i am self-indulgent,
pity party girl.
the word confessional sits in my throat
like a sore
like a ****
i don't know how to speak
without letting it all fall out
and what am i if not
confessional?
if not the record-keeper
of all my family's worst sins?
how long have i sat
blindfolded
while my loved ones spit
horrible truths at me?
if it were not for my humanness,
i'd have died buried with all of it
eating at my heart.
so here i am, open-palmed
sin-catcher,
mouth unstitched for
the confession.
can you hear me?
Oct 9, 2018
Oct 9, 2018 at 3:54 PM UTC
Body; caution tape closed-up casket.
Traffic light stuck on yellow. I am caustic, I say,
I am battery acid. I flash all the
bright colors. Defense mechanism
won’t save me now. My soft victim-skin screams
danger-red against your palms.
Force myself into small doses. Become immune,
numb to all of this. Finally.
Sometimes poison feels a lot like
I love you; I need this; It’ll be quick.
I am child-small again, like the first time,
call this the third. Wish my body asleep
like the second,
frozen.
Start to claim this slow contamination voluntary.
A part of me. Easier to swallow if I say
I wanted it, than to tell them
I never learned. It is so hard to run from something
you have sat still for your whole life.
Oct 31, 2017
Oct 31, 2017 at 12:14 AM UTC
**I.
It was the beginning of a mild Indiana summer, the kind when your lips are still recovering from being chapped through the inconsistently cool Midwest spring and your skin starts to stick to vinyl when pressed against it for too long. It was a summer of cold-sweat chronic nightmares and letting go. This is when I told you I would be leaving that fall, said I was doing it for myself, said it would be good for you, too. I’m not sure if you believed that. I’m not sure if I did, either.
II.
I spend the morning of the move on the living room floor with all my things strewn out in front of me, figuring out what to leave. I watch the light filter through the blinds, shifting across the floor, trying to guess where it would end up when I finally depart. I clean the bathroom for an hour, trying to leave everything prettier than what I had made it. Don’t worry about it, you said, it will all be a mess later, anyway. When I shut the front door behind me, it sounds different. Absolute. I circle the cul-de-sac three times trying not to cry, watching the trees start to shed their skin. I wonder if you saw me.
III.
We play phone tag for weeks as I try to put off the inevitable. In a stroke of bad luck, the real you answers on a bitter Sunday evening, instead of the recorded message I had heard so much it now sounded like a dirge. I say nothing at first, and then everything I possibly can. I did all I could; I tried to make it up to you, you reply, ambivalent. I agreed even though I hadn’t wanted to.
IV.
We took a Polaroid of our hands clasped together the last day we saw each other. I later cut it in half and threw it out with some rotting orange peels. I had wanted to burn it but remembered how I get around fire. I retake the photo somewhere on the west coast with my new boyfriend. I call it a memorial. I finally say goodbye to your red sweater long after I had already done it to you. I wash it five times trying to get you out of it, pressing it into my skin to make it all mine. When it doesn’t work, I throw it out to rot in refuse with the Polaroid and the orange peels. I call it giving up.
V.
I am such an unreliable narrator, how I paint myself tragic victim in every story, and you, culprit. I wonder if I’ll ever let you be the martyr. I think maybe you were the one who suffered, even though I’m told that can’t be true. It’s just Stockholm syndrome, my therapist says about the way I condemn and praise you in the same breath. I still don’t believe her. I think about my grandmother and her mother and my mother and me, and all their bad blood in my body. I tell her victims can be monsters, too.
Oct 26, 2017
Oct 26, 2017 at 9:25 AM UTC
The trains are always making me late.
Stoplights blink red.
Spend eternity here.
Feel the ground shake.
Make my legs tremble.
Feel tremor take my bones
railroad-hostage.
Watch the wheels roll over steel tracks.
Think my body splayed out on top.
Wheels make ****** body, bare
all the teeth
crush and snap.
Inside becomes chewed up and spit out.
Think yet another unconscionable death.
Another way to make the body break
open, tear out everything leftover,
push it through the softened skin.
Think another coward’s thought.
Call it what it isn’t.
Call it growing pains.
Call it impulse.
Call it coping.
Think through all this passing
train-time.
Oct 23, 2017
Oct 23, 2017 at 9:22 PM UTC
she comes back smelling of a different city
cold, sickly sweet aftermath of a harsh evening
i do not mind.
i do not understand anything
but i can sense the sickness she carries
through everyday disasters
sitting on the bathroom floor
pulled into the folds of herself
crying through breathing exercises
tender days when she does not eat anything
but fills my bowl
and lies with me
for hours
flowers sharing my name
wilted on the windowsill
i wonder who will care for her
when i share their fate
i can do nothing about this
but i am here
sometimes
we are worlds away
our time intersects
briefly
we greet
and part
but
right now,
she is Home
right now,
i am Home
Sep 30, 2017
Sep 30, 2017 at 6:44 PM UTC
Slick, sticky vinyl is making a sweaty mess of my skin
I think about all these Train Station Men
and how they must look just like my father
After I leave This One I can still feel his hands on me
Just like I can feel the 2 a.m wine session in the living room
Every Tuesday night making dinner together in the kitchen,
Making a ritual out of loving each other in every room
I can scrub my skin until I am bleeding; raw
but
I cannot take his memory from the blueprints of these rooms
I do not know if I can ever live in these four walls
unmoored from the context of us
I try to leave before I am left
And
I do
this time
I am finally crying in a forgettable place
The bus ride is lonely.
Sep 30, 2017
Sep 30, 2017 at 6:34 PM UTC
I am pulled out of the party
by my own self-preservation
half-sober mess
wanting a little bit of space
in this travelers' town
I wander the moonlit path of this unfamiliar place
barely lit sidewalk bleeding into waterway
aqueous reflection of a familiar face
pulling me in like the tides
I see the Moon
Tonight, She is half-full of Herself
Forever living in phases
As I do
There are so many versions of me
I have not allowed myself to become
for fear of showing off too much
or not enough
What is so glorious about giving up all of yourself anyway?
I look at the Moon
My only comfort here
She has known me my entire life.
Sep 30, 2017
Sep 30, 2017 at 6:32 PM UTC