When I was too small to see over my own nose
My brothers told me that I wasn't really their sister,
in fact, I was an alien. Found under a rock.
In a cave. On the moon. I did not believe them.

I thought I would grow, become
long and beautiful and shaped like fascination
and all would see that I was everything
and strength, and softness. They'd forget my sins.

I worried when my friends grew tall- I didn't.
Playmates became unrecognizable,
cool, nonchalant, gorgeous, effortless.
I stared in the mirror as if it would transform me.

I fell behind. I did not bloom. Instead
I picked at myself, cruelly, cut little punishments
into the flesh of the thighs that didn't grow fast enough,
into the girl who didn't quite understand what she did wrong.

I wondered if everyone secretly knew that I was less.
That something was different. And in their way,
I think they saw, if only out of the corner of their eyes,
that I wasn't right. Like a spectre that almost mimics human.

The world made sense to them, and I studied for hours
but could not read between the lines and ascertain
why I had no home- where the changeling came from
and how she'd get back to the others like her.

I called to the moon, hoping they'd remember
that they once left a child under a rock somewhere
and did not find her when they returned.
I'm ready, I said, where's our ship? Where's my place?

But no one visits the moon anymore. Her dust is silent.
And if there ever had been a nursery in a cave,
it lies abandoned, mother and child forgetting eachother.
Never seeing themselves reflected elsewhere in the cosmos.

I grew up in my own time, but never tall, and
I was more frail than the strength of my convictions could imagine.
I could be beautiful for my species, the best of them, the last one,
but I am forgotten, small, an alien without a reflection.

It's true- I've never known how to keep my mouth shut.
I was born gasping like a fish, taking air from the room,
expanding lungs to fill it completely with verbosity and
wondering and questions without answers
and every word I'd ever steal from the library.

I felt compelled, obligated, desperate to capture
exactly the right words in a net quite tattered.
But if I found them you would drown in my need
to be heard finally, to be understood, to rush the ocean.
To let the same currents carry us home.

And for years, I exhausted you, annoyed you, overstimulated
without ever pausing to consider the erosion of our shores.
I became a selkie, desperate to lure you closer and teach you
how to grow graceful in the wet, so you could join me
and we'd forget we ever grew legs.

I never knew that water frightened you, the surf overwhelms you,
that you don't know how to swim in torrents of passion,
in whirlpools of thought, in pots of boiling water.
Too late, I heard you gurgling soft
and disappear beneath the waves.

i feed the birds when i can.
they dive down, chattering,
chiding, finally respecting gravity.
taking their fill, and if they can,
their neighbor's too.

a friend once told me that
we just needed to trust the birds
they come, they go, they'll come again
i think of how they do not hesitate
to **** on his car, but he loves them anyway.

i watch them from behind glass, behind bars,
sealed safely, sheltered, but alone
with arms that didn't know how to be wings instead.
i think today i'll buy them more peanuts
but i know my legs won't carry me there.

i tell myself that the birds need me,
that without my offerings to the sky they'd starve
but as we watch each other- close, but not too close
i remember that they're free to eat anywhere in eden
but chose to show me kindness.

Study yourself- measure the intangible thing exactly.
Collect the data, but throw it out - you exaggerated.
Describe your experience, in detail, but know that
it's just a formality, for insurance- you seem fine.
Results of our studies say you're simply not real.
It isn't possible, no way around it. No way around
the system we've created to keep mercy confined
inside the sterile bottle of preapproved problems and solutions.

This has never happened to us, so it cannot happen to you.
This is not something I've seen before- and I am God.
This isn't pain, it's nothing, just a sham, a trend, vanity.
This must be fun, writing sad little pleas for help, cancelling life,
quitting your job all for the sake of playing pretend. Playing sick.
This would all go away if you would just lose a little weight,
grow so thin we could tuck you in an envelope with the bill and
send you back home. Come back when you're dead.

Are you sure you're not just anxious? Insane? Confused?
Are you secretly drinking rat poison, but you forgot?
Are you trying to get out of having to enjoy life?
Are you sure you're not just hysterical, womb wandering angrily
through your psyche, whispering silly things it read on the internet?
Are you simply an interloper here to ruin our day
by insisting that you are not a healthy young woman
who simply needs to get a hobby? Get laid? Get lost?

Have you tried gratitude? Yoga? Mindfulness? God? Satan?
Tums? Shutting up? Ibuprofen? Having a baby?
Have you tried being an entirely different person, the right kind?
Have you considered that you're not medically but
spiritually defective, missing a piece of your soul?
Have you considered that we're simply not willing to try
because the only thing wrong with you is you
and you've become quite a burden to us all?

We're sure you think you are sick- but we're sick of you.
We're sure you're just looking for attention, sympathy,
to challenge us, to get some mysterious satisfaction.
You must love spending all your time here, paying us in blood,
ignoring our script, writing your own. We've got your number-
in just a few rushed moments, forty five minutes late, we've
disassembled you in our heads, lost the screws, determined that
you're simply of subclinical importance. Here's that bill.

Once upon a time I visited Hades
Just for a week, something like that.
I don't quite remember how I found the way down.
And I was supposed to be a prisoner, of course.
No one wants to be confined. I didn't.

But I was fed. Reassured, I signed the forms, still woozy,
and frankly then I was somewhat ignored
but there is so much unexpected liberty in captivity
if it's the cage you yourself have chosen
and that made all the difference. So I rested.

I planted grains there, buckwheat, barley, arborio
knowing I'd return to spring soon, also knowing now
that hell is temporary, that it just happens sometimes.
That my mind is sometimes lost and found again
like a train of thought, or an acquaintance's name.

And then I left. I've been back to the underworld
here and there throughout the years,
when I needed or wanted to visit with my demons.
But I don't need to stay- I just harvest what I've been growing,
nourish myself, rest a bit, replant, wave to Hades. And go home.

I wanted to write a poem for you.
I really did. And I tried. You deserve an epic.
I don't understand why it won't just fall out of me
The way my tooth did last year, or a swear does any day-

I didn't get why I couldn't put you into words,
packaged neat, edited well. Simple.
It should be, I thought. It's established.
You know. I know. It's clear. Sky's blue.

And perhaps that's exactly it.
I love you so simply I cannot complicate it.
I love you so wholly there's no room to doubt it.
I love you in a way that is reciprocated, complete,
entirely inscrutable to me. For once in my life, I am tongue tied.

You would think I could write a poem about that.
You would think I could write a book about you
then sell it on Oprah's couch, humble-smug
insufferably smitten and fulfilled.
But I can't. I didn't write this story. It happened to me.

You happened to me. And we're both still a little...
bewildered, might be the word. It's been years,
it's not new, it's not puppy love that brings you home to me.
And we didn't expect this, we never felt that it was owed,
or knew the world even had any of this left in it.

And yet, quietly. If I could just shut up and listen.
The epic writes itself, it isn't forced, it isn't marketable,
But it's true, innately woven into the feeling that I
am now home wherever we go. I learned to speak in tongues,
I ate a dictionary, I wrote until my eyes and fingers were crimson
but I simply could not write something this good.

All the best things are forbidden
(or on the way to being so, or on the way from it)
gluttony-lust-mischief-drugs-rebellion-falling in love
especially with someone who sees you when
the mask is off and you’re done performing

It’s frowned upon to occupy your body completely.
It’s impolite to feel both the pain and pleasure your body gives.
It’s not proper to swear and emote and exist in a way that
challenges others, or makes them think further than they were trained to
within the context of their life.

When they ask you how you are, lie.
When you know you’re right, back down.
Make yourself small enough to fit into the moment
Of brief consideration they’re offering you- do not ask for more-
Do not allow yourself to be anything but opaque, pleasant. Smiling.
But not too wide.

Tuck away your anger, your sorrow, the aching, even joy
Because it threatens them. They do not know how to live in
the spectrum of colors and sounds and shapes and chaos
that is your world, that is the only way you know how to live.
You must terrify them.