it's the first fifteen seconds of messes of men

and the newly wed couple coming out of that church in Ireland

bathed in light and new union

her red lips are so clean in my memory

kissing the hand of her husband

a safe place

surrounded by green and the anticipation of the unknown future

it's my father's square hand, pressed to my forehead, praying

it’s the way his face looks when he speaks in another language, meant only for God

and the sound of his voice when he read to us as children

it's the way a river moves me

with its inherent music,

and I close my eyes

it's the sunlight turning everything into honey

and the taste of the morning

and the sound foliage makes under wandering feet

it's watching the pine trees move by in slow, flickering movements,

like the pictures on a roll of film,

set to the sound of hymns

rising and falling with the passing mountains,

like we’re breathing together

in sync

it's a senseless homesickness

and a piercing, unutterable ache

It's the frustration of never being able to say what I mean

it's the relief of not needing to

it's the first fifteen seconds of messes of men

and the comfortable silence between friends

it’s the distance between us

it's the way I don't

it's the way you

it's

I am afraid of speaking.
I am afraid of the texture of my voice, and the effect it will have on you.
I don't want to be pressed into the caricature of an angry woman; voice raised in what they call a hysterical display of emotion.
Calm down. Be rational.

Stop being
So
Dramatic.

Well let me tell you something:
I am an angry woman.

Because all I can see is my best friend’s blonde head, coming within an inch of becoming the crushed drywall beneath his fist.
All I can see is the false piety painted on his pastor’s face, asking, “well… did he hit you?”

I see her eyes closed in the darkness, fingers gripped in the sheets he tore off of her body to wake her. She has to hold on to something.
He says, “Show me you're enjoying it.”


Calm down. Be rational.

Like he wasn't gaining access INTO her BODY by FORCE. Like, of course it's her job to lay down and take it. Like it. Lick his lips for the taste of honey, because honey, he told you to.

but it's poison. It enters her bloodstream, weakening her will to resist it.

She looks at her phone, at a text she did not compose herself, or send,
“Hey hot stuff. When you see this, let's have ***.
“If I pretend I didn't write this I'm just playing hard to get.”

Do you get it?

Yeah. I am an angry woman.

Stay calm, dear sister. Be rational.
Rationalize the gaslighting, because the big picture doesn't look beautiful when you hang it above the sofa; and her home was staged to look like a family so that when you look in the window, you don't see that she was a hostage.
You don't see that her son was asleep in the bed when he grabbed her face between his hands and crushed it,
And called it “gently redirecting her gaze.”

From the window, you can't see his body blocking the exit.
You can't see her baby, with his little fingers curled around her *******, begging for comfort.

I will not calm down. And in case you are so damaged by devotion to comfort that you can't see it, it is right to be angry.

It is righteous.

I am angry, and more rational than I have ever been in my entire life- rationally, righteously begging for justice to flow down like rivers.

I am an angry woman.

Between you and me,
I see it;
Ink black, can't-take-it-back,
-Indecent.
Words you'll later swear you didn't mean,
But I'll feel them,
Sinking deeply,
Steeply,
Creeping in between each of the promises you made to me,
Infinitesimally small,
Like the space between me and the wall you broke your fingers on.

I am not the idealistic dream you fell in love with me to be,
And I am not breaking your heart by breaking the frame you pushed mine into.

I am a living, breathing, incandescent human being

-and I need you.

My mind is an open palm, raised to the trees
avowing and disavowing the love of sunlight,
and translating fractured thoughts caught on the breeze like cottonwood seeds,
snatched by a hand in the air;
like the way we used to catch mosquitoes, and ended up with one one another's mingled blood crushed into the lines on our palms
and to be honest,
I didn't mind it so much.

I guess I wanted to reclaim something
I guess I wanted to take back a little of the life that was siphoned from us

I am sick of lifeblood being stolen and replaced with poison, and the anticoagulant that keeps it flowing long enough that we never know we've been bitten until it's gone, and carried away in someone's belly, where it melts into so many others inside their stomachs

It's so easy to let your heart get to racing, long enough that you don't know what's being taken from you. Like the first time I let a man take off my shirt in the back of his car; he used his hands  to show me where I could stand to be improved; carving another woman into the air,
and she would live there like a ghost for so many years.

Sometimes I still see her.

Sometimes I am afraid that I'll never know what it's like to feel safe in the eyes of a man.

But I always feel like that now; peeled clean, exposed, disrobed to the heels in front of everyone. And there are so many hands, creating ghosts for me to fear. I am afraid of being afraid to let anyone near me, especially since I welcome it so easily.

God help me.
God help us.

There is comfort in being crushed to one another;
our essences coalescing in our minds and open hands crashing together to catch the cottonwood memories, stinging before we know what’***** us.
There is comfort in being bled together, our grief being wed together, and being folded into one another in the bellies of sleepless nights.

God help us
There is nothing I can do except feel numb next to you.
God help us,
There is nothing I can do except feel alive in pain next to you.

My mind is an open palm, raised in a question,
Translating fractured thoughts,
Caught between us.

close your eyes⁣
lay your body down in the green of mine⁣
soft and rooted in earth⁣
veins of life reaching into soil ⁣
⁣
rest ⁣
place your hand in the center of my chest⁣
where wildflowers gather⁣
in full bloom ⁣
and you among them ⁣
⁣
my love is not a serenade⁣
my love is an aubade ⁣
not an evening, but a morning song⁣
warm and full of new sight;⁣
let me be your eyes ⁣
⁣
you are not what you see ⁣
you are not what you have seen every day that you can remember ⁣
let me be your eyes ⁣
⁣
I see a blue dark sky ⁣
oil slick rich with violet, gold, and white ⁣
wild and endless, ⁣
I feel so small in comparison ⁣
⁣
my love is not a serenade ⁣
my love is not the weight of expectation ⁣
or an entitlement to experience ⁣
it is clean and unrequiring ⁣
⁣
you are not what you see;⁣
⁣
close your eyes⁣
⁣
⁣

Your eyes flicker with warm light,
like the humbled cumbustion of a dying fire,
expiring under a cold sky.
Embers roll into black,
Dirt and ash,
and I am afraid of what’s left behind.

After all this time,
You grew to despise the love you claimed to seek.
After all this time,
You’ve still got the sharpest teeth.

Embers roll into black,
Dirt and ash,

And I am afraid of what’s left behind.

He drew a figure eight on my spine, absentmindedly,
and traced the nape of my neck with his fingertip when he said,
“You are beautiful to me.”

But the ellipsis in the silence spoke louder than he did, and the look in his eye was not born because I was lovely;
It was not because he loved me.

A thing too small for love-
But far too large to be lust;

Simple. Ugly.

He looked at me like he was hungry.

So sweetly he critiqued each curve, every line, blurring my edges with the images of every bent perception pulled from the mire of his mind;

and I
could not
satisfy


Pretty innocence diminished in the grip of his vice,
Pressed tight against my body, despised in dark eyes.
I am not the inhuman creatures you contrived in the middle of the night.
I am not the feminine expression of your ******* pride.

What a wicked crime,
to take a woman’s body and leave the woman behind.

Crawl on your belly into the garden,
Slip between the ferns
Swallow fallen fruit you found on the earth,
Fatten your girth with what you didn’t earn.

Crawl into his marriage bed,
Break into his children’s home;
Rearrange the furniture,
But it doesn’t make it your own.

You are not his wife.
You are not his lover.
You are the profane, no-name, acquisitive *****.

Crawl on your belly into his bed,
Sink your long teeth into his cowardly throat-
Rearrange the furniture,
But it doesn't make it your home.

It is a wonder, to feel
Chemical peeling, remove the first three layers of dead, useless skin
And the new life was sleeping beneath it, isn't that always the way?
Raw, untouched, unloved by nature's oils,
Unfelt by the rough but gentle fingers of maternal hands
Steady my trembling, I cannot see the page when it moves like that.
Do not remove me from my grieving,
I need these little deaths;
It is right that I should lay down in their little graves and feel the weight of the earth scatter over them.
It is right that I should feel the sting, deep in the part of my nature which knows that the betrayal is always greeted with a kiss
I am the man who stands in outrage, and cuts the ear from the soldiers head,
And then turns in shock to roosters weeping,
And removes to the city's edge

Bite down hard.
There can be no question of who’s in charge here.
There can be no doubt about the alpha- sheep.
Make sure you hit an artery; we can not allow that kind of blood to flow unbroken inside their veins- and remember that we are only trying to help them remember their place. Because we love them.
Stand back, and let the smell attract the vultures.
Let the laymen see-
EXCUSE ME EVERYONE, THERE HAS BEEN A BRUTALITY
And make sure you lick your teeth clean.
Make sure your breath smells like honey.

Strip them, strap them down, parade them through the public square, declaring,
LOOK AT WHAT THEY DID TO ME.

What a spectacle.  

Why can’t we all just make peace?

Your life, like white light, still ringing in brilliant clarity,
In bitter delicious memory in our minds.
-your beautiful life,
Standing out in burning silhouettes every time we close our eyes.

I write poems about you in my dreams.
I try to work it out in miserable half-sleep,
How a girl of thirteen could one day be wrapped in the arms of her parents,
and the next,
Immured in cold earth without mercy.

You cannot be gone.
You are so **** young.

You never met a heart you didn’t mark with the splendor of your beauty,
That outrageous, unique, chromatic personality,
Resplendent by nature,
Demure in humility.

Do you hear me where you are?
Sitting in glory at the feet of God?

Your parents will see you when they come Home.

I know that we’ll see you when we all come Home.

You and I,
buried beneath the coruscated winter sky
In taciturn stillness,
half-enraptured by the unmasked glory,
and half by the unasked in the others eyes.

There is no time to hold us;

There is no other moment.

Volatile, visible breaths,
The almost- touch of our fingertips,
and the quiet intimacy of our insignificance against the endless, open sky.

You,
My darling,
and I.

You said you dreamed about her eyes last night,
And what you called The Unreachable Light,
And you wept with a bitterness that cracked your lips with salt.

Your voice breaks with vain repetitions,
as you wring your wrists in mournful frustration;
An impatient aching, the veins in your face a silent screaming proclamation;
I am a man at fault.
This is all my fault.

Your mind, riddled with sharp stalactites of cold indignation,
Condescending every other second with rhythmic dripping condensation,
And the sound it makes keeps you awake with miserable reminders of resounding blame-

Drip-
(Stop.)
Drip-
(I have been dead so long.)

You cut your teeth on infidelity,
and you raged against the Lord,
“There is no sun!
There is no meaning!”
And you put out your eyes so you’d never see that you were wrong.

Oh to hate how great a debtor,
How small is your belief!
You said the end was without absolution,
But I think you know it isn’t true.

Drip-
(Stop.)

His eyes are like black beetles rolled onto their backs, thick legs like lashes flickering in the movement it requires to take me in;
And I am exposed- again- to the disease they spread from living underneath the foundations of so many homes, not unknown, exactly, but pardoned as 'harmless’ and left
to live in the crawl spaces, where his real eyes roll between the cobwebs.

Therein the innocence of beauty, with all her God given curves, is curled up inside the belly of that glutton, and the stomach acid does the devil’s work in decomposing her;

We all have bruises on our necks, blooming in lavender colored thumbprints where he turned our faces forcibly away from him;
There is nothing so damning as a woman who has made eye contact with those insects,
Bite
Your
Tongue
Girl,

This is not about you.

This is about the ‘stumbling block’ you became to him,
This is about the disastrous eventuality of outliving your usefulness.
This is about the godforsaken body you were given to spite and entice him with,
And your ability to keep it carefully hidden.

We will not bite our tongues.
We are not the amalgamation of soft feminine lines, rent into the shapes you like them best,
Or the shapes you hate,
Or the constantly transforming flame of your carnality, with it's cruel hands around your throat.

We are not our bodies;
But they are ours.
We are not our bodies,
And we will not be easily devoured.

Wind berates the window panes in angry exclamations
And the walls groan with the intermittent vibrations of my father’s steady blows-
With every other heavy step the leaden strokes of his fury, a loaded roque mallet meets the wall, meant for me.
And deep in my body, white terror (boiler heat)
climbs the stairs in syncopated heart beats.

Daddy, can you hear me in there?

But I think he’s gone,
and I’m running.

Long hallways, deep black, and the crack of his weapon send shrill fear in (fire hose) snakes down my back.

“COME ON OUT, WORTHLESS PUP, AND TAKE YOUR MEDICINE,
BAD LITTLE BOYS HAVE TO TAKE THEIR CORRECTION,”

I think daddy is gone,
This inhuman place took him.

In the back of my mind,
(You’ve got to keep your love alive),
In the back of my mind,
(I know that you tried.)

There always comes the end of the line, and as I beat daddy to the attic by a step, I know I’ve reached mine.
There is nowhere to go.
There is nowhere to hide.

“If my daddy is in there, he knows that you lied!
You’re just a false face, just a big hungry void,
and you swallow men like him to survive.
If my daddy is in there– ”

And all at once, his countenance changed.
A man hollowed by agonized sorrow, he bled,
(Monsters are real)
“Doc, run away quick-”
(And ghosts are too)
“But remember this-”
(They live inside of us)
“Remember I love you.”
(And sometimes they win.)

And I believe him.
I kiss his blood stained fingers,
And vignettes of sweet memories pass between us, fading with the hue of humanity in his eyes-

And I cannot say goodbye.

The mallet ascends to end him-
A coup de grace, a bleak salvation,
So that I can look upon the mangled maw of the awful stronghold that held him.

“Masks off, then,”
It says.

And I grin.

Turn. Tug. Pull at my dress where the buttons came undone in the scuffle. Point to the clavacle, a little blue. Trace it with your cruel fingers. Talk like it was your right to take my body into your mind and do what all red blooded men want to do. What they're made to do. I wanted it. Draw the strands of my hair into your nostrils, and close your eyes in what will look like a prayer for chastity, to the very blind. You enjoyed the way it felt to undress me with your words in front of everyone, and nobody stopped you.
I bet it felt powerful.
I bet it felt like freedom, to flick your tongue to taste the air right out there in the open.

You are not free.
And, forgive me,
But I do not believe that men were made to pull off the buttons. I do not believe they were born to take our bodies into their minds, or into the back seat of their cars, or behind dumpsters, or into empty laundry rooms where no one can hear the screaming.

Forgive me,
but it's *******.

Men do not have to be cowards, or dogs, or drunkards, or the way it feels to have the pillows ripped out from under your head for saying "please, not tonight."

You are not free.

(But you could be.)

My sisters and I were placed on the front step in front of the house, where red blooded bodies were begging for red blood, and ***, and somebody's virtue to ravage.
They said, "take our daughters."

It was our innocence which made us the perfect consolation prize. A tidy meal to tide them over.

The truth is coming like a sword.
The truth is coming like water.
The truth is coming like a sword.
The truth is coming like fire.

There is a look that you used to get in your eyes which I cannot to this day quite accurately describe. It was the night prowler, passing by the downstairs window, peeking in. Evaluating the locks. Evaluating the distance between the front door and the valuables.

I made it so easy to get in. I kept the windows open, and my eyes shut. I kept the doors unlocked.

When you touched me, you went away. I was not a woman, I was the chemicals responding in your brain. Ironically, for a burglar, you hated any part of me which suggested that I was something of great value. You hated the individuality tattooed to my skin. What is a womans body if it does not look like the last woman's body you used to touch and go away from? You hated the reminder that we are not all the same, and we do not exist to release chemicals in your brain.

I colored my hair red. Like wine. Like the lipstick you said looked "too heavy." I inked roses into my ribcage and between my ******* and I kept you at a safe distance, that is to say, too far away to ever touch me again.

The windows are locked.
The doors are deadbolted.
I moved homes, I moved cities.
You'll never get close enough to give me that look;
You'll never taste wine, or feel the ends of my hair between your fingertips while we watch a movie.
You'll never trace the shapes of roses.

You

Will never see me

Again.

This is not a beautiful story.
This is about you and me.
This is about two common thieves who could never see the forest for the trees,
and every word we breathed to one another in the spaces in between,
choosing to believe that we were anything but sinking vessels,
rending holes in the other’s heart-
this is about you and me in the dark,
sinking to the bottom of the sea.

See, this is not a beautiful story.

But the narrative you crafted was of two lovers in a romance, and you said that it was best that we keep it in the darkness, under the ironic promise that it was in the name of honesty to be fostered between us-
I suppose I wanted to believe it.

I was yours, and you were my secret.

But no heart ever knew a secret that didn’t grieve it, and it grieves me to think of unveiling my beauty meant for another man beneath the wandering of your hands,
and you said you didn’t understand why there were tears in my eyes.

Well neither did I,
but it still keeps me awake at night.

And I didn’t know it, but every time we parted you went home to finish what we started

alone in the dark with your computer screen.

This is not a beautiful story.

You used to say that we were more than the chemicals responding in our bodies,
like what we had was more than lonesome, broken misery masquerading as intimacy,

but it wasn’t.

You just needed a warm body
and I needed to be enough for somebody
we could never alleviate the pain we were trying to escape,
and If I could see you today, I would tell you that I’m sorry.

I’m sorry.

Did you know that if you leave your car in your driveway,
With the keys in the ignition,
And someone sits down in the front seat like they own it, and drives away,
You are the one who is liable for theft?
They can drive that sucker to the coast.
They can burn the upholstery with their cigarettes. They can bring their friends into the back seat, and fill the compartments with their refuse, and ****, and they can leave it ruined in front of your house, or crushed into the median on the highway, or left in disconnected pieces under an overpass.
It will be called, “unauthorized use of a vehicle.”
It will be called a “misdemeanor.”
But you left the car running.
Weren't you kind of asking for it to happen?

They said,
This,
(Gesturing to the skirt which fell to two inches
above my kneecap),
Is like that.

If I walk outside of my house in jeans and a t-shirt, or a long dress with thin straps,
Or with my chin tilted out,
Or with long eyelashes,
Or with full lips,
Or with my hips swaying when I walk,

It's like I left the car running.

It's like I invited them to force their bodies into the front seat.
In their minds, or with their hands, or with their lips to anyone who would listen to them.

Little girls in leotards become like unlocked car doors;
Where men can burn their cigarettes into their skin,
Or stick their fingers in
In plain view of their parents,
And told to let it happen,
Quietly.
It isn't theft,
It's “a medical examination.”

What did they expect?
It isn't a theft.
She was just as guilty of negligence.
It isn't really a felony.
It's not THAT BAD. (Stop being so dramatic.)
It's the unauthorized use of your body, for a time, or one night,
or every time you close your eyes for the rest of your life,

Sure-

But you left the car running.

it's the way her hand moves back and forth in the air
as she's thinking
Like a maestro, conducting
an orchestra;
but it's her mind,
unfolding.
cue the crash of cymbals,
jarring
-- and silence.
//
Cue the image of her ex husband,
and the flat landscape which was their marriage
and the heat which hovered on the horizon,
like unreachable dreams,
taking on the form of
water.
but she cracked with dry reality.
cue the salt on her lips

-- crash.

//

and here we bring in the street preacher,
who can't keep his eyes on her face.

he reminds her if the desert.

he reminds her that sometimes we must cover up the curves to keep from stumbling our weak brothers who cannot resist the presence of wine,
(but she is not the wine.)
//
women are not the wine,
and men are not the drunkards.
women are not the wine,
or any other intoxicating substance.
neither are they meat sacrificed to idols,

or meat at all.
//
cue the crash of resounding cymbals
and it breaks her train of thought
but it does not break her
//
and the desert did not **** her
and the drunkard can not taste her

cue the crash

-- and silence.

I am sixteen, ⁣
walking down winnie in the middle of summer⁣
heat waving thick fingers in the air, taunting ⁣
I am wearing sweatpants and a hoodie ⁣
all my layers of self and self defeating comfort eating are not enough to cover me ⁣
I have the hood pulled over my hair ⁣
*****, too short, uncared for⁣
⁣
I am carrying a novel, something cheap and badly written ⁣
a friend from school passes by me, waves, I turn away ⁣
pretend I don't see them ⁣
I stuff my hands in the soft pockets, grab a handful of hip meat, it feels like that scene in Lord of the Rings where juice runs down the chin of a false king⁣
⁣
⁣
I wear anxiety heavy around my face, I don't recognize myself without it⁣
but depression is not a word I can touch⁣
it doesn't fit me ⁣
it doesn't belong in my charismatic vocabulary ⁣
I don't know that I am drowning ⁣
⁣
wet mouth smacking and finger tapping make me feel like my mind is an experimental horror film ⁣
how are small sounds so loud? ⁣
how do they crawl into my ear canal like an animorph alien? ⁣
I was always so afraid of those books ⁣
and the sounds outside of our tent when my brother read them to me ⁣
I am so afraid of everything ⁣
⁣
I am sixteen ⁣
It's 98 degrees outside ⁣
and I am walking down the street in three layers of winter gear ⁣
and fear ⁣
and self hatred ⁣
and I cannot identify it ⁣
I don't know that I will be beautiful ⁣
I don't know that I already am ⁣
I don't know that my hands will pick wildflowers out of words ⁣
and that my life will be a practice of arranging bouquets for kitchen tables ⁣
I don't know that my hair will be long and easy to twirl around one finger, without thinking about the action ⁣
actions won't always feel like eyes watching me in and of themselves ⁣
⁣
I don't know that I will pull on jeans without thinking about the way they don't lay flat against me ⁣
I don't know that curves can be custard on the tip of a finger, sweet and nostalgic tapioca, ⁣
gritty and dimpled and perfect for sundays⁣
and mine and plenty ⁣
and pretty ⁣
⁣
I don't know that I will be beautiful ⁣
I don't know that I already am ⁣
⁣

I do not want to be touched like a steering wheel is touched;
Or a guitar-
Like I am a machine, an instrument made of parts,
Like if you pluck my strings, I’ll sing for you
Like I was only created to get you from point a, to point b,
Like I was made entirely to respond to your urgings. –

I do not want to be loved like a dog is loved,
Or a car.
Like I am the comforting warmth at the foot of your bed, or the meticulously painted frame you can’t wait to show your friends,
Because you still hope you can earn their respect. –
My love, I want you to touch me because it is through my skin that you can cool the fear that burns me,
I want you to want my body because it is the artistic expression of the person God made me!

Do you know that God made me? –

My love, I want you to love me because I AM the bones inside your body,
Because I am the ribs that curve around the softest part of your insides, protecting.

I want you to love the way it hurts to love me,
Because nothing worthy is painless,
and I am nothing if not worthy-

Do you know that I am worthy?