Whenever I get a lover again
I'm excited to give them kisses on the nose
And to feel the oils of their pores
And smell their skin
Their face skin and hand skin
I'm excited to be close and to touch and love and **** and laugh and do things I haven't done yet
I've had physical intimacy with so so so many people
And I wish at the time I had been brave enough to try to love them too
But they were like me
Which is why we met
They were scared and unhealed too
And they just wanted the blurry rush
The untamed ecstasy
The freedom of meeting a stranger
And taking a $17 potion
And ******* like animals

And now
I just can't wait to have partners I can hold close
And kiss their noses
And feel the smush of the nose skin
Against the cartilage from the pressure of my lips

Just recently I had a sort of lover
An almost boyfriend
And sometimes I think I cherished the closeness
I sobbed in his arms once about my dad
And him letting me do that
It felt like a great kindness at the time
And I think it was one
But it was a kindness I deserved

I could text him if I wanted
And have someone again whose nose I could kiss

But he's kind of a **** so I wont
Which is annoying

I want to meet someone who's not a ****?
Is that so hard?
Isn't it too easy to take people for granted?
Recently I found birthday cards from an ex who I loved and who loved me so dearly

It wasn't until maybe three years later that I
really cherished the way he treated me

He was a good guy, like such a good guy
But ultimately I wasn't attracted to him and he was very needy and it all devolved in the end and I hurt him a lot and he wanted me to be small

Today I saw my hot neighbor clearing out his car from the snow
And I fancy him
Or I want to anyway so I went out to clear my car
Thinking we might chat and laugh
Instead I just cleared my car and across the way he cleared his
And then I went inside because my hands were cold

And anyway, I promised myself I would
Date a woman next
Trying to go to community events to put myself out there
Desire

I used to enjoy the brush of longing against the inside of my skin
I don't enjoy it so much now
Restlessness and feeling empty for the presence of no one else around me
But I also just watched a sad movie about a woman who is dying
And currently my dad is
Maybe he's not actively dying
But he's got a foot in the door

But maybe the new treatment will work
Maybe he will be able to enjoy a burger again
Maybe I won't quake when he walks up the stairs

Though now that I don't live at home it's easy to pretend
That he's okay
To put him from my mind
And he would absolutely say that he's okay

I thought when I moved here that I would sit on the floor
And have a BIG BIG CRY about the pain
Of the past year

And I haven't had that big cry yet
That big relief
I want it
But I'm scared of it
Just like I was scared to tell
A hottie who I made love to countless times
That I cared for him
Because the one time I did open up and share about my life
I couldn't have ***
I couldn't even look at him

I think about him often actually
I think about that woman too
I can still see her hips swaying on the way to her car
She knew I was memorizing her waist in my shorts

I loved her with such abandon
And then she too treated me bad

And he did too
I don't know why they came into my path
And I don't want to be a victim about it either

But **** man
I memorized them
The way you memorize someone you'll know forever
Without even trying
They are memorialized in my mind
And no where
Absolutely no where to be found in my life

And they don't even exist how they once did
She is absolutely better and she is chaos
Truly terrifying to me and my nervous system
He's better too

I guess I'm much better than I was
And better that they're not in my life
She still makes me shrink
Him I don't care about really

I guess I should get her out of my energy field
Where her fingers and hips and lips and hair and scalp and knees and *** and ***** and ******* and freckles and neck still live

It makes sense, she is a love witch
I guess she put lots of love spells on me

Who knew this is where this poem would take me

Claws click on my hardwood
Thump
A petite beast lands on my bed
She stalks over ruffled blankets and
Yesterdays sweater
Tentative paws
Test the certainty of my torso
7 purring pounds keep me company
Kneading paws
Dazzling eyes like emeralds
Fur softer than soft
Lounging on my belly for the nth time
She bestows upon me the peace of her closeness

Just when it’s all falling down
And I’m tumbling with it
When the sunrise looks grey
And the tree branches too spindly
When I’m nearly tugged under the waters of my melancholy
Into the currents of despair
I eat a bit of aged cheese
And it speaks to me in the language of pleasure and nuance
It holds my tongue
A deep, floral, aromatic effervescence
Smooths out the wrinkles of my being
And it’s alright
A light starts on my tastebuds
And expands to my body
And then even the tree branches respond
Now elegant like ballerinas
The sunrise coaxed into a more vibrant peach
Reflecting on the windows of the apartments across the way

the immunotherapy it seems is not working
the CT scan results had some "big brain words" as my dad called them
he showed me his phone
not looking too closely at the words as he passed it my way
he's smart enough and so am I
"residual/recurrent tumor"
"enlarged"
"narrowing of the luminal space"
we know what this means

the tumor grows still
squeezing that space where food wants to go
making the tube
that protrudes
from his waist so necessary

brown slop full of minerals and vitamins and calories
poured into the tube by his loved ones
so vulnerable
so bare as he lifts his shirt to be fed
by a daughter 50 years younger than he

his skin so dry and sagging
once inflated by muscle and a bit of fat
now clings to his bones

the skin is pink around the tube
and wet
raw where the tape is ripped up 4 times a day
we keep a bandage there
it hurts when he showers and he flinches if I accidentally jostle it while inserting the syringe

to make your aging, dying, thinning father flinch
is a pain I want no one to know
but how many countless women have cared for their aging fathers
in this way?

I didn't ask to be a nurse

Since he showed me the damning results
black letters on a white screen
I've avoided him
I don't want to talk about it
What other option is there?

Maybe the drug administrators at John Hopkins
will think of something new
Maybe he can go back on the other immunotherapy
my mother seems to think was working best.

I can picture the tumor
so resilient and pink
ripe with blood vessels
new thick flesh
cuddled there inside the esophagus
gatekeeping saliva
from entering the stomach
so he has to spit it back up
walks around all day with a little cup for the saliva he cannot swallow
food he can't swallow
and because he refuses to chew and spit out delicious foods as I've suggested we do together
he doesn't even taste
the only thing he tastes
is burps
that rise with chemical gusto to push through the tumor's gates
"that stuff is nasty"
he says with emphasis
"hardly people food"
he says with disgust
Now I mix his goo with strawberry or banana smoothie
to make the suffering a bit less
hoping he isn't assaulted with nasty burps from the goo
that entered his stomach
through the tube

I see how death roils around you
How it looms and tickles your space
How its tendrils hang around you like
The reapers cloak on a wind

In the night your demons come to dream with me
I don’t know why they come
But they show me the way they have filled you
For so long
How they have lived in your husk
And now that husk is not so habitable
Now that husk doesn’t have the energy to sustain them
They can’t feed from you how they once did
Now that you can’t feed yourself
Now that you must be fed
Through a tube from the hands of your wife
So on their way out
Your demons, your company, the spirits you’ve channeled for many many years
Come to your daughter
To reveal themselves in the night

One so sick and strange
So small with oily hair mother never took the time to wash
A forsaken child beaming at the attention I give her
To lift her from your body and put her in your bed
I listen to her sounds and animations
And she goes into a soft sleep

Another so bold and mean
Large and angry
Cold and resounding and sure
This beast was inside you all these years
Shape shifting you to yell at your babies
In a booming voice
With out kindness or remorse

Who will I meet next?
Who will leave you next?
Will I meet the last when you are on your death bed?
Or will they leave you and then by some miracle your body will start to work?

Who are you without them?
Do you know?

Today, my mom and I obsessed over my kitten's beauty:
"she's so precious"
"mirala come se pone asi"
"a work of art"
"her eyes are BEAUTIFUL"
"un modelo"
"preciosa"
resounding in the air around her
as she tore at the rug by the door with sharp claws
motivated by each word of praise wafting around her.
Then I said:
"I think she could have been a show cat, but her personality won't allow it"
and then mom got busy with her breakfast
and I had some space for my thoughts
Sometimes, when I notice something new about my cat
I wonder what this new knowledge
Can tell me about myself.
I think I am just the same as her
I could have been a show girl, a show something, a trophy wife, or by now a print model getting botox to fend off the aging that tugs on my laugh lines
But my personality, won't allow it.
Too sensitive, too knowing for that 'could have been' that's not for me.
Too disregulating to my nervous system to be beautiful and voiceless.
Again, again, again, again
Thousands of times in this mind I contemplate myself
As if I am constantly being beheld by a thousand eyes who will judge my value as a thing of beauty
Will that ever end?
I don't think so and I suppose it's something to accept.
That's being a woman in this life isn't it?
Being a cat, always beheld.
Or who cares if it's being a woman or a cat.
It's a distinct part of my psyche to be beheld.
Just like it's an integral part of my cats life to be beheld and praised as she tears up a vintage rug.

I used to confess
Confess myself all the time
Confessing parts of my personality
Disowning myself
While playing the martyr to my flaws

I don’t do this anymore
Suddenly
After years of work on my inner walls
I hear my no’s and yes’s clearly
I respond to them shortly thereafter
And I no longer  confess
That I’m very sensitive
That I have a past with trauma and pain
That I have unique needs

Part of this is knowing I’m not alone
We’re all sensitive
We all have pain
We all have unique needs