My sister loved sunflowers.

Anything worth loving in me died in a ditch behind a trailer park in northern Wisconsin. I’ve never been one much for talking. But I think I’d like to say something. I am all nerve endings. Don’t touch me. Don’t look at me. How dare you look at me? Keep your money, I come here to be lonely and broke. That is the whole point of me, you know. I’m like some sort of plot device the author chose to show how lost the human soul can be. I’m supposed to die horribly to teach you that life is short and beautiful or some ******* like that.

My niece liked pie. Not just any pie.
Pumpkin pie.

I could go on this whole speech  about how you don’t know me. But I’m probably just as ridiculous as I seem. A stereotype confirmed. Go tell your friends you’ve found Waldo in the wild. It probably won’t happen again.

My mother collected angel statues.

No, I wouldn’t change anything.  I’ve tried so hard to fix the people in my life. To fix myself. But my hell has made me complacent and I just don’t give a **** anymore. Spite is the only thing keeping me alive. Spite and Jack Daniels.

You know, I used to like to sing. Isn’t that interesting?

Don't tell me to shut up and be grateful,
For the rights "given" to me.
Nobody "gave" me my sovereignty.
It is mine, inherently.

To say that I should be grateful to possess more rights
Than the women before me,
Is like to say I should be grateful to the theif
Who only steals twenty dollars, when he used to steal fifty.

As long as I live in a society that blames a **** victim
For being too ****,
As long as I live in a society that creates an institutional
Gendered Heirarchy,
And as long as I live in a society where people feel trapped
By their ****** identity

I will not shut up and be grateful.
I will be loud and angry.

We work our fingers to the bone
For a pitiful paycheck.
Our clothes smell of chlorine and bleach.
We stay up all hours to study.
Our futures are bought with our sweat.
Women like us don't wait around.

No time to be idealistic.
Sure, we dream of a better life.
But we're not afraid of the means
To our ends.
Women like us have ***** hands.

They say we are strong,
Sister
What do you think of that?
I laugh.
They say we are lucky,
Sister
What do you think of that?

They say we are survivors.
I smile.

I glance at my sister, balancing her beer
precariously on the edge of the couch cushion.
Her brows furrow.
She knows how grief worms its way into your
Heart and makes a nest.
They stole our souls and ****** on our innocence.
No amount of change, distance, time, love, therapy
Or pharmaceuticals
Can ever replace what was taken from us.
She looks back at me with knowing eyes.
We laugh.

No one survives.

Containers full of pain and sorrow
And laughter and joy.
Tiny universes held together with skin,
Sitting in a bus station at 3am.

Drooping faces weary with travel.
These are my people,
Though they don't know me.
My family,
Though they don't see me.
I sit alone in the corner and watch them watch their T.V.s
I watch them wait.

I watch the woman across from me.
The picture of middle-aged addiction.
Clinging to her garbage bag belongings
Like a scared child clings to its mothers breast.
As I memorize every line on her face,
Broken teeth and searching eyes,
I realize that she is beauty defined.

Has anyone ever told her?

In that room,
unperceived,
The ineffable resides.
Hidden in the suitcases of crack fiends
And vagabonds.

3am Escanaba to Milwaukee

That's my cue to leave,
I raise my hands to the ceiling and I shout
"Goodbye, you're all beautiful!"
They look at me like I'm crazy.
I don't care.
I am madly in love with their humanity.

I never want to know sanity.

A flatness of feeling falls and rests on my shoulders like leaves that
Drop from the maple at summer’s end.
Graceful fatigue.
My hands are limp at my side.
They have no wish to grasp at false strings of hope.
All of the passions of my youth have died.
Now, I only care for truth.

How quickly I have aged.
Only a few years ‘til I reach my expiration date
And all I’ll leave here are a few words on a page.
Words of rage.
And the love of a man that time forbade.

His soul bears the scars of my mutiny.
I am guilty.
But somewhere in his veins,
Somewhere etched in his DNA
Is all of the love I gave.
I did not take it with me.

I heard news of him today.
He has a wife and a summer house on a lake,
And
He’ll be a daddy soon.

Isn’t that beautiful?
What a fitting dénouement.

Someday when the door is open
And the sky burns blue,
I’ll see you standing on my beloved dunes
In the spot near the coyote’s den,
Where when I was ten I learned of death
And life,
From the sun bleached remains of a rabbit’s collar bone.

Someday I’ll see you shining in a sunlight
That no shadow can erase.
Joy will be the air around you
And there will be no more pain.
No fear of retribution,
Divine or mundane.
No more death
No more hunger
No more shame.

Someday we’ll start over.
Just you and I
And live the dreams we spun
When we were young.
We’ll have world that isn't crooked on its axis,
A life that isn’t hopeless.
We’ll have our innocence,
Immersed in the warmth of
Pure,
Unadulterated,
Love.

For now I will endure.
Live the existence assigned to me.
I will quietly suffer my share.
But someday,
I’ll meet you there.