What I didn’t tell you that day is that I love you
Because I was afraid you would change towards me
Treat me differently and that I’d have to act differently
When all I know how to do around you is be with you
The way I am now and with the person you are
But right now I want you
So intensely that it affects my health

My blood pressure is higher
My mouth is drier and my breath is beginning to smell
Like tartar and decay and maybe it’s because
I feel I’m rotting inside
Like something is dying and withering in me
And I know it’s my strength
How I feel about you
The amount of me that I can devote
To you to see you are happy
The fuel for the words that deny your every self-defeating doubt
Tell you you’re marvelous and perfect at least all right

Please don’t go away
Run away or treat me differently
Just love me and say it every chance you get
Love me more
Add to it and build upon it
Give me permission to be
In love with you
Like I already am
Wanting you to be different
Without going away
Wanting you to be in love with me

I stopped “loving,”
I stopped hating
And I started telling the only truth

That one so obvious that it’s woven into everything
So loud and ubiquitous
That I mistook it for silence

It is that ringing in my ears
The kind I can’t escape when it happens
Only ride it out like a headache

It took more than twenty years to remember
The words that describe it
“Listen to it all, it moves.”

“Hem da la li, si laina.”
And I began to stop every so often
Just to ******* listen to it all

When I did I began to hear it
The sound beneath the ringing that is a song
Simplicity paired with intricate and infinite beauty

I hear it every time now
The groaning and moaning and crying out beauty
Joyous for simply being alive and immortal

I remembered to be in the moment
Live in the here and now and hear the present
I remembered to sing along in the silence

This mind is so beautifully filled
Dreams and dancing phantoms in day
Overlapping the world and carrying on
Overlapping the world and all play
Some florid and flamboyant show
A show to enlighten and entertain
Twirls and tumbles and fireworks
Infinite routines synchronize for the refrain
Heard in the rhythmic swells of silence
So often heard by those sitting in it
Too busy listening to watch the show
Far too busy to take the free ticket

I sold my skin one evening
As I had times before
He was a pale man this time
But eyes and hair as black as pitch
Teeth of smooth and beautiful ivory
Light circles under his eyes
Smooth, handsome face
Marred by an almost imperceptible scar

It was only when I saw his skin
Beneath the neck
His chest, his back
The corded and worn muscles
Fatless arms and legs and torso
It was when I saw his skin
That I both feared and ached
Wanted and wanted to run away

Where was it then?
That old romantic and cinematic sentiment
Where a working girl
Finds protection and comfort
A change and better offer at life?
Where was it then
When I wanted and wanted to run away

I sold my skin to him
My guts and breath and sweat
And though I smiled and cooed
Surrendered more than my form
I cast off my want of romance
Wept and hated myself
Beneath the actress’ mask
Running makeup on top of raw skin
Sweated out my tears
Washed away and worn away
False tone and pigment of youth

He left his seed, coin
And a tip for his tip
Light bruising and dull ache
I sold my skin one evening

What is it
About the simpler language
The easy words that I love so much?

I like to think these are the words
The rest of our race can say
And understand

They have a bare-bones feel
In hopes that through childish words
We speak more like the gods who made us
That through these words
The deeper meaning, emotions
What has been, what is
What is wanted
What we are
Can only be said by children

Let me speak like a child
Who speaks like the gods
Let me put letters next letters
And build meaning
That everyone can grasp

He is like a smile to me
One earnestly shown
The flash of perfect-imperfect teeth
The bunching up of cheeks
Soft and warm with innocence
Boyish, ageless and happy

It sparks the coals of my memory
The first boy I kissed
Sensual and honest flesh
Playful, limber, gentle and careful form
Opaque flesh became transparent
As inner fires began to shine through

Oh how much a mirror image I was
Likewise ignorant but lustful
Adventurous and at once wary
Afraid to upset him and skittish to touch
Ticklish in a way
As I became just my body

How alien it was to me
And how I was reminded how alien I felt
In this body my body
House and vessel to me
With these senses almost my true senses
Conscious and subconscious playing along

Do I really want this to be with him?
I’d love him so much better without this form
I reason when body does not do as I feel it should
Why won’t I *** for him
Or rise to please him as he pleases me?
Why won’t my skin show my inner pleasure?

Oh, I do like you and the things we do
The way we touch and how I moan
I want to say I love you
But will you be disappointed if I also say
That I am not in love you?
At least not yet

I watched spiders make their webs
Four to five paces apart
North to south along the ficus hedge
Anchored nearest to the green wall
Each two knuckles wide
Street lamp orange undersides
Yellow tiny joints
Each moved quickly
Set to finish its trap before the night settled full

I discovered them while walking
Seeking familiar toxin
And found them
Masters of their craft

The first I saw caught that caught my sight
The furious movement of rear limbs
Catching the stream of silk
Guiding it on its way
Jagged plucking stemming a straight line
Then laying over a guiding wire
And moving on
From four o’clock to eight it went
Then back along the clock’s face
Its red underside patient but swiftly going and pulling along
Leading a tiny line of molten muted silver
Five to eight and back again
Pendulumous and measured geometry
Dancing back and forth

Then I saw the second
South I crept with knees bent low
Shrank a hand’s breadth
Swift and wonderstruck
And it too worked a masterful weave
So similar but when I looked back
I saw the difference
More than size of form between them
Slight as was their difference
Unique minutiae of brown fuzzy backs and brown fuzzy heads
Varying personalities and style
Artisans of the same renaissance

And soon I saw a third
South still and still different
Higher up to catch the light
Still giving light to its neighbor
Who lets the light reach her neighbor

A fourth’s stilled anchor
Taught and shining in the light
Beneath the indigo sky
Highest of them all
Largest of them all

If in the beginning of their dance
Drawing cracked windows in the sky
Nets or webs or sails
I might have seen them
Forming a rainbow arc
A fragment of such a thing
But I did not
My wonder and my mind
The first catch of the night