She cannot remember
The number of lips
She has kissed in her lifetime

She is strangely proud of this
Like a kindergartener with a new watercolor

Look at all the fun I've had

Her memories are filled
With smart men
Funny men
And beautifully attractive men

And some not

Wince.

They come and go
She tells herself
Feelings are transient
And love is too much work

And yet
She finds
The more lips she kisses
The more arms that hold her
The more wedding pictures her friends seem to flaunt...

The more that piercing pang,
That warmth in her belly
Wants a man to stay

And yet
She tells herself
That she's not allowed to settle
An old German man told her so

But somehow
It becomes easier and easier
To imagine a future
With the men that she meets

Is it desperation?
Is it desire?
Or is she finally looking in the right places?

I talk myself in
I talk myself out

I pine
And I pause
And I hesitate

Hem-
Haw

Stumped by
Indecision

Fascinated
By you

Brain whizzing
Heart swooning

The duality of
Harsh critic
And romantic youth

Practicality tempers
The foolish hopes
Of the dreamer

They duel out
My insecurities
And reshape
My aspirations
Slicing away the cravenness
That covers my desires

Now
Daring is comfort
And Chance is worth the
Risk of Happiness

Hello lover.

She hates that she is a woman
The putrefying weakness perceived in the curves of her body
The naivete shown in her blues
With the unintentional flutter of butterfly lashes
That refuse to meet the glances of those that pass by
The fear-- Of what?
That stereotypes are true?
She doesn't even know
And it sickens her.

She sickens herself.

She hates that she is white
The blandest vanilla
The marble statue
Somehow revered
Worshiped
Privileged
But simultaneously overlooked
Boring
Unimportant
The Caucasian mongrel
In light of the fact that her People
Have no proud history
Which she can name herself heir to

She hates that she is middle class
Not poor enough to struggle
Not rich enough to be free
Just situated dully in the middle
A footnote in the statistic
That they tell her she must use
To identify herself

She hates that her belief system
Has to be called by a name
That she has to choose
To be a part of a group
As part of her "identity"
And she is not allowed
To stand by her own integrity

She hates that she is American
The pudgy, loud-mouthed, laterally-speaking nation
The brashly jumps into conflict
Guns blazing
As its political system decays
In the stench of its overwhelming debt and corruption

But in truth
She hates
That they force her
To whittle her essence down
Into Gender, Race, Class, Religion, and Nationality
A *****-inducing statistic

As if there was nothing more to her
Than the facts surrounding her existence

I tread on the tightrope
Suspended between thinking too little
And thinking too much

I balance precariously
Tiptoeing towards optimism
But humanity sways me
And I shakily creep
Towards despair

The costume chafes
There is not enough chalk on my shoe
The lights are too bright
And a pearly bead of self-awareness
Trickles past my temple
And drips on the dirt baseness
A thousand feet below

And yet--

The crowd smiles
And gasps
And cheers
And claps
And I am reminded
That everything
Is a show

So I smile
And I bow
With a flourish
And I soak in the adoration

And try to forget
That the struggle repeats
Each night
In each town

But the show can
And does
Go on

Où est mon coeur?
Where is my heart?
It's pitter-pat is strangely gone
And there is a strange
Emptiness that I
Can't
Quite
Appreciate

I have sought it
Since the sun peeked through my curtains
And the spurt of a swiftly ended dream
Woke me suddenly... too suddenly!
But I could not hear drumming in my ears
Or a pounding in my chest

There was nothing.
There was silence.

Où est mon couer?

Is it holding my place betwixt two chapters of a book?
Non.
But if often rolls around in words. Funny that it would not be there!
Is it hiding in a flower ***?
Non.
But it often hides in the ground hoping to grow. Strange that it would not be there!
Is it under the bed?
Non.
Stranger still. It often keeps the dust bunnies company.

Où est mon couer?
The panic
Is starting
To drive me
A little bit
Mad.

How could I have lost it?
Où est ma tête?*
I am usually so good
At keeping it caged up
Penned in
Out-of-bounds
Locked away

Strange that it would vanish in the middle of the night
Without a sound
Without a trace!

Unless
Someone found it
Stumbling across it
In the foggy half-world of my dream
And picked it up
And put it in an oversize pocket
Stealing it
In a dream-act
That bleeds into my reality