Happiness comes slowly
weaving its way through the butterflies in your stomach
as you step into the hall, seeing
all the open doors
wondering which to knock on, who to know.

Then it’s diagonal crossing
and shaking fish. It’s a group picture that still hangs in your best friend’s room to remind you of how much you can age in a year.

Suddenly it’s the ballet and lingering looks. It’s drunk astronomy videos, and tea with second intentions. It’s well developed boys with delicate minds, who are more hurt by misthrown words. (I’m sorry, still. Those months of silence did a number on me too.)

It’s red lips and falling leaves. It’s pulling yourself together out of the pieces spread around campus, and creating one rule: don’t **** DSig boys.

Then it’s floorcest, but this time more wholesome. It’s meeting the man who’s sure to be your best-man at your wedding, and wondering how you could be so similar, could love someone so much. It’s being scared that people aren’t puzzle pieces and losing one to gain another is never the same. But then realizing that maybe the original piece didn’t fit that well to begin with.

It’s a long night at the hospital, because family is family even if you never share secrets. Because sometimes cheez-it crumbs can heal souls.

Then it’s snowstorms, and gossip nights. It’s living with your best friends 24/7 and picking each one up as they threaten to unravel. It’s chugging earl gray and crying over gluten free brownies. It’s getting used to a pseudo-something only to have the ground shift under your feet––again. And then it’s growth. It’s loving other people enough to know when you’re wrong, when to let go.

Finally it’s peace, and midterm cramming. It’s shedding layers of skin and coats so the sun can finally scab over your innocence. It’s making the exodus from your room to hole up in a coffee shop and write, because the school listens now. It’s knowing that so long as you know how to cover a hickey, you’ll never really lose your status as mom.

It’s loving. Happiness is loving. Every stolen moment and stupid, idiotic escapade; every too big personality surrounded by too small quarters.
It is holding fast to the spirit of youth, letting years to come do what they may with the tattooed six on your heart.

And what of the thick-thighed woman

            who held a dying god in her lap?

            History has silenced her grief to stone.

But what of endurance as sharp as love?



Do Zeus’s tears still stain her dress?

            Her atlas hands guide thorned crowns

            To rest, as the weight of heaven

forsaken, collapses.



Womb made machine;

           Reach out your hand and feel the crimson––

           Hips that birthed the civilizations of the world,

I worship the god called woman.

I keep this love, my dear, in my back pocket.
Neither a prologue, nor epilogue to my thoughts, it
simply resides in the middle of the flat high-way distance
and sky-scraping time. A pocket of feeling; the ghost
of possibility clings to my breast, where your hands grasped
my heart, once––our sighs but passive resistance.

Some days I want.

I want so much that my bones crack and my muscles cramp and my breath feels too shallow

Like me.

Not enough

Not enough

Not enough.

(potential is the kind of word that suffocates you)



Some days I don’t want.

I don’t want so much that I lose myself in the hollows of my back and let myself echo in the folds of my skin.

It is too much. And still

Not enough

Not enough

Not enough.

(Want is more of a volume than a light switch)

Zeus’s golden scales are hanging

around my closet doorknob.

The satin ribbons straddling an uncertain fate.

Two such similar– such distinct

entities

You could say I fell in love with your differences.

One side is bold

all caps writing,

spelling errors and innuendos.

I pirouette on my right foot.

The other is softer,

delicacy in strength,

precision and restraint.

I developé with my left.

And how easy would it be if I only needed one foot to dance?

If balance simply happened by willing it so?

But feeling comes first

and the relationship is symbiotic,

and I–

I am stuck,

waiting for the scales to tip.

And so I love you in pieces
I think
more than before
less than when

forever
rolls around
is a concept I’m not
familiar with

do you think when the ice melts
we will
fall
shapeless along with it

in the ocean of your sheets
if I could swim that channel again
I could sleep
with the ghost of your arm pressed
around me
I think
I am pieces of you
in memories

Like I am translucent
stuck somewhere that doesn’t exist
except when I drink
at 3am

A ghost ship
come back to claim its victims
my heart
still beating
trapped in your chest

I was never so much at rest
as when I was with you
but there is never security
in the past

and I don’t know in which direction
I’m drifting

Friday night:
Time is a nonentity now.
Days last longer than the hairs I find scattered around my bedroom floor;
Weeks go so quickly that I can't remember
when I last heard myself think.

Saturday morning:
The world is still.
I open my window to feel the breeze of crying skies
as if they knew
but I didn’t listen.

Saturday night:
I come back stumbling
the night wind still in my hair
I grab your leg, you touch my mouth
It’s been hours since I tasted the *** and ***** but my tongue still tingles
And my fingertips echo the feeling along your hairline
I remember thinking “I’ll have to deal with this in the morning.”
But I’ve been known to procrastinate.

Sunday morning:
You kiss me on the way out
I don’t sleep.
Every time i close my eyes I can still feel hands on my skin
I have bruises in places I didn’t know existed
My lip swells slightly, and I tiptoe down the hall
wondering who knows my secret
I can’t bring myself to pick up the pile of black lace on my floor
a mark of reality

Monday:
They say your skin regenerates every seven months— I don’t want to have to wait that long.
I know I sealed my lips but i need to scream
so I do it in semi-private whispers

Tuesday:
We reverse roles as I realize I don’t feel
this is new but it seems natural
no– ordinary
I thought I’d have an awakening but instead I’m apathetic
and awkward.

Wednesday:
I confront the ox sitting on our tongues.
I prepared for every possibility, every answer, every worst-case-nuclear-situation
except
this one.
And for the first time all week I feel violated and vulnerable
with all my clothes on I am naked in front of you again
and I step back as a door closes in my face
Huddled in the corner of my room
I wonder if mimicking my mother’s womb could recreate the safety I felt
before you told me.

Thursday:
I thought I wanted numb, but this is worse.

Friday:
How many words can I come up with for being shunned?
I give up.
I’ve started going to the bathroom on my own now, no more bodyguards.


Saturday:
I’m fine.
No, really.
I’m more fine than you and yours
and that in and of itself makes my blood boil

Sunday:
I smile, and you flatten yourself against a wall to avoid me.
You don’t remember me cleaning up your drunk mess last night
for a moment I almost thought we were back to–
but no.
you are too detached
and too hurt
to find any sort of perspective in this mess

Monday:
He talks to me again, and I feel okay, finally.
There are pauses,
like our fumbling fingers in the dark,
but this time I have back up.
And even though everything is wrong, everything goes right.
From rock bottom, there is nowhere to go but up.