I've spent an alarming amount of time just sitting in a car
while parked in some front yard,
beer in hand,
jamming out to favorite songs.

Every point you try to make will never get made.
Everything you say will be twisted.
Before long, you'll realize that you'd been better off never having said anything at all.
After it's too late, you'll spend the rest of your life trying to correct this mistake.

I've been searching for a fountain for this entire visit.
People don't seem to wish much here.
I had a two pence piece saved in my pocket
And I took it everywhere with me
Just in case.
And maybe as I walked it absorbed my uncertainty
My misery
My acceptance
My love and joy
Maybe it grew warm in my pocket with the weight of everything coursing through me for these weeks.
And here I am, sat alone and silent by a bubbling fountain
In a soaring white hall
And the light glances off coins in its depths
They glimmer and wink, giving the water a false glow.
So many wishes.
At the bottom, where the water drains, I can see them piled, half hidden by stone.
People who sat like I sit and poured their desires into a coin
Or people who walked casually past and, on a whim, found a penny and tossed it in,
Their wishes have collected here, like sand and pebbles at the emptying of a river,
The residue of us.
I take my coin out and hold it in my palm until it grows hot.
I have always known what to wish for before.
Every moment, always known where I wanted to go.
But this time I turn it over and over in my fingers, trying to read something divine in its ridges and valleys, its rough edges.
I think for a long time.
Finally, I decide
Not to decide.
"Help me."
"Save me."
"I want to be happy."
Because for the first time in my life
I don't know what will get me there.
I don't know what I want to happen.
I only know what I want to feel.
I want to be happy.
I want to be happy.
I want to be happy.
Help me be happy.
I repeat it in my mind, trying to find a clearer answer, a better wish,
But all that comes, cyclical, is "I want to be happy."
I throw the coin in and it sinks to the bottom, indistinguishable from the others.
I've made my wish.
So why do I feel so lost?

She steps into the dark swamp
where the long wait ends.

The secret slippery package
drops to the weeds.

She leans her long neck and tongues it
between breaths slack with exhaustion

and after a while it rises and becomes a creature
like her, but much smaller.

So now there are two. And they walk together
like a dream under the trees.

In early June, at the edge of a field
thick with pink and yellow flowers

I meet them.
I can only stare.

She is the most beautiful woman
I have ever seen.

Her child leaps among the flowers,
the blue of the sky falls over me

like silk, the flowers burn, and I want
to live my life all over again, to begin again,

to be utterly
wild.

If my Valentine you won't be,
I'll hang myself on your Christmas tree.

It was many and many a year ago,
  In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
  By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
  Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
  In this kingdom by the sea:
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
  I and my ANNABEL LEE;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
  Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
  In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
  My beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
  And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
  In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
  Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
  In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
  Chilling and killing my ANNABEL LEE.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
  Of those who were older than we—
  Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in heaven above,
  Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
  Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
  Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
And the stars never rise but I see the bright eyes
  Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride,
  In her sepulchre there by the sea—
  In her tomb by the side of the sea.

i can remember, quite accurately
the day of your birth
the name of your mother
how you like your food spicy

how you have never had a first kiss
the shape of your mouth when you smile
the feel of your rough hands in mine
and all such simple truths as this

is it so hard for you, in turn
to remember how i cannot deal
with nights as lonely as this
how it is only your voice that i yearn

how i might not make it another minute
without checking to see if you have perhaps
acknowledged my existence, in a separate
universe than which we live in, that of pure silence.

i am tired. i have been cleaning,
solving sudoku and crossword,
writing, and playing my violin
with nobody around to witness
the way my hands are never still

i want them to stop shaking. once
in motion they never seem to listen
to me when i say "it's over, you can
rest", instead they find new ways
to involuntarily release my anger.

my shoulders are aching. i cannot
stretch and reach my toes anymore.
i packed my bags today. truthfully,
i wish i could just hold you again
(even if my arms tell otherwise).

they laugh at my use of the word 'feminism'
it makes me different, makes me unique.
a woman asking for a voice is like a child asking for a gun.

they cringe at my use of the word 'feminism'
it means i am angry, means i must be gay.
a woman demanding respect is like a beggar asking for more than you're comfortable giving.

i want to feel safe,
i want to be acknowledged,
i want to be valued,
to be seen as a whole person,
not an object of ****** desire-
a mother,
a wife.

i want to go a day without my validity being questioned,
but i am just a girl,
and that's not how things work.