Everyone in me is a bird.
I am beating all my wings.
They wanted to cut you out
but they will not.
They said you were immeasurably empty
but you are not.
They said you were sick unto dying
but they were wrong.
You are singing like a school girl.
You are not torn.

Sweet weight,
in celebration of the woman I am
and of the central creature and its delight
I sing for you. I dare to live.
Hello, spirit. Hello, cup.
Fasten, cover. Cover that does contain.
Hello to the soil of the fields.
Welcome, roots.

Each cell has a life.
There is enough here to please a nation.
It is enough that the populace own these goods.
Any person, any commonwealth would say of it,
"It is good this year that we may plant again
and think forward to a harvest.
Many women are singing together of this:
one is in a shoe factory cursing the machine,
one is at the aquarium tending a seal,
one is dull at the wheel of her Ford,
one is at the toll gate collecting,
one is tying the cord of a calf in Arizona,
one is straddling a cello in Russia,
one is shifting pots on the stove in Egypt,
one is painting her bedroom walls moon color,
one is dying but remembering a breakfast,
one is stretching on her mat in Thailand,
one is wiping the *** of her child,
one is staring out the window of a train
in the middle of Wyoming and one is
anywhere and some are everywhere and all
seem to be singing, although some can not
sing a note.

Sweet weight,
in celebration of the woman I am
let me carry a ten-foot scarf,
let me drum for the nineteen-year-olds,
let me carry bowls for the offering
(if that is my part).
Let me study the cardiovascular tissue,
let me examine the angular distance of meteors,
let me **** on the stems of flowers
(if that is my part)..
Let me make certain tribal figures
(if that is my part).
For this thing the body needs
let me sing
for the supper,
for the kissing,
for the correct
yes.

and here i am again
at the intersection
of pedestrian language
& old wives tales
swallowing gum
like 7 year memories
opening umbrellas inside
cause i can't seem get away
from all of this rain
i ******* with my left hand
cause i was told
back in highschool that
"it feels like someone else is doing it"
it gets me wondering
about the difference between
losing you and finding out
that some one else found you
or my sleep
or lack thereof
its starting to tear me apart
i keep having this dream
where you are in
an unfamiliar body of water
trying to wash my poetry
off of your hands
or the one where
something happens in my chest
every time you sit
on someone else's bed
i'm tired of feeling like something you've misplaced
but don't have the heart
to look for anymore
tired of you saying my name
like you're trying to bury it
i'm tired of wondering
if you can tell the difference
between the absence
of my voice & silence
the other day
i almost started sobbing
at work when a woman
asked me about
our equipment
i was explaining how
things come apart
and almost mentioned your name
it made me think
of how you used to say
things like "what would you do
if i showed up on your doorstep
one day?" now, i haunt
the windows in my house
i don't leave for weeks at a time
i sit on the porch like the dog
you didn't shoot behind the shed
the one that refuses to die
until you come home again
i told somebody once, that
you didn't even know
what my voicemail sounded like
i wonder if they thought
it was because you
are so important that i never
let it ring that many times
before picking up
or if you dont know
what it sounds like
because you've never called
you can't be the ****** weapon
and the search party
i'm tired of all the seats
to the ferris wheel in my chest
being empty
tired of your voice
being the one i look for
in abandoned places
that one sound i beg
to bounce back
down vacant hallways
i just seem to stand there
in all of that quiet
like someone looking for a mistake
on an eviction notice
so i guess the hardest part
isn't letting go
it's forgetting
you ever had a grip
in the first place
and since you've been gone
i wonder if when
you pushed yourself away from me
you used your left hand
so it felt like someone else did it

I was a child with apple cheeks
when I learned my art was worthless
unless kept within a stranger’s frame
and I would grow up to realise
it never stopped at the
development of fine motor skills
when toy stores gave me gaudy idols so piercing
fluorescent pink dyed my soft palms
and turned my fists into regal waves
I was too young to imitate
and too poor to afford the surgery
putting the stick in my *** to fake it.

I had dreams of touching the bottom of Mariana’s Trench
and bringing clouds home to my Mom to decorate her kitchen.
If you told me then in a few years
my life would always centre around
whether my blankets were blue or pink
when I took my first breaths
or be defined by the chasm in my body
I didn’t even know I had
I’d question not for the first time
if adults put their brains in jars when they stopped being kids
and dye myself green with grass stains.

Fifteen years later
I am a muddled grey,
an “anti”,
a prefix implying rebellion
when all I ever wanted
was a better chemistry set,
some peace and ******* quiet,
and the wholeness I never knew
would be so painful to miss.

I want to be pretty.
Not in the way magazines do it
where everything is tucked, twisted, tuned and polished
because I am not an ideal.
And I will never be the Mona Lisa
with a coyness that leaves people wondering
what I've smelled, touched, tasted in
every moment of my life,
because I am not a treasure.
I want to be the kind of pretty
where my little sister can see a galaxy of pride in my eyes
and know she's ten times more beautiful
than I could ever be
(or at least she'll know I think so.)
I want to be pretty in the way that
strangers don't know if I'm kind or
powerful or
manipulative
and are timidly curious that maybe I'm all three.
I want to be pretty in the way that
I am all three, and so much more.
I want to be pretty
so that when I'm older
I can be half as beautiful as my mom.
I want to be pretty so that
my friends see honesty in the corners of my eyes
and security in my fingertips
and hold my gaze with evenness as my equals.
I want to be pretty,
the kind of pretty where you bring me home,
we reflect each other like lighted mirrors
and your mom will smile that knowing smile
because in three years you'll want to see a ring on my finger
and she knows her baby will do it in five.
And I want to be pretty so when my hair is damp,
my eyeliner cakes my face like charcoal
and a towel is wrapped around my body...
When I look in that mirror I see fireflies and lightning
and not an abandoned house
in a quiet street
with the attic light left on.

Your eyes
                        see through me.
Sometimes they*
                                  catch me off guard
                                  and I stumble over my words
                                  and I have to catch my breath
                                  and I know you see me fumbling.
Save
               for *maybe the sun,
               I've never seen anything
               shine so bright.
Me
            and you,
            I see us in those eyes.