I have w e i r d anxiety
And I don’t quite k n o w where to put it
I feel off
Like watching a black and white movie when you’re a kid with a theme that’s b e y o n d you and knowing that you don’t quite know what it’s about
A lack of an aboutness with yourself
Much about what I do and where I go and who I see
And triumphantly living this l i f e
As I w a n t
But feeling a l i t t l e far from m y s e l f

I’m writing a bookmaybe I should get back to it

He’s just a boy
Who likes his friends
And prioritizes his comforts
And that’s so lovely
I can go to bed early
And feel like myself

Nonchalant, like a toddler who pulls your hair out of your scalp with strong, damp little fists.

Nostalgic, like wet carpet and dusty, musty, summer camp drawers.

Ticklish, like a scratch you can't itch that seems to live just between your collar bones and your chin on the thinnest part of your skin.

Bitter sweet, like days old, left over red.

Whole, like cows milk ripe with chewy, sticky cream still hot from her utters.

Bright, like sunset on a day that you never wanted to end, haunting the night that you never thought would begin.

It's been a while since I've been here
Since I've done this
It is quiet and calm but still passionate in its own way
Sometimes do you ever feel like the passion you have now is just burn marks left on the wall from a flame thats gone out?
I guess I do feel like that sometimes
But probably only when I'm tired.
Being self aware is a hard thing sometimes,
You can't lie to yourself like you used to
and you realize all the lies that kept your roof up
And now theres no roof and I'm that much closer to the stars because of it but sometimes there's a breeze that blows too cool
But then the other night a new friend
Asked if we could all share some poetry
And I realized
That magic and childhood and vulnerable smiles live all around me
All the years thinking
Knowing there was no one like me
No one to call "like me"
are long gone

Where to even start, I don’t know
Maybe with your wholeness.
With your completeness.

Sometimes maybe it feels that there is too much,
Such a great muchness in you,
It’s not too much.
It’s exactly as much as you are.
And it’s a blessing and a beauty and a bounty
That you will always overflow and you will never run dry.

Just the shine in your eyes could make the whole sea glimmer.
Just the zeal in your laugh could contest with all the lemons in the world in zest
Just the shimmer of your hair!
It could send rockets to the moon.

The point is
That you,
You,
You,
You,
You are the point.

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

Space is deep and dark and blue black. It expands behind us, never ending, never beginning. Stars are sprinkled there in that space, some we engulf as we move our massive star outlined bodies, some become part of us as we move. We are magnificent and huge 3-d outlined beings, we are billions of years old, or maybe we have always been. We are not made of matter for there is no matter, only the blue black ‘space’ dotted with the lights of millions and trillions of stars; some of which make up our massive forms; and our consciousness, our knowing, our silent communication, our utterly immortal existence. We exist there with each other, there is no breath but we breathe each other, there is stillness except for ripples of love and knowing passed between our conscious mind.

We have been here for so long existing, taking millennia upon millennia to gracefully move about in this space, so massive and grandiose, then we wanted to create, or we needed to create. So we began in some way to create life and substance in our ‘souls’. Or maybe we willed souls to exist by our consciousness and from there we made light, maybe it was a black hole or rip in the continuum, but whatever it was, it was necessary and magnificent. From our diaphragm areas flowed blue, sparkling streams of light, shooting, streaming out of me and out of him.

Nearly facing each other square on, our individual streams of light and blue love and diamond brilliant swirls of matter caught each other and began to spin. Just like a wind storm on earth, two winds from opposite directions will create a tornado, a spinning, so did we. We created a soft and new little system, I wouldn’t quite call it a solar system yet, with the planets hardly developed, more like soft, foamy spirals trying to form sphere-like mounds, with suns in the middle still shy of their own little light. Everything so perfectly baby blue and new. Shooting stars soft and content, a milky blue and sparkling atmosphere enveloping airy spheres of new, new matter - we made something our own.

Something different from us existed, there between our bellies we kept it safe; there existed no to threat to it, but we longed to keep it close, watching it spin so comfortably between us. As we watched our little system develop, we too developed, our consciousness grew, we became even more gentle, with tenderness, a graceful antiquity and adoration dripping from our starry forms.

What do you want?
A fragile heart responded:
'To be alone in the dark with you'
A comfort she longed for but had never known.

Now in the shower,
                                          lights off

                                                            ­              alone.

Good. Goodness.

A good that only a 'you' can know and no one else can know it.

Like dusk: created. An Atmosphere, A Mood.
A place to mend the temptation of that want.

Alone in the dark with you?
                                                                ­                   No
                                                    Who is you anyway?

Only a feeling, an idea, a fragile comfort of someone else's something else?
                                                           ­                       No
               What she wanted then, was this moment.

It just hadn’t happened yet.
The comfort of this space.
Existing in her body.

In this musky, soft, grainy mood of dusk.

It is all made of she and she, and she are one.

Where is boyhood lost I wonder
And why must the sweetness there get lost
Swimming in a masculine parade
Of shades of rage
Does he know at 9 years old
That somewhere between 10 and 11
He must pretend
He doesn’t want to be held?
Looks from elders who were shoved  
Tell him to be rough
To give up girly stuff
To get big and buff
To be quiet and tough
To call girls *****
To disdain getting cuffed
To maintain
an illusion he doesn’t need love
Sameness painted across generations
Taking its toll
While sleeping giants get old

So let him be soft
Whimsical
Effervescent
Delicate

What is it like to be a man, I don’t know.
Ask him.
Does he know?
Is it cramped?
cold and hard?
Is it full and bold and large.
I hope
I hope
It’s a bit of it all of it
I hope
Every angle gets explored
And every piece gets adored
And that boyhood softens
Rough knuckles

How is it
That I meet someone even more lovely
More interesting
Taller
Better dressed
With more to say

And still
I rate their kissing
On a scale of 0-how you kissed me

Still I wish it was your touch that traced along my spine. Even though you didn’t do it as well as this new lover, I still want to know how it would feel from you. I want your fumbles.

Three times we slept together
that’s it.
That’s nothing.
But. Clearly it’s quite a lot.

Because still I compare every new lover to the way you’d throw your head.

Still I keep a guard up between my iris’ and their smile.

Still I feel like these are passing time until I see you again.

And for what? What do I want?

I honestly would just love to get lunch.

See what you look like
In the sunlight
Eating a sandwich
Smiling at new things.

What makes you belly laugh?
I don't know.
I just know that I like how it felt in the dark, in the sunlight, under fluorescent lights, nighttime lit by passing cars peeking though my window, I like how it felt under the moon.

And that I'd love to sit across from literally any table with you.

Loving [you] me now, as [you are] I am,
In each moment that [you] I experience [yourself] myself
is
is like


what a body of water must feel like.

Affecting itself continuously,
Supported unconditionally regardless of matter or variants.

It is strongest, most full, most complete


when together.
In one container.

But even separated,
In different states,
With different influences

It can never cease to be.
Never

Always: it is
always you
are always I am
always.

But I am best when I am purely me,
Being me
Regardless of my conscious awareness that I am.

I am.

Hairy knees and skin that’s just learned to tan,
I’m here and I’m not and loving a lot and I’m ******* as much as I can,
A woman alone in strange cities is never alone because,
When she has her self all the rest has been and is and was.

Retreat and respite for a mood that shifts from good to better when the sun shines brighter and she gets some sleep,
Doing as I please is my bliss,
Going a way that looks good, saying goodbye when I decide,
Pleased and rested with an hour of sleep and feeling like I ******* shine.
Divine and mine with pleasure cooing in my spine.

Starry eyes and gnarly lies.
It's all just a trick.
All of it. Every bit.
Every sensation.
Every ounce of what it is to feel is a trick.
That sneaks up on us,
That mutes us,
That frees us,
That mutates us, if we want.

To think that not so long ago I was looking at starry eyes and falling swiftly into fits.
That I was captured by a heightened feeling of 'only you'.

Those two sentances need not have been. Just to say "To Think", is enough.
There, you've done it, you're a human, congratulations.

But for the sake of my self and the purposes of this prose:

I used to think: only you.
But now I know: every me.

The heady deep, that starry gaze, the sensation of falling into the night with your fingers on his lips...
It's not love, love.

It's just you. Experiencing you. As you decide that you want to.

I don’t know
But I know that I’m liking this beau
I’m pulling back
And in the moment I feel off
Until I don’t
Everything feels good
And conversation feels easy
Until there’s one little lull
And then suddenly I feel that it’s always been a lull and I don’t really feel queasy
But that’s because I’ve already started pulling back
I also think to myself
It didn’t feel this way with that other one
Who pulled me in a direction I didn’t choose
Who wanted things from me I didn’t want
And who was not so generous
But could offer me value
In ways I know other people value too

This one doesn’t require any anything of me
This one is happy to watch and let me be
Paranoia sets in as I wonder in what way
He’s trying to take advantage
Trying to sway

But then I remind myself that’s an old way of thinking
An anxiety not meant for this party
And then I’m left feeling lulled
And awkward
Without much to say
Feeling confused because this is different
There’s no game
It’s so simple
There’s no jaded ulterior motive
There’s no underscore of disapproval of anything about me or the things that I’ll become
There’s no needing me to change
There’s no need at all

There’s a like and a desire that is plain as day
And the same from me

I don’t feel scared
I feel cute
I feel confused
This different and good
I am actually safe
There’s nothing nipping at my ankles

The conversation does flow
Actually
But sometimes it stops and I think that’s normal
It’s my choice to be okay with a silence or to feel like it’s gone on forever and always will

I just get a little tired after a few hours
I think that’s normal too though
To get tired with someone who’s also open
Who I don’t know yet very well

There’s nothing spoken into the middle
No commands
No plans

So I get tired with nothing to follow
No expectations to uphold

With the other there was a regimen, a schedule, an intention
But with this one the intention is just to be present
Just to be delightful
Just to exist and enjoy or not

It’s new to me to have nothing resisting
To have no little fear growing
To have nothing that seems like it will grow into a problem
On my plate

To just have this good, plain as it is and honest of itself until it changes into something and honest about that too

I am open and he is open and I just get a little tired leading
I think he also gets a little tired leading
Maybe
I don’t know, but I could ask and he would be honest

He’s really nice
And I get prickly when I feel off
And I only felt off bc I felt rejected
A rejection I created mind me
And that’s okay

Okay so here’s the play
Look at my past
Look at who I’ve been
Look at the models I’ve had they’re ****** up
But look at my future and where I’m going
Look at how good I treat myself
Look at what I want and what I’ve been getting
It’s drastically different than the past

This is different too
And actually really good.

I will choose to go with the flow then
I trust my feet to step on solid ground as I lay my heel

Strange to think
How many men have known your body
And I know in my heart of hearts
That none saw you the way I see you
I'm probably a fool
To say this

I felt that you had revealed yourself to me
And me to you
When we woke up in the morning
Sprung out of bed fresh
Clean, new, sweet
And took in each other's forms
With such splendor and delicacy
Wrapping you in my arms
While you wrapped me in yours
And a completeness I'd never known
Blew through me
As your lower belly expanded
Deep, full breaths into mine
Inviting me to release
Womb to womb
Cheeks breathing puffs of air
Beside each other
I've never known a fuller love

A shy 'wow' from your mouth
At the sight of my curves
Holds my heart in suspense

No man has ever seen me the way you did
And many men have seen me well
With eyes that see me only the way they can
But you saw me with a tenderness
Only woman can express
And I believe I saw you the same way

The secret language of women
Who love women
Know that I saw you as only my eyes can
In the caves and forests
In the soft moss of my mind
Near the bubbling creek
In the rivers and sweet leaves of fall
The bending stems of wild flowers
In summer wind
I saw you

How do I quell these cravings?
When the longing flees from my mouth and ears
Just to linger in the back of my knees

When I can't get you out of my minds eye
When I wish I had known you longer
So you would still know me now

Should I have memorized your finger tips your hand prints your pink lips... more?
And should I have you touched you twice more at the door?
Then should I have wrapped my legs around your knees and not lay coyly atop the sheets like a cat also teasing your breath from your cheeks?

Should I have devoured your lips a hundredth time?
If I had would you be in my bed tonight?
Beckoning me
Eyes aglow as I parade myself around the room.
Like a horse at the races ready to make me croon.
Desires more than met when I lay on your chest?
You’d look at my mouth and feel pride
Knowing just what it’s like inside.

Or maybe no,
You would still be gone,
And I would still be better for it,
And the backs of my knees would still feel sweet
From the touches you chose to forfeit.

I took a bath
The other day
After looking at your Instagram
And seeing a photo of you on your birthday
You are wildly different now
Then you were when I last saw you

You were so sweet with a sleepy in your eye
And smile in mind
So confused when you asked “What?” “Why?”

Now honey you’re almost ugly in your darkness  
But the curve of your brow, the shape of your teeth, the beak in the center of your face
I’m still fond I’m still sweet on all of it
I still want you in my bath
But I guess I probably don’t want you, you
I want old young you and old young me
Sitting in my tub
Making bubbles
Playfully disrespecting each other
You were a bit of magic in my potion bottle
That never stops giving
I have no angst or pain associated with our parting
Because our meeting was so perfect
I wonder if you remember it too
Or maybe you blocked me out

Either way, you’re in my mind
Always laughing in the dark looking so ******* sublime.

Isn’t the wasp
Who acts like a bee
More a bee than the bee
Who all day, only has to be

sometime
s

I wish

I

was a fashion designer or someonelikethat maybe living in newyork being botheredbymynicotineaddiction but happy to not have to go stand intherain

wearing bellsleevesonatuesday and feeling n i c e and callingmymotherbefore dinner and having lunch withmybest friend and her dog

and living a life asleep

sometimes

it feels good towishicouldbe someone else and to know that instead i will alway
s

b e  m e

The blue dust of death
Lingers by your elbows
A skeleton in a t-shirt
Who insists he isn’t hungry
Who insists he doesn’t deserve
The dust used to sit around you in big puffs
Blown in fresh from the latest round of chemo
Now it swirls by your ears
Seeps at your nail beds
Swishes in the wispy little hair you have left
Now we’re doing the natural method
Many methods exist
And we’ve chosen one with good results
From a friend of a friend
She had three lumps in her breast and now they’re all gone
So now we talk to the good dr Valentina
Who answers questions and tells us what to do
And you are awake for all of it
You are not lost in a stupor of narcotics
Lost in the brain slickening wash of chemo
Lost in a stupor of alcohol
Lost in a rise of vivid emotions like rage and shame
Lost in the waves of the Holy Ghost
No, no you are here
In the stillness, in the quiet morning
In the house with your worried wife
Your worried daughters
With yourself
You are awake, conscious
Making these healthy, guided, slow, steady, daily choices
You’re surrendering consciously
And it’s hard
You’re present with your demons
And it’s hard
Maybe you see the blue dust of death
And maybe since your eyes are now clear
Maybe you think it’s new
Maybe you think it’s worsened and not lessened
You know so little, dad
You know about submarines, trains, fear, National Geographic, how to give a cutting death stare, how to starve your body, how to dehydrate, how to laugh off the pain of a friends wife, how to to convert someone to our lord and savior Jesus Christ in a broom closet, how to make a savage dog submit, how to provide for a family for 20 years, how to leave your young children, how to not care, how to brush it off, how to hide your drinking, how to lie, how to inquire, how to shame, how to apologize
Some of these skills are new and I’m grateful for them
And now you are learning how to live, blue dust of death and all

Anxious she finds herself
Though lately less so
Childhood bed
In her childhood home
Thinking childish thoughts in her childhood head
Russian nesting doll

Nesting
Nesting soon to be though not so
Rings and nausea
And please let me sleep
Head in her mother’s lap

Mental illness and lack of routine
Tapping on her glass

The blurry light from the hallway outside the bedroom reflecting on the shiny wooden headboard.
How many many many times has this dappled wood revealed its imperfections in that blurry reflected light?
Put me to sleep with your consistency and resolve

Thank you little light
And mother’s hands that flipped the switch
And eyes that remember
And mini terrors of her adolescents that gave this reflection the right to sweep across her consciousness in swooning waves that feel soothing as they scrape.

In this moment its comfort is quite enough

I just like this tiny little bonsai tree
Of feelings for thee
Growing in me

I like to pretend I don’t know it’s there
Like I don’t groom it with the highest of care
Then it taps me on the shoulder when I’m in my wardrobe
I remember that I miss the shape on your nose
I remember that I miss your t-shirt on my collar bones
That I like having you around
That I like your laugh sounds.

You’re good egg
And a tall tree
That I really like to climb

You’re a skinny bird
And strong boat
That I trust to float

You’re a glass of room temperature seltzer water
And a strawberry top.

But I think you’re the strawberry too.

I like how you let me fall for you slowly
You let me pretend you don’t know me
I’m satisfied with wondering if you think I’m gorgeous
And for now not knowing
And for later still wondering
And forever maybe you’ll tell me

But I never want to ask.

I can still feel the pavement beating my feet,
Little bits of earth and water and worms between my toes.
I can feel the warm summer rain on my upper lip,
I can feel my hands splashing in the creek with this little man to be beside me.
I can feel wet hair on my forehead.
I can feel how tall those trees were above us.
Us.
How ******* lovely.
To go through childhood with a partner.
Someone to follow and imitate.
It’s that warm summer rain, our motivated, pounding feet, the slosh of mud and water, the scratch of twigs and sticks, clothes soaked and smiling.
Brotherhood.
Though I am your sister. I like to think that in those times, I was your brother too.
Maybe I showed you a sliver of what it is to have you.
Never in a million years would I give up the sweet sensation of these memories.

Days when life is hard and ugly i want to be **** with you
So I text you something *****
and you don't respond right away
and i feel a bit sorry for myself
and i lay in the bath
and i talk to my mother exclusively in Spanish about this and that
and i feel a bit better
then life doesn't feel so hard and ugly
and I contemplate the crutch of you
a **** sunshine boy in my mind
an ideal who is a fantasy
And says he just wants one thing
but really i think you love me
or maybe i mean as much to you on the flip side
of this coin we share
as I do to you but in a different way
are you aware of the fantasy?
or maybe I'm silly to think that I know how you think
you smoke
oh no, you smoke
you poor stupid little thing
did you start to be edgy?
How stupid
why, your poor shiny pink lungs
why damage yourself baby boy
i want to heal you
and i want you to heal me
you did heal me that day
and thats why i come back
and i healed you and thats why you come back
or maybe my ***** really is that magical
well its both
either way we both come back around
the promise of more of something
the tether between us
I learned that you mother passed when you were a boy
you texted me on mothers day
before that you texted me on thanksgiving
youre so avoidant and too cool for school
but you also said you were "holding it down in california"
so there's no way you can be that cool
i know you're not
but I want to bite down on the back of your hand
while your fingers are shoved down my throat
and up my ****
while you smirk down at me
and i melt in your hands that control me
own me
heal me
hold me
i want to take care of you so badly
and i deeply wish to be taken care of by you
but you know yourself well it seems
or at least you know what you are capable of
will this be like what happened with the french one?
but the reverse?
Will I be the one
with the partner
who still reminisces over text
but can't meet up while in the same city
and eventually it must be cut off in the greatest of what ifs?
perhaps
I think of him and it's unfair
though when i first saw him i was disappointed by what i saw
i thought his knees were too skinny
but really he was so hot
but really i was out of my mind and hadn't slept and
then we kept up the online infatuation for
three? four years?
with even more down the line
who is he to me?
what karma is there?
that we never met when i was in europe for over a month
but even in that time
it was right that we weren't together
because i was head over for that other one
oh so many ones
and yet here i am
alone
writing a poem to someone who will never read it
pining for who knows who
wanting a husband to manifest in front of me
and wondering if he does
will i still want you?
will i ever see you again?
what a joke if not
what silly kids we are to maintain this
to keep these candles burning
I supposed i can review our karma and
see what past lives loom

You don't get dark when you fall apart
It's when you're putting it back together, that you see the damage from the bad weather,
Mom I can't come inside my clothes are soaked

I guess it's not so serious in the end,
I'm not made of glass I don't break I bend,
So I'm bent out of shape,
I'll take some yoga,
Get a massage,
Focus on my breathing,

I'll do a bunch of stuff and sort out my kinks.
Give me a high five, promise I won't flinch,

I didn't do this to myself,
But I'm here by myself,
I won't be bitter,
I'll be better,
See:
I burned all the sweaters,
I've moved somewhere with better weather,

So I should be getting lighter and I think I am.
But on Tuesday I cried because of a printer jam.
I wasn't worried about the printer but I was worried about my boss. Would they yell at me? Did I **** up? Am I worthless? Do I deserve this?

My boss is nice don't get me wrong, but I was told for four years that I am what's wrong. I am what's wrong. I am wrong.

So anyway I had to reload the paper,
I missed a therapy session and misplaced the stapler.  

So I didn't do this to myself,
But I am what I am and I'm dark,
Im here by myself not afraid of the dark,
Maybe in the end I win,
Maybe in the dark I'm better,
Maybe my night vision will save me next time,
Maybe my clothes won't be soaked.

"Why couldn't you just meet me for lunch?"
I want to send you in a text
But instead I delete you from my phone
From my computer

Because you won't give me a real answer
You'll lie something ridiculous and believable
Or you'll just ignore the question and tell me how much you crave me
And have me wrapped around your text

Of course you texted me over thanksgiving
What happened? You were with your family
And you looked around at them
And thought
"Carolena would make a good family
Carolena is a good woman and I should text her
And try to be decent"

Is that what happened?
Or maybe it's like Sam said
That he can't respect himself
So he can't respect me

Is that what it is?

Why couldn't you be respectful
Why couldn't you
Why did you have to rip the fantasy away?

You were so delicious
Your broad shoulders
Your perfect face

I could describe more but it doesn't matter
I'll never touch you again
And I have to let the part of me that mourns that die

It was all just a lie to think that I would
A delicious lie I told myself
And you sent me those voice messages
With your voice
I like that voice so much
I like so much about you
Except for I guess whatever trauma makes you such a ****
What happened to you?

I rack my mind wondering if you
Had a terrible accident?
What the **** was the issue that kept you from just
Meeting me in the day time

What a horrible **** boy you are
So manic with those adoring texts you sent
Then so avoidant
So dismissive
So rude

And still, still I crave the husky way you felt against me
The soothing slide of your skin against mine
The ask for permission in your fingertips
The charge in your palms when I granted it
The way you breathed me in
Like I was something you desperately needed
Your scent
Your hands
Your hair
Your electric skin
God I wanted to touch you
I wanted to see what the three years we spent apart had done to change you
Would you have laugh lines?
Would you be different in bed?
Would I look different to you?
Would your mannerisms remind me of things I'd forgotten?
Would we laugh at stupid things?
Would you still look at me like I could teach you things you'd never known?
Would you still look at me like I was a goddess of *** and life and pleasure and discovery and wisdom and truth?
Would you still reveal things about yourself to me that even you didn't know yet?
Would you still charm me with your utter wonder of the world and me?
Would you still make me adore you with the simple way you lean against a door frame?
Would we stay up late with a single lamp on covered in a pillow case?Would you lay on my ribs and make circles around my *******?
Would I get your hair in my mouth and savor it?
Would we finally get to say goodbye?
Would you pick me up so easily?
Would you overwhelm me with your easy saunter towards me?

I wanted
To know you
To love you
And I never ever will now?

What a sick joke.
What is this useless melodrama for?
The drama, oh my the drama it makes me feel like I'm 22
Pining like this

Those 3 years we'd spent apart when you texted me when I was in Paris have now turned into 5
And that time will keep expanding into forever I guess

Why hold a candle to fill the space between you and I?
Why do I do it?
Why do I measure the time?
I guess in hopes I'll see you again in this life
And that in the time between now and the imaginary then you will change and be better
But I need to blow out the candle

And I have countless times.
I have deleted you countless times. But give it time and you will text.
Give it a year, 6 months, you will text.
Why? Why do you also hold out?
Do you also suffer? Is that why you reach out?

I don't understand you and I need to let it go
But I want to understand.

What did you create in me?
That night that you squeezed me so tight
What did you give to me that I don't want to give back?
I want to read you these words and look into your eyes
And know how it effects you
I want to be special to you
I want to be your best friend
I want to know your secrets
I want to be a safe space for you and good god I'd love it if you would be my safe place too
I want to love you.

Maybe I do love you,
Yes, in so many ways I do love you
Useless ways.
I am fond of you and I care for you.
I need to pull out and blow away this honey-colored blob of goo that I keep in my soul for you
This honey-colored energy I can taste
It's so sweet and it makes my mouth water and it brings tears to my eyes and it tightens my chest and you're in it and I need to let it go
You gave me something so special
You told me secret things in the sweet cave of safety and *** I lured us into
"Some people have been married 40 years and probably never feel this way" you said to me
I made you feel like that
"If every one could feel this there would be no war"
I made you feel that way
My body, my *******, my openness, my apartment, my bed, my face, my neck and mouth made you feel that way and then you told me it
That was a gift like no other I've received
And we both sort of threw it away, huh?
Maybe if you had wanted to see me more I probably would have brushed you off like you did me.

Or maybe you realized you had given me too much
Maybe you saw how badly I craved just a bit more of that from you and it was too much
Maybe I was too much
Too intense

Then later you sat at the edge of my bed and I did my favorite thing to do that I've done with so few
I sat behind you and wrapped my knees around you and caressed your back
And supported you so you could lean on me
And feel safe and still like a man as I adored you

I want that all again
But I want it with someone who respect me and themselves
Someone who is my match in so many more ways than the ways that we matched each other that night

The night we first had *** was the anniversary of my failed, traumatic marriage from the year prior. You were bright eyed and bushy tailed and made me feel really alive. And I was at the peak of my spell casting. Maybe I tricked myself and spelled you and then looked at you and spelled myself thinking you were the spell caster.

And I've given up that kind of spell work, I cast different spells now.

But still my eyes water if I think of the way your hair fell over your eyes. Every single thing I did to draw you in marked you the way I hoped it would. Maybe that's what I liked so much. That my magic really worked on you. Each flick of my hand, each little performance of mine had you doing exactly what I wanted you to do.

Each careless-looking swipe of my hand to clear the space where you would have me wasn't careless it all. It was calculated to make it look like I had thrown caution to the wind, for you. And you believed it and you believed that you really had that effect on me. And then I even began to believe that you had that effect on me. But I was the master from the beginning.

I'm still the master I guess.

I hope the undoing of this spell has begun. It feels like it has. It feels like a loosening of the vivid memory of your hair and your hands and your mouth and eyes and voice that sometimes has my heart in ribbons, my angst at an all time high. It feels like its sliding away and I hope it is. I wish this candle would melt down and blow out.

Even when the night is dusky and when the mood is gone,
When she looks out the window and knows there is nothing,
She doesn't see nothing.

As long as she has her mind, she always has so so many somethings.

She sees herself. She sees a face she knows.

She sees cheekbones for days. She sees a face that she has watched grow into its nose.

She sees ambition and potential.

She sees lovers easily lost. She sees haters torn from her.

She sees a smile that she guards only for herself.

Loneliness has never been so sweet and so satisfying.

She feels true love. She feels an ernest quench to the dryness that used to be in her throat.

She feels safe. and free. and had. and good. and bad.

She sees all that she is. And she ******* loves it.

Captive mind her own. She feels good alone.

November:
Stop screaming forever, like I'm some storm you're going to weather, you're the one who's tethered and I'm just trying to get my life together.

February:
Now I'm screaming forever and wearing your words like a ******* sweater, I can read you like a letter and you want me too.

April:
We're screaming like we're deaf, but we're not. I've got the hots. We're flashing the lights like we're blind but somehow we don't mind. I'm a wet mess all the time.

July:
Just touch me and you'll see,
That your fingertips were made for me,
And then you'll drink me up like gin on that famous Eve.
Because I think we're done screaming,
I think you'll start dreaming,
I think we'll forget how to lie,
I think you're my Christmas in July.

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?

Have you ever fallen in love like a cookie dipping into milk?
The milk is thick and whole and fills the holes
Where anxiety used to tick
It makes you softer, makes you better, makes you wetter and sweeter still
The only catch
My cookies beware
Is that if you get undipped
You’ll find yourself now soggy silt
Fumbled across a paper towel
Leaking your beloved milk.

Sometimes I miss the holy grace of ignorance,
Sometimes I miss the comfort that I felt when I read about David and his caves,
About his moody eyes and his harp,
About his *** addiction and his jealous, musical heart that only a god could love,
About the way he loved with abandon, reckless, selfish, taken aback in naivety, balking at those who dared disagreed with his unwavering need to be as he was

David made me ***
David made me feel closer to God and my mother
David told me a story of lust and ****** and protection and angst and a sweet tortured easily patronized self

Maybe in all of this, one day this flawed, beautiful man who murdered a giant and sang to lambs

Would be me

A woman, self possessed, soothing sheep and culling sleep in her victims.
Passion dripping from her honey harp.

David, thank you for the awakening and for the saturated hedonism that you spoke to in me.

On the tip of my tongue you burned like hot coffee,
With a hit of my blunt you’ve undone my lofty,
made me a softy,
I wont forget.

Denim jacket leaning down, you’ve got room in your throat,
You’ve got words in your coat,
Pockets full of notes.

Ink on your arms that wrap, wrap around me,
Words pushing on your teeth like braces,
Laces,
Up your shoes that walk all around me,
I won't forget.

Maybe whisper it now or tell me tomorrow.

Denim jacket leaning down, tippy toes to kiss your nose.
You’ve made me a softy,
I won’t forget.

Sweet and simply say it from behind those curtains,
Smoke in your nose from my fire lungs,
Stain my breath with your words,
Blessed syllables,
I won’t forget.

Go into the dark to love on the pain that hides there,
But don't shine a light on that what hides,
It's not ready to be seen yet,
To scalp a pain of it's darkness before it’s ready for the light,
is like birthing a babe too young to leave the womb,
Harm done for impatience

My therapist said we're enmeshed,
The further you get from me (just like I asked you to),
The more I want you,
I knew this would be true,
It's always when I sense you don't need me,
That I want you.

You didn't believe me but I meant it,
When I said, that I still love you,
It's all the
Other stuff
That gets in the way of the desire,

The mistakes, the stupid mistakes,
The (two) lies,
The need for me,
The weakness in your spine,
That is now getting stronger,

I look at you and I want you,
So bad,
But really I don't,
Because it's not healed yet,

It was so many things that got in the way of: in love
What was it? let's see:
1) the lie that you would work on yourself like an adult
with intention and clarity
you didn't do it until now that we're no longer sharing a bed
and I think that is good
2) the need for your mother
3) the need for me to need your mother
4) the inability to let me fly
to let me be big
to let me be strong, stronger than you
and you called it selfish when I used my strength for me
5) the need for my time
my mind
my thighs
6) the total acceptance and denial of your need for me
without ever accepting that it was too much for me
or that you shouldn't need someone else so completely
7) the boyishness
the child in you that you refused to admit was running the ship

Basically,
if you don't come correct
I can't *******
if you aren't standing proud in yourself as an autonomous adult, as a man,
I can't sexually resonate with you,
why is that so hard to understand?

Your sister said I was throwing you away,
**** that,
I'm doing anything but.
This whole time you were throwing yourself away at me,
and now I've closed my doors to you,
So that I can be alone like I need to be
So I can heal from all the dents in my walls where you've hurtled your body,
begging to be loved.
in a way that you approved of,

I'm a wild woman
A flame
And sometimes I need to burn all the way
Without fear that I'll burn that man-child underfoot
I need to run barefoot
Paint naked
Without being sexualized by the guy who needs my ***** to validate his ****** prowess
Scream
I am a woman-child too,
in the right place and the right time and I don't bring her to you,
Maybe I did, I'm sure I did,
I'm sorry that I did but she's not your responsibility,
she's mine.

I need to cry for my ancestors
Chant for my descendants
And it scares you
But you love it

and I could not hold space for both

You need your wild man
not your weak man
Your wild man does not need me.

You’re just a tall bachelor I guess I never knew,
Took that flight with poor Lu
You were faded and probably wearing black
Suffering a separation anxiety attack,

So you high tailed it to your coast
And took back the peanut butter toast

It was a beautifully clean break
But it’s a shame we never socialized the snake.

It smells vaguely of pizza
And there’s a little white fuzz floating around in the air,
I’m rewriting memories and helping a friend through a break up.
I’m sitting on my back staircase alone at night with no substance to keep me company,
Remembering a time sitting here with my ex having wine while he smoked a cigarette feeling relative peace and romanticism.
Now I’m contemplating the roughness of the stucco walls and the wrot iron and staircase and window cages,
The exceptionally uncomfortable and bumpy stair steps, all of the tangible visual interest around me,
Maybe falling in love with it,
It doesn’t notice me or maybe

Maybe it does, maybe it feels my weight,
Knows my smell,
Oh my god maybe these walls remember that moment that I’m thinking of!
Maybe they know all of it and they support me,
Maybe the me that was then and the he that was then is sitting here too just below me,
Letting the me that is now observe the sweet, pervasive sickness that we were lying in.

The pizza smell has wafted away and so has the little fuzz,
The wrot iron staircase feels okay against my head,
The angles that I’m looking down on feel unique to me, my frame of vision, is just for me.
He lived here, he bothered me, he smoked on this staircase nearly every night.
But maybe these steps and this material around me knew it was not his,
Maybe he never saw the stairs at this angle, maybe they never showed him their magic or their comfort or their mood or their simple, simple majesty.

Falling in love with a staircase and with the shadows that it kept secret for me.
Divine, it’s all divine.

Feed me your visions,
Pour your thoughts into my throat,
Your eyes like mine.
I need. I need. I need, you.
You. You. You. You are my blood.
But with you, I never bleed.

Entrance me, easily,
Hands on my neck, fingers tracing the lines in my spine,
Turning my soul with your palm,
Shifting my dark heart into the light of your gaze.

Dreams my dear,
Demon gone,
Heavy angel wings sending pounding waves through my chest,
Feathers soft,
Tip my chin aloft, with one long finger placed where only it knows where to go.

In this way I am fed.

Vulnerability
Makes me feel
kind of strange
very strange I'll be honest
it makes me want to overeat
it makes me feel like Im an alien learning to swim with no feet

But none of that's true and I'm a human
and I have feet and ankles
Vulnerability makes me feel
Very aware of my shins
It makes my head swirl and the back of my neck feel more naked than a dog shaved for summer

But in a way
it feels like home
is that too much to say
Do i really feel that way
go with it
try it out
its probably true

I used to like vulnerability

Maybe this is where I get my creativity back
Actually maybe this is how I combat
My detach

Maybe this is where my strength lies
Maybe in this honesty I am more myself than ever before
Maybe I've shed the fear that used to make other people a bore
I've been coming to this for a while
Now that I look back on this year
I've been craving this earnest collective of presentness being picked up by my ears

Little hairs swaying back and forth
A strange notion

Simpler and fully in
Learning to remember that I know how to swim
My calves engulfed in blue
feeling fresh and new

I did always say that I wished I was a fish

Imprinted in my mind
is
my foot pressed against your eye
as
we made the bed a slip and slide

Each one giving for the other.

But then we were giving too much
From a place we didn't have to give from
From dry wells we fed each other our earth
When what the other needed was sunshine and water

But we hid together beneath the earth
Building little tunnels between our wells
Digging out the earth underneath
Forming a wide chasm between our wells
Earth cleared out by our most ancient thoughts

Our network of tunnels
Each giving consent to our nightmarish coping
Easily excavating thousands of avenues
A complex and beautiful city grid
An Atlantis a la toxic-lovers-just-learning-to-love-well built in the earth and clay at the bottom of these wells becoming one
Sweeping breaths pouring more and more illness through our tunnels

Our relationship built of the mutual chemical compounds in the poison cups we drank each day and then began to feed to each other.

We needed therapy and instead we held each other on the shower floor wailing and surviving by filling each other up with the others' insides, then dumping that new cocktail back into the other, over and over and over again. For a few moments balancing our sloshing insides between our mouths.

Each one giving for the other.

Sleepless in Seattle on my mind and in my feelings,
Making me feel moody and 90's,
Chunky belts and colorful, dark sweater,
Old airports in family comedies,
Big clunky landline phones,
When Harry Met Sally and I watched it on a plane for the first time last summer.
Baroque in my headphones and 1950's swing playing from the ceiling

Girls talking loud, so important,
Deciding options for their next photo shoot,
sweet and divine making their plans.

And me
Silently observing, enjoying

If I were an overweight man
probably
I would be creepy

But I am a nice package

They're in L.A. for the weekend.
Oh, they've been to London and "her boyfriend is an *******"
She wore the baby blue, "it was my mother's", and it brings out her eyes
Why is he friend's with Madeline?
She's a *****
But we like her. She's very bold.

Plans laid and heading out. Good for them.

And I'm still here.
Ache in my neck,
Baroque in my ears (because I heard it improves learning and slows heart rate),
This anti-poem coming from my fingertips

Alone in this cafe and now the mood has shifted.

Honest decisions
From people who feel good
Are the amber of the earth

I’m never ***** anymore 
I used to drip onto the floor
Libido was higher, more, my core.

But I suppose, no, it was not.
Because it waned 
Yet 
I remained.
Yet
I miss being effortlessly wet.

I know, I know
It’s in my head. 

But maybe mostly it’s the bed?

Say, what’s different about my bedding?
Is it that I had a wedding?
And now,
Linens my sister gifted my ring and I
Sacrificed
Sprawled beneath some other guy
Another lover

Oh! dear, I’ve blown my cover.
Oh poor dear, my mother.
I'm a disgrace,
A divorce, at my age?

So, is that what stole my soak?

You know, you shouldn't marry a man,
You don't really know.

Is that what dried my dripping *****,

A quick ****,
From a new husband,
Who wouldn't hear no.

No.

It couldn’t be.

Far too simple for my psyche

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

Is there anything as sensual
As the ripe, full grapefruit tree
heavy with that orangey pink fruit?
So full of readiness to be eaten
That the grapefruit falls with a
Wet slap to the moist earth below
Moist earth that feeds the roots
That alchemizes the rot
That supports the weight
Of the tree and her grapefruit

I love the slate blue sky
Lightening over the gloomy, moody, swooshy sea
I love my pale skin that won’t tan
I love my hairy knees and calves and thighs
I love the cool breeze tickling my back
I love my oily, sea-salted hair
I love the plush sand from the high tide
I love my hairy hairy hairy waiter, covered in the cutest curly cues I’ve ever seen
I love the palm trees, with their fronds bent across each other from the wind
I love the muddy brown bumpy road
I love the rain and humidity, the wet.
I love the mist over the sea, making its surface a sweet mystery
I love the green and the blue and the brown
I love the happy, sleepy travelers
I love the happy, sleepy sea and my mind breathing it all in for keeps.

Lately I’ve been letting my hair grow
My leg hair has caused me consistent unrest in my life
Shaving and plucking and waxing only for it to bristle again 30 minutes later
Coming in dark on my pale skin
Sharp and tough as cactus spears
So I’m letting it grow
And wearing shorts
I went to a friends house with my hairy legs and he was shocked
He wondered out loud “you go out like that?”
That time around my grown out leg hair only lasted a month
I wonder how long this phase will last
Maybe I’ll never shave it again
Wouldn’t that be easy?

I feel the same about a wild lawn
Of uncut grass
Growing in thickets and patches
Different species and colors and lengths
Catching the light
Being divine
Maybe my leg hair can be like this

I emerge from the dock barefoot in a t shirt
And find my sister talking to neighbors
They’re wearing shoes with their hair done
I wonder how wild I look
Not as wild as I am

They’re teachers too
My bare hairy legs reveal
That I’m a feminist
She clocked the legs and didn’t have to
Take a moment to let it sink in
As my friend from college did when I went thrifting with her last week
She started at them and then quieted herself
But this lovely woman in hot pink
Gave me her approval
She said I’ll be okay teaching
I can handle myself she said
I’m a feminist

Reactions from women
About my hairy legs
Are becoming
So fun

I like my hairy legs,
They make me feel like a sunbleached cowboy.
They make me feel like a long, lean man with elegant lines and a strong forehead.
I like it when they’re blonde
And they just glisten on my skin.
Like a faux-protection or a cloak,
A delicate barrier between myself
And the world.

Or really I guess I just like the way it looks:
Textured
But smooth.

It looks wild but soft.

A landscape.

I think the hair compliments
The shape of me very well.

I’m always amazed how the hair grows everywhere,
Even on the back of my knees
There is hair

And I like my boyish pretty toes.

I guess I like the sort of genderless aspect to my legs.

From far away they shout
I AM A WOMAN!

But from near they could be anyone’s: hairy with little scars here and there, hairy toes with some dead skin in the toe nail creases. A sort of chunky pink toe there on the end.

A bit of dry callous on my heels. A strong, curved calf muscle. The hollows at my ankles, the delicate depression behind my ankle bones just before the rigid wrinkles of my Achilles tendon.

I like the bulging veins in the arch of my foot when I point my toes
How they press their purple faces against my see-thru skin
Squeezed by the muscles that bump against one another beneath the hard arched bones above
I like the little bubbles of fat that pad my heels, turning bright yellow when I stand on them
Never-smooth legs that even when freshly shaved still prickle
Like a cactus
“Don’t get too comfortable here” they say
These beautiful legs aren’t for rubbing and lounging though my calves love to be pressured

These legs are made for exploration

Do you ever feel like you're made of paper?
I don't.
I'm made of flesh and bone and rocks and stones.
The flesh and bone I was born with.
The rocks and stones came later,
You know, they came with the haters.

Do you ever feel like you're made of lead?
Heavy and falling and poison and dead?
I don't.
I'm made of blood and water and thread,
The blood and water my birth-right,
The thread to keep me warm, back full of stiches,
You know, from the *******.

Cautious and sweet and young
Strung high from the tip of her tongue
Stone shoes laced up to her knees
Heavy and soft like the soul she’ll steal
A wind in her waist
Dust, lust in her taste
No ones marionette
No ones Juliet
Willing the words to existence
That will burn the past of least resistance
A pink young tongue
Deep
She breathes deep into her lungs
Strung now so high that she’s nauseous
Yes still so young, so soft, so cautious