And it waited a moment longer than a moment’s pause

It was rain resisting its temper, attempting tenderness

Each drop the poignant pain in a patient bladder
when you hold to hear the end
of a song in a play or a whisper behind you
despite your body insisting you must leave

Then, it drowned the saplings in the gutter

a violent politeness
an apology for impeding
a housewarming gift

i am lying on my stomach
after having spent hours propped up on my elbows
spent hours reading, sunbathing
spent hours getting drunk and tired in the sun
i am outside our new chicago home
in a courtyard belonging to only us

i am sprawled on the transparent blue plastic of my past
the cerulean beach chair that never made it to a single beach.
its plastic wound and woven around the metal
like nothing i’ve ever seen before

and i fall asleep

and i’m awakened by the raindrops on the low of my bare back

but it is not raining

and i wake up naked, inside, in your arms as you tap out a tune on me

and the blue chair that we put in the shower
when my brother was too weak to stand
because my brother was too weak to stand
is nowhere to be found
even when he went to live in the hospital
that chair
gathered rust
in a closed, dripping shower

we threw it out
it reminded us of a hard time
he was our only surviving souvenir  

i miss the chair
and i miss the person he was before it all
before he gathered all this rust

and in the 12th my teacher grade tenderly grabbed my wrist
and said
what is this
and
I said
me
But
that was the wrong answer
he wanted me to say
my —-wrist
he wanted me to say my
MINE

He wanted me to take ownership
of my body
he wanted to acknowledge
Or
He wanted me to acknowledge
that I was
An inside
of a body
And
Not a body
He wanted
Me to think what I just
“mistakenly”
called “me” was just a vessel
To hold “me”
That is it was lent to me and would return
from whence it came
that I was barely or merely or some other kind of “erely” visiting
and
that me and mine were different when it came to body

Such a kindness and autono-motive restoration to remind a person that they are
More
That they are not their looks
or their actions
Or even potential ambulation
I know what he offered me was a kindness

I declined
I said no in my own way
If you’re wondering
What I said was “you are what you eat”

I still don’t know what I meant
If I meant

and I’ll ozymandius myself
If I claim to be more than this

I am crumbling, but I will stand tall on these broken feet

As soon as I can fix my posture

Mobile/Stabile - I don’t speak French

Main two types of mainly 3D artist
Alexander “sandy” Calder

Mobile - is a French pun meaning both "motion" and "motive"

If you had one of these above your crib to muse over as you drifted to dreamland, you have Sandy to thank.

Stabile-  following the style of the name mobile, is a sculpture that is unmovable

Both are French words I have trouble saying


I am becoming or was becoming paralyzed from my feet up
(they still haven’t decided which,
feel free to laugh at that)

Feel free to laugh at all of it, I do

I have complications from unbeknownst year long scarlet fever that turned into rheumatic fever that turned into julian Barre to thank for that.

There is no cure, so I’m using condescension.
I call it Julian Barre because “Gee YAWN BERET” is just so **** hard to eek out.
And
It requires more pomp than it deserves

Okay it’s part condescension and part more French words I can’t quite say.

It’s sort of like the opposite of when I try to say  “petit” pwessON” to be cute, I mean to say Little Fish to address my partner:

But instead say “petit pwazOne” which means
little Poison

And at my new job I am the manager-in-training.

In French it is

“Responsable en formation”

Or as I would say,
Responsible information.

However, I was not responsible in gathering my information.

During my interview, I said masseuse.

Turns out that is heavily connotated and maybe even denotated as a *** word.

I asked if it was the French ending

He said, “No, it’s the happy ending”

Maybe French is only **** because of how much is escapes me.

The opposite reason is why death was never **** to me
because of how much I escaped it

Maybe death finds
Me
****

And Anyway I got the job
And a month later my boss gave to me a T-shirt that said
your table is ready

At first,
Instead of a massage table,
I thought it was a stretcher
And I laughed

I wonder what that means

“You could have died” “you almost died” “it’s a miracle you’re still here”

“we’re /glad/ you’re still here”

Are words I often hear from my doctors
who almost always meet with me pro bono because I am poor, but also interesting

Medically

But they are not words I hear from my mother

Those are the words she saves to give to her 90-something mother-in-law

I say 90-something not because I am careless or inattentive, but because my grandmother Adeline lied about her age so often in her youth, that both she and the government forgot her actual age

The words my mother gives to grandma J upset her.

She is tired of living

Asked all of us to pray for her death

Asked my brother in law to be “to help her get to heaven tonight”
Said “I know you can help me get to heaven tonight” presumably because he works for the cook county coroner's office.

He is a man so jaded that he sometimes can only laugh on the job when he sees particularly trite Chicago suicide notes:

To be fair, he’s not cruel
It is usually when it is something
Like
“you either die the hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain”

Anyway, it made him cry when old Addie asked that

and also if you are a prayer person,
please pray for her death,
I can’t bring myself to do it.

And I know so many things to be universal

I read somewhere once that we are all related to one another

to the tune of 50th cousins

That you just can’t go back that many generations

That there aren’t enough people left to give anyone their own grandparents

Or something

So intangible

I want to feel the connection between each two men

I believe we are all a woven blanket of fibrous soul

Aptly covered in fibrous meat

I want to believe that we all share more than ancestors, but I will settle for this

I

At night, I search for the wrench
I lift it off my nightstand
I lie down on the workbench
the cool weight held in my hand

what I must loosen first is my knee
lull myself to a state of repose
leg is a swollen trunk of a tree
placidity the pain soon outgrows

ache that is green
ache that is ivy,
ache that is wrapping
around me
entirely.

being disarming,
the way that a friend will--
in no way harming,
I pry up one tendril,

My ache and I have just locked eyes
I turn my bolt counter-clockwise

just one half turn.
making way t’ward release,
pain is adjourned
to finally find peace


II

And in the factory,
It seems I was wound too tightly
Deemed satisfactory
Now, I relieve pressure nightly

The bolt pushes in such a way
it leaves the metal bent
Relief is not given away
but instead it is lent

pain that is sharp
pain that goes squish,
pain that is swimming
around me
like fish.

The pain in my head
a pain bright white
Will surely spread
If not done right

My head and I sob, throb, and cry together
And then I finally sever the tether

spin one full revolution,
Though I know it's unwise,
Lets in nightmare pollution
Maybe last night’s reprise



III

At night, I will always search for the reasons
Why is it that bad things happen to good people
I lie down and lament each of the seasons
If it’s about church, I’m skewered on the steeple

Now plaguing me is my dear heart
O! Please don't think me frigid
It’s how to be, if you are smart
Walls that throbbed become rigid

want that is lace
want that is divine,
want that dissipates
completely
in time

Wincing at every twinge
Heart so hollow it awards me pain
Lace is fraying at the fringe
Meteor in my orbital plane

said it flutters and feels flighty
prescribed one spin righty tighty

Then, compact are the loves I hold,
Locked in my heart airtight
No space empty or left cold
I wish you all goodnight

The color of the cream
As it is bled
from the cows in my dream
Also in red

Unfurling, curling,
bended, distended

A color so bright
It demands a white vase
So tired at night
Cannot lift its own face

LONG AGO,
            I     S P R A W L E D.
I WAS THE OCEAN FLOOR
            I WAS AN ASTRONAUT, A COSMONAUT
            Still impressive,
                               I am now
                               Harry Houdini
                               in the worlds'
                               smallest box

Less impressive,
I am covered in my own ****
which is soaking into the cracks between the linoleum tiles
in the ****** kitchen
of the ****** apartment
i live in
with my ****** ex boyfriend
(But he is not home)
  
Serenity, alone
It's rare
To feel love
From inside

Serenity, together
It's hard
To have help
from outside

An hour and a phone call later

A friend hoists you up and carries you
Mopping your floor
wiping your genitals
Tenderly, platonically
The way we hoped had already happened for the last time
A moment between you as a baby and you as a parent
Before you gained a real memory
But that moment is happening right now
But, somehow, your whole childhood is ahead of you still

I thought I’d be smited, right then and there

The red gravel spilling into the dugout

Was now plastic aquarium rocks

I was in a bowl, drowning underwater

It felt like drowning a lot of the time I was out there

Mostly because I was easily distracted and couldn’t play softball for ****

When Paige kissed me, I cried

Now, those pieces of red dirt
were a hellfire beneath me.

My religious upbringing was the kind that’s secretly stifling. The kind that permeates so deep that to act against it is to act against yourself.

This generational inherited catholic guilt.

The idea that I should be unimportant and unassuming and sinning was important in a bad way.

I knew I would only get one trip to the bathroom per service, I planned it carefully each week

So that it would take the most time

So I could stand in the great hall and twiddle my thumbs

As we were  forbidden to re-enter the chapel while the father was speaking

I am forbidden from many things as a child.

I’m forbidden from tears as if I’m not important enough to have them.

I am not stone and my tears are not blood. I am not a miracle. I am not a sight to behold. I am not a message from god.

I am not the prophetic ****** Mary in my mother’s dreams the night a relative passes.

I am not allowed to love without meaning.

When Paige kissed me I cried.

I had to tell everyone in t-ball that I was 5 when I was only 4 because my mother wanted me to start a year early.

I hid the sign up forms they gave us at school each year, but my mom would register me in person.

Every year she’d tell me, just one more year, this can be the last one.

This went on for nine years.

After I made my first communion. I asked to quit

I had to study five more years to make my confirmation sacrament, effectively promising I’d stay in the church,
before my mother would let me leave.

The irony was lost on her.

When Paige kissed me I cried.

What a cruel way to hurt someone. This was worse than the tripping, the taunting, the terrorizing.

Her tenderness.

I often wondered why she treated me as she did—I was already an ugly duckling, a left fielder, a loser.

Her mom was the coach, and she was the best on the team. They all listened to her, which meant they all hated me.

She’d call me a **** and pull my hair.

When paige kissed me, I cried

Why couldn’t it have been anyone else, why not natalie johnston

I never told anyone else, I decided it wasn’t my secret to share.

But I am tired of keeping secrets of what people who hate me did to my body.

Retrospectively, it’s easy to try to be flattered. I’m sure it was hard and weird for her to have those feelings.

I’m sure she expressed them as well as she could.

But I didn’t want Paige to kiss me.

I WANTED Paige to stop calling me a ****.

I wanted her get hit in the face with a softball

and I wanted it to shove her nose into her brain.

And I wanted her to die.

And

I prayed for her to die.

You own something electronic that glows blue in the night and you find it irritating, and I find it helpful

When I sleep over the first night
And it helps me find my way to the bathroom

What the fridge organization would look like if we lived together.

How much the landscape of my fridge would change if you stayed over for four days in a row

How when we move in together we’ll have to make a mature decision between slate gray and burnt orange for an accent wall even though we will each be firmly on different sides and neither of us like the idea of striping them nor mixing them together


How well would we compromise, how hard would you kiss me when we chose what you wanted for dinner

And in my dreams i dream of the dreams i’d dream in your bed

a dream in which I walk in a long bounding gait, like an astronaut ballerina

The restaurant
We ate at
The last time I saw you

Is now closed

I didn’t know that would be the last time I would see you

I didn’t know that would be the last time I
would eat there

You looked into my eyes for the first time since I picked you up to say “this is the best garlic bread I have had in my entire life”

It took us 47 minutes to get there

It took us 61 minutes to get home

Because we sat in the parking lot of a gas station I’d only been to once before, but liked a lot

I haven’t been there since we were
Either

We listened to that song

Not the one you quoted at “lunch”

Not the one about what you want and don’t

The one that asks why

I took you back

To his house

I parked a block away

I cried

And it waited a moment longer than a moment’s pause

It was rain resisting its temper, attempting tenderness

Each drop the poignant pain in a patient bladder when you hold to hear the end

Then, it drowned the saplings in the gutter

a violent politeness
an apology for impeding
a housewarming gift

i remember being a child
i remember the ignorance
i remember the jump rope that whispered, “how do people’s knees just /hurt/“

i remember dreaming of digging mosquito bites out of my flesh, but never daring to

i remember peering through the cream-colored tissue paper and seeing the blue and green toned ribbon rivers flowing underneath, wanting so badly, so innately, to dam them, to disrupt them, to desecrate and destroy

i remember watching television without glasses, i remember seeing the movies, seeing the bad but handsome men, i remember wanting their scars, wanting my own, wanting to save the broken glass pieces of the broken glass picture frame (more than i even wanted to save the once precious drawing inside), wanting to remember every memory, every mistake

every time i thought of pain, i thought
how, why,
when


and now, i have a warm and wretched wedding ring made of my own marred and mangled mistake

put there by a hot, hollow heat

and that hell-fire put there by either me as a careless adult


or by the wishes i had as a child

to be

mysterious
interesting
and
hurt

to have abundant axiomatic afflictions
to be scuffed-up and broken-in
to be a well-loved leather wallet
to be an other
to be seen as damaged and dangerous

to say “keep away”
to say “i have lived and you have not”

and maybe one day,
to say, “that one looks just like mine”

and eagerly pull at my clothing
and carefully cull
desperate to reveal myself
and find camaraderie in unforgettable pain

It feels as though every day your maggots eat at my brain--
every time i see something rancid, i think of you.
on television, I see the horrors of humanity, I think of you.

How can I blame you for eating away at me?
I am garbage,
rotten,
a horrible shade of gray-green.
You are maggots,
you cling to and feast on those like me.

Being who I am, being what I am,
it must've seemed like an invite.

When garbage cans become infested,
owners blame their own recklessness.
It is the conditions they created
that invited the maggots.

When I became infected with you,
I could only blame my own recklessness.
It is the conditions I created
that invited you.

the endorphin sigh                   of
                           a lover re-adjusting
                                             post-coitally
---a small rush---
                 a wonder what they're doing
                          a hope they won't leave
                                        a fear they may

A feeling of reassurance and import
                      as the fuss was only to feel
                                  somehow even more
                                              comfort
      ­                                     against you

               the intense relief

                                 of being        ------[and JUST being]
                                          (when you
                                                    are

    ­                                                loved)

SALVE
                           pungent and potent

             an emollient embrocation.

                           my sweet succor,

                   the
                           salve of my soul

6.
I was wearing my beetlejuice underwear.

5.
It happened.
I was a fool to think it wouldn’t.
Our lips touched.
So softly it could have been written off as an accident.
So light, so airy, so pure, so simple.
It happened so slowly and then all at once.
It’s all happening so slowly.
I love that.
“What did you think of our New Year’s kiss?”
How could I be honest?
How could I tell you the exactly three tiny lip kisses we shared today made my heart leap?
I think you’ve stuck and trapped me forever.
I can’t tell you how badly I want you.
I still feel your arm around my thigh.
My muscle memory clings to you. Wherever you touch, I blush.
My blood tries to leave my body, to touch you, to engulf you.
Every time you kiss my chest, I know you feel my heart race.

4.
Your love reaches me.
I know you feel how I feel.
Splayed o’er me, trapping me, pulling my arms above my head.
Holding me exactly where you want me to be, I feel safe.
It excites me beyond belief to feel as if it really is possible.
Your sporadic kisses became more frequent, closer to my mouth.
I keep expecting to be surprised.
I know you wouldn’t [kiss me] without asking, but I know you’d never ask.
I readjust and your innate fear of my leaving must be combatted.
Your body weight keeps me where I am, keeps me in your arms.
I wanted so badly for you to be mine.
I hadn’t considered what it meant to be yours.
I no longer want to have for me, I want to be for you.

3.
I want to buy you things.
I want to buy you everything.
If I could, I would buy you.
I would buy you, just to give you to yourself.

2.
Chewing with your mouth open, talking all the while.
I couldn’t help put purse my lips.
The way your hair frames your face, you look small.
I’ll put you in my pocket, I’ll get small too, and I’ll crawl into your mouth.
There’s this true form of love.
I can see it in the very light creases of your neck.
There’s a cold mountain range on the back of your hand.
I’d spend the night in a tent between the peaks of your knuckles.

1.
Today started with my lips on yours.
I knew it would.
I tried not to be impatient, I tried not to anticipate it.

I tried not to love it as much as I did.
Yesterday, your face changed.
My eyes began to see through you.
Your loveliness spilled out of your eyes and trickled down your face.
You transformed from what I knew to who you are.
I almost wish that it were hard to love you.

to you, a mere dust speck
sitting uncomfortably in your mouth
pearilze your discomfort
cover me
prevent your pain
coat me in your expectations
suffocate me in your well-wishes
smother me in a shiny sheen of your self-respect

take me as dust, make me into your pearl