing 

again because you love me

you let me torture you by

telling you about the men

whom I love, who,

through the same

twist of fate,

do not love me

and treat me poorly

talk about themselves

call me closer

and send me away

confident in my love

for about five minutes

when they call me back again

and again

and again

or until they meet a woman

whom they love

who calls them closer

and then sends them away again

and again

and again

you love me so much

that you haven’t spoken

to me in years

every now and then

I’ll reach out

to tell you that I miss

how much you loved me

and you’ll tell me to fuck off

because you love me

so much you think

we should not speak

for the rest of our lives

I tell you that I understand

I tell you that I’m sorry

that I don’t feel the same for you

I say how terrible it was

me stringing you along

accepting your love

when I knew I wouldn’t return it

even though you knew

I wouldn’t return it

because I told you

that I wouldn’t

and you gave it to me

freely freely but also

perhaps in the hopes

that one day I may

change my mind

and it may be returned

I feel badly and my apology

is sincere but, most importantly,

I’m still talking about me

and we’re still talking about me

and isn’t it still all really

about me 

and how much you love me

and what you are willing

to put up with

to prove to me

that you do

which is now ‘no more’

so I’ll always remember fondly

the love you gave me

that I accepted but didn’t take

and how recklessly I handled

such a precious

and delicate

and tender gift

that you tried but failed 

to convince me

that I deserved

to tell you how I love you

I call myself a poet,

yet I cannot capture 

how I feel for you in words.

I would have to dance for you,

but I am not a dancer.

If I danced, I would sit on the floor

my knees pulled into my chest 

with my arms wrapped around them,

opening my left elbow to the floor,

my ribs, then hips following.

I would roll once and stare at the sky

with my arms to my side.

My pelvis would rise and then fall,

my arms fold inward then out again.

Pushing against my elbows 

I'd raise my back off the ground

curl as I sit up

then twist towards the front, 

Standing, twirling

faster and faster.

My hair lifted in the wind

my arms free

my legs spinning 

as fast as they could go

a spinning top,

a merry-go-round of existence.

I'd fall to the floor again,

My heart pounding.

Using both hands 

I'd pull apart my ribcage.

First, the skin 

then the flesh 

then the bone,

Exposing to you my beating heart 

red

blue

a maroon muscle.

A child cries.

No one claps for me.

To tell you how I love you, I'd have 

to paint you a painting, 

but I am not a painter.

I prepare the colors:

a bright red

more blue than orange.

A lions yellow

the brightest color

in the piece.

Royal Blue

Navy

A teal as spacious as the sky.

Purple to go under the gray

with a yellow, a dull, dirt yellow.

Black,

because I must

I'd pull these colors into my arms

I'd grab them all,

hands reaching elbow deep into 

the buckets of paint.

Trying to hold them,

my forearms pressed against 

my bare breasts and belly, 

catching them,

catching the colors

As they spill down.

Of course, 

I cannot.

Colors don't hold.

They drip across my navel,

follow the V of my topography 

down my legs.

As I try to scoop them back 

up into my arms

they blur together.

Panicked, I'd fling

whatever I can onto a canvas.

I'm flustered, disappointed

by my horribly inadequate

attempt.

The canvas is splattered, scattered.

My body covered

I'd lie a towel on the ground 

to press myself against.

The colors of you,

the silhouette of me.

Do you understand? 

Do you understand what I mean?

Tell you how I love you, I'd write you a song, 

but I'm not a musician.

Next week I'd enroll at the conservatory.

Over the next five years I'd learn piano 

violin 

percussion.

I pick back up the flute that

I detested playing in school.

Every time I purse my lips 

against the mouthpiece of that 

dreaded flute 

I think of you and blow.

My fingers ache from practice,

yet day after day I practice 

morning to night.

In a decade

I'd  take what I have learned,

write song after song.

Some sweet and soft,

full of tenderness,

others bold,

punctuated with the sound of a gong,

the feeling

of meeting you,

that you were real. 

That you were real.

The violins come in as gently

as the spirits you whisper to

who whisper back to only you.

The flute,

full of love, of longing, 

glazes over the top,

Weaving through the air.

By this time you are gone,

but it doesn't matter.

I'd play these songs for years

in subway stations,

on small stages.

I'd play them on sidewalks.

I'd play them in the heart of forests 

where no one can hear.

To tell you how I love you

I'd spend years sequestered

because I knew

I'd never find the words

to capture

the fullness

the richness

the softness

this ineffable

yet resilient

tenderness.

There has never been a calling

more important,

less urgent,

or more fantastic than this.

whisper

You whisper incantations without moving your lips. It conjures me, drawing me in, unsure if I heard you make a sound. Meanwhile, your spells take effect. I am danced by a rhythm played by the pulse of your blood rushing through your veins. I am swayed across the floor by the cascading of your hair as it shifts behind your shoulder with the turn of your head.

From a glass box, pantomime a caress. Across the room you see me shutter and turn, affected by just the air you stirred.

Do not set foot on the immaculately smooth fallen snow of my skin and mar it. Instead kneel on the stoop, exhale as carefully as a prayer. That one breath is the birth of spring. Molecule after molecule melts the snow as each tells the other the tale of your closeness.

My body is a cauldron that you hold your hands over. It boils and bubbles and leaps towards your fingers. “Not yet” you both chide and promise as your hands lift further away.

You watch the mercury line of yearning rise in my eyes. You feel it too. We didn’t come here to cash out a small jackpot. It’s more than a body can hold. Yearning spills out into the room, soaking everything, rising till the bed floats. We are weightless and submerged, swimming through the world of yearning we created.

Your hand grazing my hand breaks the surface. We take in a long breath, one we didn’t know for certain would come.

You reach for me again then pause.

That butterfly flap crosses the globe of the small universe we created and crashes into me like a wave. You can make love to me with a blink of your eyelids. You turn me inside out with a twitch of your finger. Let’s leave constant frantic motion for the children. I want to meet in the realm of the sorcerers and play with more subtle and powerful tools.

You stand above me, musing on weather patterns, calling the sun and moon to rise and set as my body flaps like an unhooked flag. You are delighted to find that when you stand still the wind keeps blowing, your hair whips around your face as the gusts increase. You don’t need to be in motion to create motion. In stillness each action reverberates.

I chose you for your ear, because you know the room stops echoing long after the last beat of the drum. Only I don’t want to be beaten or played. I’m far too precious for that & my skin is unstretched, untaned. I want to be moved like sand dunes, one grain at a time over hundreds of years. I want to be worried smooth as a volcanic stone in a creek bed. I want to be adorned with dust like a cobweb in the corner that reveals itself slowly and then, once exposed, becomes the victim of it’s own weight. I want to be haunted by the slight chill of the sun dipping behind a cloud on an early fall day. I want the heaviness of the moist air halfway down the basement stairs. Those are the ways I’d like to be touched.

When you call, don’t speak, just breathe.

When you come to my doorway, don’t enter.

When you cross my threshold do so with just a toe that you tap…. tap…. place and then retract.

Think about leaving.

Turn to leave.

Pause.

Decide to stay and when you turn back around it will be into my open palm that clasps you by the throat and pulls you in, consumes you so quickly that you don’t have time to be afraid.

Shrödinger’s Crush

One night with you and suddenly I’m a walking cliche. These phantom feelings pulled me over on the desert highway out of town and hijacked my mind. I am pretty sure this hapless state is the thing people hope for after a date.

I have turned into my own science experiment. In my lab coat I track the cycling emotional states, transcribing the shifting storms of rhetoric on my clipboard. Stopwatch in hand I time the bouts of anxious hysteria or feigned indifference, pushing my glasses up my nose as I coolly confer with my colleagues. 

My heart, ever untamed, exiled, and emaciated as a mustang, has morphed to a humiliatingly transparent gelatinous blob on the beach. With disgusted disdain I probe at it with the toe of my shoe. The way I feel about you is equally alien, curious and queer, fascinatingly strange. There is no logical explanation for my tender disposition. Without knowing you, I really, really just like that thing you do where you exist.

With pinched nose and fingers I lift this deflated character up to inspect it.  Wasn’t this poor girl, just days ago, grand and untouchable? Love nonconsenually makes prattling school girls of us all.

This is Shrödinger’s crush. Unobserved, it is in any state. Like a child reaching again for a hot oven, I clench my eyes shut and try to pin it down. Panicked, frantic, with no external input whatsoever, the flaming pinball in my heart hits the buzzers of all my hopes and insecurities unrelentingly and in splendidly random order. 

In the meantime, scenarios intrusively expounding in my imagination, I smile and nod and pretend to be wherever I am.

We don’t need to meet again. We likely never will. We will flirt from a distance and one of us will get bored or distracted. We might try at love and part ways bitterly or amicably. Best case scenario we are wildly happy until one of us dies. 

Let’s save ourselves the trouble and skip it. My fantasy of everything has already happened anyway, object of affection not included nor required.

i didn’t call you

I drove through New Mexico & I didn’t call you

The sun set for hours & I didn’t call you

Lightning flashed over Mexico & I didn’t call you

Clouds lit up by a city & I didn’t call you

Elton John belted "I want love" & I didn’t call you

The arroyos flow like the stories you told & I didn’t call you

My lips chapped in the desert & I didn’t call you

The words in my throat & I didn’t call you

Lightning strikes in the distance & I didn’t call you

Half a mile from the border & I didn’t call you

Hands at ten and two & I didn’t call you

I drove the whole state without calling you 

& since we last spoke that’s all I do

i can’t decide

I am a palace and a haunted house

I’m eloquent poise and a trip or a stutter

I’m the clear reflection and the mud below

The freezing water and the warm sun

I’m the soft fur and the sheathed claws

The wet tongue and the teeth

I’m better than you could imagine

And I’m better in your imagination

I’m hard, reclaimed wood from an old church and the mites that rot it

I’m the sinners that cried in confession, the kiss of the newlyweds

The bored children in the pews, the minister shakily giving his first sermon

The adulterer that sits by his family every Sunday two rows from his mistress

And the storm that blew the stained glass windows out

I’m an early Spring picnic and the ants on the plate of cookies

I’m the umbrella you remembered to bring, but forgot has a broken arm you meant to fix

I’m the classic car without headlights that you can’t register

The gas station two miles beyond where the gauge hits E

You thought I was a chipmunk cub, a fallen feather, a soft patch of grass

I’m a porcupine, a pigeon guard, baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire

The broken neck of a wine bottle you trace your tongue around

The metallic taste of your own blood being swallowed

Petriolo

I said Saturnalia and you said Petriolo

I said afternoon and you said serata

I said Cavour and you said Italia

After Fortezza and apertivo

Was poetry and Petriolo

You said sulphur and I said uovo

Your English much better than my Italiano

You translated my body, soft and piano

Your touch smooth as the rocks in the heat of the water

I lay at your feet and stared at the stars

the dark pool steaming in the last of twilight

I said stay and you said go

I said vedura and you said cena

I said acqua and you said vino

I said my bed was small but you could lay with me

Your arms warm as the thermal springs

The space between our lips infinite as the ocean

living art

Looking down at the reflection of the dawn light on

my skin, my leg exudes where my shirt ends

The curves, the seamless play of light and shadows

We are numb to the body, tone deaf, bored senseless

It is ever present, the light touch of clothing on skin

The where the weight in which part connects to the ground

My body exudes sensation and I barely begin

My mothers legs fold underneath me now, my ankles cracking

as I walk to the kitchen in the morning, echoing the sound

of her walking our apartment hallway

My mother, my grandmother with me in this body

in all the ways I want them here and all the ways I don’t

My body the miracle, the mystery, the outline that defines me

although I can feel beyond the touch on my skin

My body the grand illusion, who are we to love ourselves?

these aging flesh vessels that we nitpick, criticize, purchase

clothes to compress or accentuate, products to refine and conceal

Here we are in these glorious bodies, taboo to celebrate,

vain to love, traded for love or money, kept apart for fear

of closeness. The body is enemy or ammunition to the ego

It’s yours, but not you, so drive it like a lease, hard and carefree

Wear it like a rented dress you can’t afford, a borrowed suit

always a size too small that you make the most of for the night

you have it. Be kind to your body. It’s its own sweet beast.

spell to attract love

Grow your hair as long as you like it. Color it. Go natural and then color it again. Be bold enough to experiment. Toss any clothes you don’t delight in wearing or pack them away to revisit next year. Find what makes you feel the most you.

Love what you do. When you get bored dig deeper, find ways to express your gifts in your work. If that isn’t possible, be brave enough to risk losing everything. Bet on yourself and keep doubling down through the hard times till you make it. Experience the flow of being in your expertise, relish in it. Seek the state where you are no longer you, just a vessel for the knowledge you possess. Let your work challenge you and take deep pride in making it through.

Face your demons. Enter each wound, each sticking point where you are your least lovable self with compassion. You were afraid, you were hurt, you behaved badly, and you are sorry. That wasn’t truly you, but the deep cry for healing. Beyond the behavior is a scared child deeply in need of your care and protection. Go inside and feel the thing you are scared to feel. Hold yourself in a fierce embrace and watch you soften, watch the patterns melt away.

Travel. Ask yourself where you feel called to go and go alone, even when the excuses of why you can’t outnumber the simple instruction of “find a way.” Meet new people and accept their positive reflections of you. Spend time alone and learn to enjoy your company. Take a risk, be brave, then dance barefoot on the space you acquired in the expansion. Hold the view from the top of the mountain or the soft sound of the waves at night in your heart. You made that happen. You.

Your friends are the art that you hang on the walls of self love. Listen to whom your heart feels called and follow. Let them see your dark side. Let their acceptance of you in spite of it teach you how to accept yourself. Seek your boundaries and learn to express them, clumsily at first. Your true friends will say thank you while others may walk away. Friendship is a beast as evolving as you are. Endings aren’t failures, just chapters. Have faith. If you follow your path, your interests, new friends will always come and the old may return if you hold them with an open palm. The process of gripping makes endings gruesome. Love is not a pitcher being poured and rationed, but an infinite waterfall. Let your first and strongest allegiance be always to yourself.

Build a home. Build your dream home. Take pride in every detail. Pour your energy into creating the nest in which your soul feels replenished. Let it look like your spirit spilled out wall to wall. Eat food that makes you happy, that makes your body shine. Light candles just for you. Draw the bath you would for a lover then luxuriate in it. You deserve it. You don’t need to wait.

Don’t wait for your soulmate to be known. Share your truth with the world. That one safe person who needs to hear you, love you, believe you is you. Speak from the depths of your being, speak the fear you have been hiding. Take the reasons you believe you are unlovable and separate from them as you put them in words. Others have had the same nightmares and they have woken. Speak yourself awake from the dream.

This is the spell you cast to bring love into your life. Live it. Make choices that make your heart pound with fear. Be alone. Be quiet and find a voice that is “you” then follow it, champion it, settle for nothing less. Be brave enough to ask for what you want and let that courage make acquisition or rejection irrelevant. Be dedicated to staying true to the process unfolding inside of you. If you do all this, the love that comes along is a bonus to the grand, exquisite and eternal love affair within yourself.

I didn’t lose my mother

I didn’t lose my mother because you can’t lose what you never had.

My mother was a myth. My mother was a fantasy. My mother was a dragon in the basement. My mother was a poison ringed cup I stopped trying to sip from.

My mother was a jealous sister with power, a needy child in the drivers seat. My mother was unrealized potential that sat like a mountain in my path or a cat like ninja that would leap to block me at each turn, her posture perfect, her next move impossible to anticipate. The hit could come from any direction. I was never ready enough.

My mother was a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from.

My mother was an empty basket, water flowing through the weaving. My brother sat below her and I was placed off to the side, occasionally in the range of a splash.

I know the rules of the game. It was imperative that nothing good happen to me. Zero Sum. A win for me was a loss for her. There was only so much. Money, love, attention. There was only so much, except there wasn’t. Why earn your own when you can reach in and take your daughter’s. What kind of mother is this? I wanted a hand outstretched, a palm open and giving. Instead it is a clenched fist wrapped around my throat, the other hand turning the spotlight back to her. Disaster coverage is still coverage. She is still the front page story, even if the news is bad.

My mother was untouchable because I was afraid to anger the gods. What curse may befall me if I try to touch these soft feelings? Vulnerability is a trap. She will find you. She will use it. Keep your armor on in your sleep, child. Don’t be a fool.

And yes she was pretty and yes she was nice. Yes she said nice words and yes you believed them. She could have been good at so many things, but instead she was good at this, tearing her child apart piece by piece. Flesh of my flesh there can only be one you stay down.

Down was safe, away was safe, quiet was safe. I was never truly safe. Missiles would spill out of her mouth when she spoke. A great tornado unleashed when she opened the door. My mother the force of nature laid me bare with no shelter from her in sight while my father flapped in the wind like a torn flag.

I gag on the truth of it, heave it up like bile. “I need love I need love,” but my mother said no. Like love was a one way street. Like love was a beauty pageant with one queen. Like love was a game we play for our supper. Like our lives depended on it. Love was given and taken away depending on how well I played the part of ‘daughter,’ how convincingly I abandoned or contorted myself to fit her whimsey.

I pressed myself against the wall to avoid being seen, drawing fire. I tried camouflage, but my skin is a mood ring and I was always found. I learned to fight because I was so tender and I fight like a beast. I’ll bite out your fucking throat don’tyoucomenearme. I was domesticated then tormented. The family life isn’t safe for me.

Then I stepped into the room and saw her laying there, held her hand. She was so soft, her spikes all down, the war over. There is a little girl inside of me who climbed out. Behind the strong, beneath the ‘it is what it is,’ buried deep enough to be safe, buried alive. She’s angry with me and I’m sorry. I did what I thought was best, I got us this far dammit pleasedon’tbemad.

And all I wanted to do is crawl into that hospital bed. I wanted a Sunday morning mother I could lay with. These metal shields are heavy and I’m tired and no one can see me back here. I wanted a mother love I didn’t need to protect myself from, but I got an RV filled with explosives parked downtown on Christmas morning. I was 40 damaged buildings, eight dead, the pile of rubble left behind. Every time I never saw it coming. The authorities had probable cause but no one stepped in.

Deck the halls with ohmygodIcan’tican’tIhatethis. Tis the season to fuckallofthisthisbigliefuckyou. Don we now our maskfuckingfakersfakebullshitholidayoflies.

my impersonation

This is my impersonation of a human. This it how it moves and breathes. I’ve learned the body, the perfect pressure of a handshake, the positioning for the loudest possible clap. Hugs were confusing. If you open your arms and lean forward then pause, people usually lean in. At first I couldn’t tell if I missed the cue and t’s easier to stand rigid than to move. No is a solid default, until it gets weird. Humans like it if you just take the lead. Then at least someone has. To dance, start by swaying. Don’t do what feels right, that doesn’t work at first. Try things and see what feels wrong. That means you are off beat. I’m not sure if it got better over time or I just care less because it felt good. I learned sex. That was fun. Sex as an act. Only, sex is all the time. It’s in every conversation, the way people look at you. People. Men deciding if they want to have it with me. Women wondering if their partners do. I like the act of sex when it’s not an act. If you do it right, really do it, for a moment you are so human that you aren’t anyone anymore. I learned to speak. I learned a lot of words. I’ve learned the language. I say ‘how are you’ and ‘that’s too bad.’ I copied people. I can speak in socioeconomic class. I can speak spirituality. I can effect someone’s perception of me with words. A good impersonation requires the right words. Your body must be cared for and no two are alike. Feed it. Water it. Move it. Let it eliminate when necessary, but also act like it doesn’t do that. You will learn to put on clothes that match your environment or express your personality and culture. You can speak with your appearance and your body as well as words. People tell you with their the muscles around your eyes when you get it wrong. People have a lot of ways of telling you you got it wrong that rarely involve actually telling you. Sometimes it’s body language. Or a relational step away. They got busy or their eyes say no when they say yes too earnestly with their mouth, their voice high pitched, sweetly shrill. There are rules to follow. You get potty trained and hold your own fork. Then school. You go to school then you go to school and after all that school and by then they hope you learned to be like everyone else. You do sports and volunteer so you can go to school some more. After that you get a job and work then you work and you work and you get another job and work more. They don’t teach you to breathe, to feel the breeze on your skin, to eat with your eyes closed or to get calm when you feel mad. They don’t teach you to love another as yourself, that the loss of one is the loss of all. In fact they encourage our stratification. This is the beginning of capitalism. It’s different from communism because half of us are trying to climb on each other to get paid the most and the other half has resigned themselves to their role.

the butcher

He says no to my mask. My facade flirts, flatters, feigns fornication. Myself watching from a foxhole, seeing if this fish will bite. He laughs, says I need to be slapped, spanked. He smiles. He says no, but he is still here.

I talk of splitting skin and he dips his chin, a fantasy delicious enough to smack lips. He says he’ll cut me to the bone. Under the skin there is a silence I cannot reach. If I am to be sliced, I want the blade to be serrated.

I eye him as a child on tiptoes peers through the rhythmic fog of her own breath on a glass pane. I read the list of flavors over and over and over as he stands holding the scoop. He slaps my fingers as they extend and it only excites me more.

My center is melted. I must keep it safe. My candy shell is not candy. You. I’ve chosen you to offer myself to. Bring your scythe to my creamy well. Dip your blade and lick your fingers. Scrape my surface so there is nothing but stillness. Cast me as smooth as the mirror you pass by in the hallway.

You cup my thighs and shoot through me, an empty channel. My mask fallen, shattered. The shell of myself crumpled in the corner. I kneel on rice to worship at your alter, my throat so full of tears I choke.

Running your fingers along my scalp you cinch my hair, twisting my neck to the side so sharply it cracks. See? I didn’t tell you which side. I’m proving to you how empty I can be. My neck exposed, you descend and gorge. The sinews, the arteries, my blood spreading like a shadow on your floor without seams.

My throat is tight. My lips closed around as much of you as you are willing to offer me. You say no because I’m desperate. No because I’m entitled. No because I lay myself at your feet. No because I would like you to stand and welcome me in. You say no, but you also don’t say no at all.

If it pleases you, saw off my hair because I do not want you to. Flay my shoulder blades so I can be a butterfly. Your sledgehammer collides with my ribs and I tumble to the bottom stair. It is cool on my cheek. I feel peaceful. There is no more me. I’m soft as a sundae, holy as muslin, a cats back arching under your nails sharp as razors.

You cradle my throat firmly till my cheeks flush, till my eyes bulge, bigger and more beautiful. I convulse and melt into you. My meditation. My master. Man who distills mess and mystery. When you grip your fingers close in on themselves, the skin, vessels, and bone submitting, yielding space.

You say no to me, but I also say no to myself. With my throat ripped out I can’t speak. Blindfolded I can’t see. Clothespins clog my nostrils. My mouth gagged so I can’t say, "come, take my hand.” Let’s annihilate me together.