Contents crumble
stuffed to the seams
drape myself in pretty charms
behind the facade
I'm still me

You are hedges
I am bramble
You are a button down-buttoned up
I am a sundress with no ******
You are Monday
I am the full moon
You are toast
I am olives and mushrooms
You are the riverbed
I am the babbling stream
Rolling over you incessantly
You retreat,
I attack
You are grass
I am chicory, clover, daisies
You are khakis
I am holey jeans
You are kindness,
I am instinct
You show up early
I come home late
You are Monday
I am the full moon
You are leather trimmed comfort
I am humid nights spent tossing
You keep both hands on the wheel
I dance mine in the wind
You are roots, deeply anchored
trunk straight and proud
I am light and airy
treetops blowing in the breeze

Who in their right mind would ever want to walk away
from this dreamhouse in the forest?

Is my mind right?

The mothers and sisters all say to me
girl, settle on down

How important is it to feel profoundly fulfilled?

Fantasizing relentlessly
depletes my energy

It’s just more exciting than rocking chairs

So I continue to do it to myself

I’m feeling inspired to write again
I tell him.
He looks at me with a pained expression,
And asks if we’re ok
Yes, I lie.
Straight to his face. Eye to eye.
Fine.
He knows the truth.
I am untangling knots, picking them apart with my mechanical pencil
Click click click
pick pick pick
It makes him uncomfortable-
My introspective searching
Quiet Contemplation.
He is Threatened
by my creative Expression
And the eager teachers that I attract
Disrupting our delicate balance
With their beards and intellect

I am lonely
I say to the dark eyed stranger
I should move, I think.
That would be the right thing to do.
Ignoring the self that I know so well
I stay.

******* slowly behind the thin fabric
I want him to notice my silhouette in the morning light

I will take you anywhere you want to go, he says to me and I want to let him

We fly through the night of a million fireflies-
Stumble downhill together in the darkness.

******* myself slowly again
behind the thin fabric
between us

I change out of my flowing skirts of freedom
back into the uniform of conformity

I should have given it to someone else.
shared the warmth,
passed it on

But I couldn’t let anyone else inside
Acting Impulsively...
Familiar.
Tendencies.

I hacked off one arm at a time
surgical scissors gutting the seams
Knit from the finest fibers

Golden angora
Gleaming boastfully
Slumped in the corner, the body of that beauty.

I stuffed it down, down, down
Then threw it out.
Ridding myself of anything, everything
reminiscent of the time of brown eyes