She sits in a cracked vinyl chair
in a room full of octogenarians,
as gunsmoke plays quietly
in the background-
James Arness is saying something
about the only woman
he's ever loved.

She digs her fingernails
into her palms and stares
at the floor with its repeating
faded patterns.
She doesn't belong here,
matching pain and numbness
to lifespans triple her own.

The nurse calls her name
and she stands so slowly,
bones creaking, wavering slightly
as she waits for the fog to clear.
She pads softly down the dim hall
and they leave her in a quiet room,
quite alone.

The doctor calls her a pretty young thing,
asks her what she is doing here.
He gives no answers,
only more medications
and a sticky sweet smile
meant to placate.

She walks away into the sunlight
and a song plays on repeat in her head:
I Know it's Over.

*****

Just a word like any other,
you spew it into the dark air
and hope that it will stick.
After all, shouldn't we all
be marrying our high school sweethearts
and ******* in the dark
to settle into bone numbing
missionary pleasure,
just like the good book says?

And if you're not married,
shouldn't you be knitting
or biding your time
silently *******
in an empty house,
willing God to shut the **** up
as you ******?

I'd rather be *******
in the moonlight,
in dimly lit offices,
on cliche sunset strewn beaches;
dancing naked in rivers
and sprawling over
sun-streaked sheets
ripe with leftover love.

Radiant heat seeps
from my wide eyes
to my long fingers
to my small *******
to the arch of my spine
to my uneven toes,
and, my god, isn't this
what it feels like
to be alive?

You can take your Sunday best
and your mewling children,
your whitewashed walls
and your plastic sofas.
I'd rather
be wholly, phenomenally
woman- shedding eons
of contempt,
laughing like Caligula
over the power that something
as simple as this body
that I carry around
can wield.

I am not strong
as synaptic junctions
stutter and fail
and blood pulses hot
against thin arterial walls.

I cram sticky little secrets
into the space between
the mirror and the wall
and put on my best
**** eating grin-
hiding behind words
that slip and lukewarm
nihilism.

I am not strong
as outlines blur into
shimmering watercolor
and my hands grip the railing
for a fleeting sense of
functional equilibrium.

I give you only the things
that I deem worthy of letting go-
only the meek and sickening
remembrances of insanity,
the things that I can
romanticize aloud.

I am not strong
as my brain fills with
black thoughts and
death wishes like saccharine.

I am not strong
but you've never asked me to be.
You know that muscles pull
and that I only have the strength
to push.
You haven't tried to iron out
the lines of my smile yet
nor made demands
or promises that lie unkept.

I am not strong,
but perhaps
there is something
more.

It's always either too much
or not nearly enough.
I cringe at the echo
of voices that carry
and words that slip
over my teeth
like molasses,
but the silence
can be deafening
in an empty room.

I vacillate between
thoughts that fill up spaces
like black balloons
and smiles that sink ships-
twisting between
tepid emptiness
and emotions that press
on all of my soft spots,
intent on seeping out
through my pores
like little pinpricks
of madness.

Caught somewhere between
a *****, a child, and a housewife;
I want deft hands to
wrap up all of my
loose ends
and in the same breath
I want to shave my head
and curl into cold corners.
I want to run through
fluorescent meadows
and twirl round in cotton skirts
before receding into
the bleak landscapes of my mind.
I want to make him breakfast
and fold his laundry into hearts-
then get drunk on cheap wine
and **** like that's what bed springs
were made for.

I want to say the words
that are festering inside
of my worm-eaten skull,
I want to see the disgust
on their contorted faces,
but on the other hand,
isn't it nice to be a pretty face;
seen, but never heard.

I want it all,
I want none of it.

I think of you
like hands think of folding;
like birds think of singing.
I think of you
without meaning,
in the middle of my sentence;
while I'm standing in line.
I think of you
and my heart sounds off
dangerous rhythms
reminiscent of your words.

I think of you
and I wilt in remembrance
of something like love
that we beat to death
with words like sledgehammers
and glances like knives.

I think of you,
and I try not to miss you
too much.

I'm growing weary
of wayward glances
and haphazard fingers.
I crave hands that grip
and fold around my edges,
if only so that I can tear them away.

I'm growing weary
of false prophets and
kisses that are sweet
as wild raspberries.
Give me words that scald
and love that makes me question
everything I've ever wanted.

I'm growing old
and still feeling like a child.
Fickle and temperamental,
I brush away men like flies
to waste away in a mirage
of my own creation.

You stitched your name
upon the black walls
of my mind,
casting shadows
of folded hands
and unmentionable
fallacies
over the wide open spaces
in the whites of my eyes.

and I cringed
at your fingertips;
wilting
like the frost bitten crocuses
in my neglected garden;
receding into the relative safety
of silence,
soft as the echo
of an empty room,
bitter as a bird
who has forgotten
how to sing,
enduring
as the memories
of your hands
around my throat.