I get aligned and my life begins to feel smaller
More manageable
It looks smaller
And I feel better
I wonder if I’m disappointing my dad
By living so regulated
And at ease
With no ego pushing me to be famous
At every turn
It makes me melancholy
To think he would be disappointed
By my lack of stardom
What a pressure I’ve held all these years
To rise and shine
Big enough to him
To go and claim the light
The stage
The fame
He believes is mine
It makes me melancholy
And frustrated too
And nauseous
And confused
I’ve applied to teach high school art
And I’m really excited about it actually
Which
If I let it and I let those familiar voices
Which scream that I MUST BE FAMOUS
If I let them talk to me
The idea of
Living near good friends
Eating good food
With my good boyfriend
Making a good album that I’m proud of
Playing in a good band
Having good days
And teaching art
To make a good paycheck
With good benefits
All of this good makes me queasy
But it feels so good
The simple life
The slow life I’m allowing
Feels so good
Is it okay?
Is it okay that I don’t crave to be great?
The illusions fades
And I love my good mornings with my cat
In the sunshine with my hat and my tea
I remember the phrase that came to me
When I left LA
I don’t need everyone to hear my voice
But I want my voice to land on those who can hear me
That feels good and true
There’s some phrase I never remember
That maybe describes my conflict
Diminishing returns
The law of diminishing returns I think is what I’m thinking of
But anyway it’s a thing where you’ve put in so much work for so long
That you feel like it’s not worth it to give it up
You have to stick with it
Because otherwise your years and hard work pounding against an immovable wall will be wasted  
But it’s a fallacy
Because the years are already wasted
And you just don’t want to admit the waste
So you continue to waste
This morning I was thinking
So what if I stay here 3 years
And save up and
Then I move to Italy and buy one of those 30k villas and renovate it
That’s fine with me
And in that time get to meet my new long lost sister
See my dad healthy again
Enjoy more seasons and my mom as she moves into her new seasons
I wasted 8 years on a dream that hurt
Why not spend 3 years enjoying a quieter dream that comes easy to me
A life that is MINE
Not a life that craves to be validated by millions
Just so I feel worthy of existing
I am resolved
My small good life is good enough for me and it feels
So good
So I will let this melancholy sit with me as long as it needs
But my good simple life is good
And I’ll stand by it
And alter these pants I got at the thrift store
So I can wear them when my cover band plays our next show
And I’ll study for the teacher exam
And I’ll play with my cat
And work on my album
And have sleepovers and
Write poems
Smile so much
And breathe so so deep

Jeans tight up to her waist
And a thick *** *****-line
water dribbles on her nails
From a jar of water that still smells like Ragu

I'm a sleek owl
With hooded lids
And talons razor sharp
My neck turns round
I weigh 2 pounds
And my call is like a harp
Who knows how I see the world
Who knows what I recall
Who knows if I live
To **** the kids
Who rule the streets  in early fall
I stay up late
And contemplate
Or maybe I don’t even think
Maybe I live in this tree up high
Counting the seconds until I can blink.

I miss being seen
By someone
Intimately

My ******* haven’t made eye contact
With other ******* in a long while

Though only since October 9
And now it’s Jan 1
And that feels like too long

But I won’t go prowling in the streets like I once would have
For someone yummy
To make me feel seen

Because I’ve long exhausted
The part of me
Who’s intrigued
By a novel human
By their novel *******

No
Now I want someone worthy of the next decade of my life

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

Do you ever have those days
When you wish it was night?
So guilt could slip off your shoulders
And down onto the tile
That you’ll sweep up tomorrow sometime
Between sunrise and lunchtime
Or who knows maybe after
You’ve got lounging to do
If only the sun would take a nap too

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

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

I had a dream about two men
And one of them was you
Another was a fantasy
But he left me feeling
Note quite used
Not quite blue
Not quite safe
Two adjacent rooms
One for me
One for a man
You were in the man room at first
We chatted during the day
I showered alone
At night we watched movies
It felt like home
*** was neither in the air
Nor nowhere
With fantasy man I undressed
Playing coy seductress
In the shower he followed me in
And though I’d invited him in
Suddenly I felt something quite akin
To fear
To too much
Too uh-oh
A man is in my shower
And his ***** is touching my leg
And standing tall
With a cheeky smile on my face
Rather than showing
The cringe
And the fear
And the trembling lack of safety
Coursing through my heart
Is all I can manage
I freeze
I give up my autonomy
But it was my fault
Because I never told him
In fact I told him come in
Then after that we laid on the couch
Calves and arms and toes bare
And giggled while we watched a movie
And that part I very much liked
The movies cast us girls to ruin don’t they?
And the boys do too
And the girls do too
And we do too

The first time a man came in the shower with me
I was a teenager
And it was scary
I wouldn’t let him turn on the light
He was touching me
And I was scared
It all felt washed in blue
And I was scared to ask him to get away
Because if he says no
Uh-oh
I was scared to ask him to get away
Because I was desperate to be
A woman
And I thought that is what
Strong women do

Anyway
I liked the part of the dream with
You
Where *** was neither in the air
Nor nowhere
Best

Though a part of me balks
At the thought
This part says
No! I am a liberated woman! I am *** positive! I flaunt my curves and men bow and I am in power and they kneel and they **** and I *** and I **** and they *** and and then after that we can watch a movie
With calves and arms and toes bare
Now that elephant
In the room
Has been had

But with you
Nothing needs to be bare
To watch a movie
And I like that

I'm 28
and I'm reclaiming my virginity
I've just realized in my bath
That *** is optional
Which came from the realization that ***, good or bad is amoral
***, good or bad, has no innate wrongness to it
**** is wrong
*** cannot be wrong, it can only have varying degrees of good to weird or mind blowing or awkward
Just like a sandwich
Of course it is more than a sandwich sometimes
Sometimes it deep and energetic and connected
Sometimes it has ramifications
Sometimes it makes life
A sandwich cannot make life
So the good and badness of it carry more innate weight
But in terms of morality *** is eating a sandwich
A poem from my bath
"*** is 100% apart from ****
But it happens in the same place
Here in this body
That remembers it visceraly"
I said this poem and thought
That this would make a good moment in a play
A woman in a bath sitting up tall in the tub with her arms against the wall, saying "*** is optional" then slumping and sliding down until she was submerged, breathing a long loud sigh on the way, only to muster the courage, arm gliding upward first and body trailing behind to sit up straight and again say "*** is optional" and to repeat.
And then I wondered if this part of me
The artist
that has visions and is mysterious
It felt clear to me in this moment that my creativity
Came from the confusion in my body of *** and ****
And wondered if my creativity, my artist, knew that she had come from this confusion
And then it dawned that maybe she has always been
Maybe I haven't been enjoying ***
Because I've been having the wrong type of ***
I don't know what the *** I should be having is
But I am willing to try things
And then I realized I am maybe scared of what I might like
And then I realized I was scared
Because lately my fantasies have been me naked in heels and chained, walking into a room of naked huge hard men who I have to ask for help because I'm a damsel in distress and then they touch me and **** me
And that sounds like an actually very scary fantasy to come true
And then I realized that maybe it's my fantasies
That don't match up
Maybe I want completely other stuff
Then I got worried of what I might like again
I rememered my ex-partner who one time made a sound like a baby in a tub when we were in the tub on shrooms and his **** was hard
And in that moment I thought oh god is he into adult baby stuff
And I was super icked out by it
And then just now I thought, did I only think that because maybe I am into adult baby stuff?
And then I thought am I into adult baby stuff?
I'm not but it does really upset me
In various ways
And then I was like oh right of course,
Because I was molested as a baby
And then I remembered the ****** I have when I'm alone
and how only two men have every given it to me
Out of the nearly 100 I've ******
Only two
Maybe I shouldn't be ******* men?
Maybe I'm actually really gay?
Though women haven't given me that ****** either,
The ******* fantasies I have
Leave me feeling so vulnerable
But *** that doesn't do so much of what I like in those fantasies
I don't enjoy very much
It would just be so much better if he choked me
Or held me down
That would be more exciting
It would send a thrill through my body
But afterward I'll feel exposed and
I'll want someone who loves me
To hold me
And if someone who loves me
Is there is there to hold me
I may shut down in fear of intimacy
Probably I will cry
Why can't I have that ****** with partners?
I have a fear that my squirting and the ****** I have with ******* doesn't count
Because that one ******, the best one, the one that waves me and quakes me and send my ***** into outer space, the readiness of my lips, the bloat of my *****, the viscous wetness that drips down my tingling *****
Doesn't come out with partners
Something faster comes, something hot and wide and flat, something high shine and piercing comes, white hot pleasure. Dehydrating waterfalls that spill out, calming the white heat before the next attack of pleasure
I'm exhausted by the latter
I'm exhausted by ***
I'm underwhelmed by *******
At this point
I've been ******* since I was four
I've had *** with all the hotties
In many countries
In all the seasons
In every stage and phase of romantic attraction or plutonic mistake
And I get it
I've squirted on so many people
I've *** in my own hands so many thousands of times
And I'm exhausted by it
But of course also I crave it
I think?
Or do I just WANT to be a sexually healthy woman who WANTS it
and I remind myself again,
*** is optional

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?

Im feeling many feelings
I’m feeling sort of tense
I’m feeling pressure to better
And feeling pressure to relent
To fall into my bodies rhythm
If I don’t I fear I’ll fail
At living the life I’m supposed to live
And doing what I’m supposed to do
Supposed
What a word
A sibling of should
Both children of pressure
Far off descendant of good
of dreams
And desire and visions
Im scared of my visions I suppose
I’m scared of the knowing I know
That I’m not a go getter
That I’m happy in the home
That I’m a creator and a lover and a dancer
That I’m an artist in every way
That I’m happy in the kitchen
And I’m happy on the stage
I’m happy writing songs
And writing scripts
And painting with paints
Money come my way
I’d be so pleased if you would
Land in my lap
So I could frolic in the woods
And this makes me want to cry
I want to be taken care of
And I want to take care
I don’t want to run a business
I don’t want to manipulate clients
Then the thought
That maybe I’m burnt out
And if I rest I’ll understand the grind
And I’ll want to be in the workforce
No
I don’t and I won’t
I want a slow life of joy and friends
And children and love and good good food
And my cat
And long hours spent writing in the sunshine
I want a private life
And public performances
I want a small circle of wonderful friends
Who know me
I don’t want to be tired
And I’m so tired now
Is it the eclipse or my period
Is it my dads cancer
Is it the pressure
I feel the pressure and I must step to the side
And let her fall on deaf ears
I don’t hear you anymore
Pressure
But I’ll lay here in the grass beside you

Feeling like maybe for now music is too much
For now all those sounds sound like noise
Silence accompanies the flick of my lamp
And the sudden quiet of my mind
Much better than the
Constant ***** beats and nasty flows
That used to charm my ears
Now the sound of crickets in the city
Are a luxury I simply can’t override with a synth pop track
Now the way my sweater brushes against my skin
The way my glasses rattle when I spin
Around the room to a tune I’m playing in my mind is all I want to hear
My neighbors air conditioner
The random honking car
The voices echoing down the hall
All these anonymous sounds call to me

They have no master
No order
No point
They exist simply because they do, they are collateral and in that they are everything.
They are collateral and they make up the experience of one entire sense.
And I only want to hear them speak
To know what my world sounds like

Honestly the way
That Maroon 5 is constantly playing in my head
Is music enough for me
Just to sink into a pocket
Unexpectedly while I order coffee
“Give me that red velvet”
Making my hips twitch and my brow hike
Is enough music for now
Harmonizing perfectly well with the din of the world
With the sounds of my body
With the breath from my mouth

Who Knows? Maybe moans retire
Maybe silence is something else to explore
Maybe deep in the quiet a voice is calling
Maybe here there’s a rhythm I have yet to explore
Of course there is.
Of course it calls.
Of course there’s more.

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.

And you did text me
About 10 hours after I wrote that poem
You texted me just as I knew you would
And what do I do with that little hi you sent
Into the ether?

What am I to you? That you text at
4am on a Saturday
Were you still up from the night before?
Were you drunk?
You must have been.
Or were you just waking up?
You’re 24 I think,
So it feels guaranteed that you were drunk
You sent the text then passed out
I wonder if you even remember sending it this morning
I wonder if you’re even awake
Or make you woke up at 4am to go to the gym?
And the in the clear headedness of an early morning you texted me?

No, no I know what it was
You had just had *** with a woman
And it wasn’t what you wanted it to be
And you thought about me
And my *******
And my face and my bed
And the lamp and my apartment
And you thought that THAT was good ***
THAT is what you want
Not whatever reasonable lay you just had
So you texted me

Stupidly.

Unfortunately I feel extremely confident that this is where your text came from
Aren’t you disappointed in yourself?
Are you insane?
Well I do think you have some mental health issues
Some mania

This morning I wondered if I’m like some god you pray to
Asking for guidance
Hoping you’ll find it between my legs
Hoping I’ll give it to you at 4am

Stupid text

I feel that a vital part of myself
Is shriveling up and dying
As each day goes by and no lover brushes their lips to the back of my hand
Is this the last remnants of my ***/love addiction?
I haven’t experienced that wild reckless craving for another body to slam into mine in ages and ages
And I don’t experience it now
But rather a loneliness that scuffs at the dusty taupe floors of the echoing rooms where intimacy used to dance, supple and pliant
Now my intimacy palace sits empty
It’s been so long since the twinkle in someone else’s eye matched the twinkle in mine and I got to be bold as I chose to fall in for a moment with them
Since I met someone who touched that deep part of me
Or maybe that deep part of me has been sleeping for a very long time
The part that isn’t afraid to love, that remembers what a high privilege it is to connect body and soul with another
Maybe it’s waking up and as it does a maddening hunger for touch yawns wide in my center
Maybe I overused that privilege and abused my ability to connect and condensed millennia of intimacy into a few hours a week
And so it hid away from my carelessness
It sunk into the walls
Slithered under the floor boards
And waited until it was sure I wouldn’t over use, abuse and be careless with it
And now I think it’s starting to get sure of me
Trust now fills the air in these vacant halls and the disembodied bits of my intimacy start to come together
Creating a bit of a pit just there at my diaphragm
A pit that longs for lovers past
That laments my empty bed
But that also praises the new halls I’ve crafted for it


All this because I desperately want to text my ex
Or worse
Write her a letter
With a poem that praises her body and soul
That I wrote after she broke my heart
I want to mail it to her for birthday with a note that says “I wish we lived closer and things were different and you could be my wife”
I’d send it to break her heart a little because mine is still broken
I don’t think hers is  
From when we last spoke I know her heart is still high up on the shelf, hidden behind her guards
And I know nothing of what her intimacy palace looks like
But I wish I wish I wish
I wish I could meet someone like her
And that’s the rub isn’t it?
She’s still my high standard and she smashed my heart up

And now that beast of longing awakens and craves her so badly
The loss of her feels deafening even a year and a half later
How would I survive someone new? Who I loved with that kind of admiration, tenderness and force?
If it were to end? I’d have to place another gravestone there in my chest beside hers. I suppose I should just let her go, dig up the grave and send her into space. But then what will the beast of longing gnaw on if not her memory?
I’m afraid it will gnaw on me
Oh the melodrama

The feeling of brown grey trees at dusk
The sky is lavender or cornflower
With peach highlights on the clouds
From the low setting sun
And you’re running in the woods toward home
And you start to lose sight of your feet among the brown grey tree roots, the brown grey earth, the leaves, your brown grey shoes
And for a moment you feel a little spooked
The light fades beneath the blanket of trees
Though when you look up
The sky is so sharp and clear against the branches
But it provides no light
A breeze blows cool
And silence gathers around you in fearful clumps
But then I remember oh I’m running back home with my brother
And he too can barely see his feet
And we’re okay
And we had a great day in the woods

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

I want a foot massage and tea made for me
I want to acquiesce and please
I want to back and forth
I want to have breakfast at the cafe by my house in the morning with my lover from the night before
I want good *** and better moods
I want someone who I don't know yet

I want *** and touch
I want more I want you to bite my teeth
I'm hungry and I'm tired and I want someone nearby
Who knows how I like it
Who know how to grab my thighs
I want a fantasy
I want a dream
I want someone who can tease me and make me feel super green
Super lean
Don't be mean
Make me feel seen
I'll be a dream
It can all be easy

I want to laugh and dance around
I want magic and sleepy breath sounds
I want what I like and nothing more and nothing less
I want someone I don't know yet

It’s stranger than strange to look at photos of me and you
From when we were together
In each photo I can feel my resistance
My confusion
This is my boyfriend?
I think he’s hot but not in a way I want to ****
I think he’s my pretty special friend
A beautiful muse
A unique and wonderful specimen
Someone I appreciate more than I can say
But the man I let in my bed?
How could it be you?
I kept expecting other people to validate my concerns
To see a photo and say really?
I don’t get it
But they didn’t so I’d think
Alright he must be right and we’re a good match
And I stayed until I met someone with whom I couldn’t deny sincere attraction
And that was the end
Of pretending to want you the way you wanted me

I love my people who feel deeply
And speak with their hand on their heart
I love my people who dabble in the depths
Every morning and night
I love my people who open their fingers
To let moments that no longer serve slip away
I love my people who have worked hard to find childhood
Who feel the joy of a six year old when they
Find a daisy on the side walk

Do any other bisexuals out there know what it’s like?
I’ve read in some blogs and Reddit threads that others feel attracted to men when they ovulate
And attracted to women the rest of the month
And mine is just like that sometimes
But other times it’s not
As the days turn long
And the evenings warm
I want to sink my teeth into a big hairy chest and be held by large rough hands
Even well into my luteal
But I’ve told myself
That whenever this retreat from *** ends
I must must must date a woman next
Because each time I date a man
Even a big one with a hairy chest
I still want a woman
Which of course brings me to my dream
Of having a relationship with both
A happily ever after throuple
It’s also been so long since I’ve been with a woman
Over a year
Maybe even a year and a half
That I barely remember the luxury of someone else’s breast in my hand
And then I think maybe I just want lovers here and there
And that in my 30s I’m still young
And that plenty of women have children in their late 30s and maybe I can have a little *** renaissance again
But this time without all the **** and the burying of pain
This time with presence and seduction and responsibility
It’s been ages since I’ve been ****** dumb
And with someone as high strung, smart and **** as me
I just think it should happen at least once a week
But I’m scared to go out there and get it
I’ll list my fears here:
That I won’t be able to attract a woman I’m sincerely attracted to
That a man, no matter how attractive, will turn out to be disrespectful and trite
That I’ll fall in love with a woman and then I’ll have to deal with pretending to not care what my mom thinks
That I’ll be jumping back into *** too early
That my still healing body and soul are not ready yet and that I should wait a bit longer
That I’ll keep waiting and nothing will happen
That I’ll get exactly what I want, my man and woman, a happy **** sweet kind funny loving relationship where we can grow and create life and dream and cry and laugh
And that somehow I’ll still find ways to be unhappy
That having what I really want
Will make me outcast
Or that in order to keep up appearances we will have to hide our truth

Oh the drama in these fears
And then I think well alright then I should just go for it
But how?
On apps? No
In bars? I don’t like bars
At the farmers market? In the city? But I like to stay at home and dance around naked and paint
And I don’t want to go hunting
I want to just happen upon my lover somewhere
But I keep not happening upon them

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