volume i
A Portrait of My Sixth-Grade Self
___________________­

Eleven-year-old fingers
swollen with baby fat
dig into the gaudy shimmer
of turquoise eyeshadow
encased in its shattered compact.

I apply the pigment,
erratic smudges extending
from my lash line
to just below my untamed brows.

The blue powder accentuates the swirls
of my fingerprints in dizzy figure eights.

But you can't quit your own skin
like you can quit ice skating lessons.

I am in the sixth grade
when the Popular Girls
in my class tell me that,
if I want to get a boy to like me,
I have to change the way I look.

I abide by the rules of the
Unofficial Mean Girl Doctrine:

{no. 1}

I mustn't wear sweat pants,
these sloppy Old Navy rags
that I have owned for three years.

See,
denim is superior to cotton
even though it leaves
cavernous indentations
on my stomach.

Sweat pants forgive
the extra swell of your waist line.

Denim punishes you
for what you don't have,
more specifically
for what you have too much of.

I ask my mom for skinny jeans
because perhaps if I can
shrink all that I am
into this blue, unyielding fabric
I will feel thinner than I actually am.

We buy the skinny jeans from Old Navy.

{no. 2}

My signature high pony tail is
unacceptable.

I should wear my hair down,
they profess.

I am not sure if this is
because of the tufts of frizz
that loom over my scalp
like wasted dandelion seeds

(I wish... I wish... I wish...)

or if this is just a necessary ritual
in the abandonment of my girlhood.  

After I unsheathe my curls
from their rubber-band Bastille,
their trial commences.

My ringlets slither
in hostile circulations,
executing frequent detours away
from anyone who might scoff
at their animalistic bedlam.

If only I could will
my spectators to stone.

Cuz no one ever dared
**** with Medusa
and her curls.

Instead,
I settle for a flat iron.

{no. 3}

Do everything in your power to be
Beautiful
including, but not limited to,
the laws indicated above.

Yet,
despite my grandest efforts,
it is never enough.

I am never enough.

I am the Walmart Edition
of what the Popular Girls
want me to be.

With my gaudy eyeshadow and the
cheap Dollar Store bracelets
that I wear around my wrists,
plastic flowers blooming
upon threaded stems
that nip at the hair on my arms.

One day on the bus ride home,
a boy from my class tells me
I am too hairy.

"Huh?" I ask,
pretending I haven't heard him.

"Nothing," he mumbles back to me.

See,
little girls are supposed to play with
jump ropes and Barbie Dolls.

They are not supposed to
play with razors as they strip away
every misplaced hair on their body
or consult Teen Vogue
for the latest beauty hacks
like they are Gospel.

This year of 2011/2012
has been engraved  into
the historical road map
of my every insecurity.
The legend of this map,
depicted in smeared globules
of sugar cookie lipgloss,
deliver me to my destination:

self hatred.

Mascara stains the
topography of my flesh
in inky, dotted lines

I follow.

I plummet
like the eternal run
in my stockings.

One way plane ride
non-stop
never to return
from this perception of ugliness
and then--

flight


down.

Every step I take
is catatonic,
an acute contrast to
the way my thoughts
bolt about the
convoluted labyrinth
of my psyche.

I couldn't stop crying this morning,  
so I took an extra Cipralex*
in the hopes that
my mind would slow down,
even though it has
only been twelve hours
since I last took one,
even though it is
a once-a-day type of thing.  

When I go to brush my teeth,
I stare, bemused,
at the bristles,
how it appears as though
they have been passed under
a fisheye lens.

I feel like I am framed
in a Margaret Keane painting.
Every object or face
I happen to fixate on
seems so comically magnified
that it's actually quite sad.

For I simply haven't the room
in this heart of mine
to house something so
colossal.

I am a broken home.

I try to cover up
the blemishes
the thumbtacks have
left in the walls with
glow-in-the-dark stickers
and photographs of
Audrey Hepburn.
But the stickers have begun
to bubble and peel,
the photographs never
resting flat against the surface.

Your typical bandaid solution--
but bandaids don't heal scars,
they only cover them.

When it is dark out,
the scars look like tree branches,
the type that scritch-tap
against the window pane
only to startle you awake
as the world approaches
the pinnacle of night.

I've strung up
fairy lights round
the perimeter of each room,
in the hopes that the scars
won't appear so ghastly
amongst the shadows.

Sometimes,
I plug too many
lights in at once,
the circuits overload,
and then--
blackout.

This dollhouse has shattered;
up until now,
the other girls and boys
loved to play with me,
though they never did play nice.

They pried my doors
from their hinges,
stole away the secrets
nailed beneath the floorboards
only to shun me
when it came to
their own indiscretions.

Atop the satin bedsheets
their tear stains,
some clear dollops,
some mascara-winged streaks
across the pillowcases.

But when I would cry?

The corridors would
ring with silence--
with the echoes of
nobody.

Empty.

Forgotten.

In my mutilated aftermath,
the little boys and girls
no longer had any use for me--
rarely does anyone wish
to entertain the broken.
A cruelly ironic situation
considering they were the ones
who tore me apart in the first place
(but god forbid
they ever take responsibility
for their transgressions).

So they hid me away
in their attics.
at the back of their closets.
underneath their beds
amongst the lost socks;
the dust bunnies;
the monsters.

This is what it looks
like to be continuously
taken advantage of
without ever quite
mustering the courage
to stand up for yourself.

I am the marionette girl.

Eyes a porcelain glaze,
I watch you leave.
I try to look away,
but the strings
protruding from my scalp
pull me upright.

There is no liberation
for the betrayed.

There is only sadness
for the betrayal,
only pills to stymie
the sadness.

But like these strings,
this sadness remains
tethered-to-me

(always).

~

"Why do you want to **** yourself, Jade? So people will miss you? Is that it?"

"I want to **** myself because I know they wouldn't."

The Spring
detests the girl
with the ivory complexion,
dollops of rosy flesh
sunk against her face
like discarded peach pits
(and discarded
is she.
forgotten
is she).

Mother Nature's
Alabaster *******,
they've dubbed her.

And tried Mother Nature
to preach tranquillity
to her daughter,
a reminder to always keep
still
amidst any tempest
****** into her path.  

But mother,
I am the tempest.

Come tomorrow morning,
the spring snow
will have melted,
but frigid I shall remain.

Dissonant and
storm-wrenched
I shall remain.

All the world begins to thaw
as I loll about in
the tundra of this loneliness.

When dawn arrives,
I will draw the curtains
before the rising sun
shoots me that beam
of apocalyptic grin.

The world is not ending,
you will tell me
(but mine is).

I have always existed
separately
from the rest,
you see.

The bright evenings and the even brighter mornings.

The unmistakably poignant scent of freshly-cut grass.

Marmalade sunsets that descend effortlessly into their celestial counterparts.

Flowers blossoming to profound vibrancy.

I wish I could tell the flowers
it is only a matter of time
before some wandering child
will rip apart their petals
in a ruthless game of
“He Loves Me
He Loves Me Not.”

(Child,
I Know this game
all too well—
the perils of picking
an even number
of petals).

And it is only a matter of time
before autumn dolls out
its wiltings.

I am also well accustomed
to the art of wilting,
you know.

The only difference
between me
and the sunflowers
is that the spring
belongs to them.

It is the epoch
of renewal,
of second chances
in spite of their inevitable
witherings,
both past and future.

But the present--
the spring--
it will always belong to them.

I know not
how it feels
to heal alongside
the sunflowers.

I know not
what it means
to shed the prospect of
death
even if it is only
temporary.

My heart is caught
in an impenetrable limbo.

Tell me
Mother Nature,
how do I move on?

For letting go
seems a foreign enigma
to me.

So,
really,
what else am I to do
but draw the curtains
each sunrise?

As I am left to weather
the deluge
while all the world blooms,
as I am left to
pour,
I desperately
await the
rain.

For it is only
in the rain
that I shall return home.

Dear Reader,

I give you permission.

I give you permission
to scar the spine
of this book
from the countless
times you will
crack it open.  

I give you permission
to highlight
and underline
and doodle
and annotate
these pages
until they have
no room to breathe.

I give you permission
to accidentally
drop
wet
spill on-
backpack-shove
the cover.

I give you permission
to dog-ear the corners
when you've lost
your bookmark
(and your way).

I give you permission
to break in these words
with the same
calamitous,
neurotic,
frenzied
passion with which
I wrote them.

I give you permission
to make this
Poetry your home.

Today,
I shared a post
on Facebook.
It explained that
manipulating someone into
having *** with you
is a form of ****.

To the ex-classmate of mine
who thought it was okay
to post a meme with the tagline,
"Regretting consensual *** isn't ****,"
in response
to my own post:

Not only are
you are a perpetrator
of **** culture,
you act as though
**** is some sort of
joke.

You think
victims "cry" ****
like the boy who cried wolf,
that their traumas are fabricated,
cheap shots
to seek revenge against
impotent lovers
and unfortunate one night stands.

Being manipulated into
engaging in any sort
of ****** activity
does not equate consent;
because
to manipulate is to
unjustly coerce someone
to submit to another.

Consent is not the enigma
society makes it out to be;
really, it's quite simple.  

Did they say yes?

I'm not asking
if they said no--
that's irrelevant.

Did they say yes?

The fact that
one individual
feels the need to
manipulate someone else
into having *** with them
implies that someone else
didn't want to have ***
in the first place.

Guess what?

If someone doesn't want
to engage sexually
with another person,
then that is not consent,
and just as ****
can be imposed physically,
it can also be imposed
mentally and emotionally.

So there you have it,
ex-classmate of mine--
you've said your piece,
and I have every right
to follow suit.

you are remarkably disgusting.

And I'll be ******* ******
if I sit around
twiddling my thumbs,
scrolling through
Facebook mindlessly,
while you belittle
victims of ****
for the purpose of
your own amusement.

Thanks for coming to
my Ted Talk,
*** hat.

I had my first kiss at the cinema, the contour of our silhouettes illuminated by the glow of the rolling credits. He tasted like Altoids and cigarettes, an ambivalent concoction of ice and fire. At one point, I'd bitten him by accident. Whether this was a manifestation of inexperience or (seductively, with heat in her eyes) hunger,  I'm not sure. But, sitting there in the thrill of My Something New, I was certain of one thing: this was a red carpet moment, the stuff of silver screens and glimmering Hollywood starlets and rows of type writer ribbon waiting to be transposed into something theatrical.

After the film, we sat outside a cafe a block over, the fever of summer adhering to the back of our necks like (giggling) misplaced hickeys. Smoke corkscrewing from the end of his parliament, he told me how John F. Kennedy was addicted to opioids. I couldn't help but think back to earlier that afternoon when he first admitted to being a smoker. How he'd asked me, "Is this going to be a problem for you?" hesitation rising up his throat like bile.

I smiled because 'Everyone's got their poison," I replied.  

And poison? Well, there's something so strikingly poetic about it, don't you agree?

(beat.)

JFK must have been Marilyn Monroe's poison, I think.

"So," I offered, "What do you really think happened to Marilyn Monroe?"

"How do you mean?" he said between drags of his cigarette.

"I mean was it really an overdose or--"

"Was it an assassination?" he interjected.

"Mhmmm."

Another drag of his cigarette.

"As they say, the simplest answer is often the correct one."

"Maybe. (beat.) But what makes for the better story?"

After two weeks of courtship, he took his leave. My mother's obvious, unwarranted disapproval was, perhaps, a source of anxiety for him. Me being freshly eighteen, he was also concerned about that (sarcastically) whoppin' three year age gap. (beat.) Not fully buying it, are ya?

Well, neither did I.

Here's my theory: his feelings (or lack thereof) were the reason he called it quits. And instead of being a man--instead of being honest, instead of owning up to the true nature of his intentions--he spun some relatively believable excuse. A coward's way of removing himself from a situation he doesn't want to be in. Surprisingly enough, I wasn't as disappointed as I would have anticipated, had I foreseen the end of our fleeting romance.

I was (beat.) fine.

It does make for a great story, after all. (wryly) But you knew that already.

Because for every Norma Jean, there's always a Marilyn Monroe.

Tell me then--who are you?

(beat.)

Girl curtsies, transitioning into a tableau of Marilyn Monroe's iconic pose wherein she attempts to hold down her dress as the air from a nearby subway grate threatens to expose her undergarments.

Lights fade out.

{Fin}

Tears percolate from
round, fishbowl eyes,
cheeks a sting
with salt
and loneliness.

I barter with the deluge,
hold my breath
for as long as my lungs
will permit
until a motley of colour
bruises over my vision.

And I can't help but think:
perhaps fainting is
the next best thing to dying,
especially when you are too afraid
to commit to the permanence
of killing yourself.

My only dilemma?

What am I to do with myself--
with the tears--
once I regain consciousness?