Instead I sat stock-still as a room full of my drunken friends
laughed hysterically about ****,
and I listened in frantic silence
feeling like the **** of some joke
that I would never have the luxury of finding funny.

i tore down the blanket you had stapled to the wall
when i got too cold in the middle of the night.
you had put it there to block the light from the window,
but when morning sent sunshine streaming in,
you didn't seem to mind.

i was glad to wake up to the sun
because when she kissed my eyelids
and lifted me from sleep,
i realized that,
for the first time in a long time,
i was glad to wake up.

you can tell by the way she swings her hips
and pulls your hair
and licks her lips
and whispers in your ear
that she's easy.

you'll know her by the short skirt
and the tight top
and the high heels,
by the butterfly tattoo on her lower back
and the drink in her hand.

if she carries condoms
or takes birth control,
if she can't say no,
if she takes no convincing,
you'll know.

she's the girl at the party who drinks the most
and laughs the loudest.
she's the one you discarded the first night you met her,
when she gave you
the only part of herself that you deemed worthwhile.

you'll figure her out
from the tar trails of mascara,
the untouched meal,
the word "worthless" carved into her thigh like a brand,
marking her flesh as property
to which you are entitled.

pay close attention to her need for validation.
a **** will have the audacity to seek your approval
just because she's been told all her life
that she is  nothing without your love.
she will measure her worth
in units of attractiveness
and desirability
because that is the only system she's ever been taught.

you'll know she's a **** when they find the defendant
not guilty,
and he arrives at the ten-year reunion in a limo.
you'll know she's a **** when she doesn't arrive
at all.

it's easy to spot a ****
in a society that teaches her that her lips are for kisses
and not battle cries,
that her hands are meant to be cradled in yours
and not ****** into the sky,
that her body is your wonderland
and not her home.

it's hard to miss a **** in a culture that paints women as ****** objects
while condemning any expression of female sexuality,
that glorifies the "good girl" who becomes whole
when the right man comes along
and stakes his claim.
the women you ****** in the lifetime before you met your wife
weren't marriage material;
you need a girl who's saved herself for you because
a girl who lets you **** her
crosses the threshold from ****** to ****
in a bizarre coming of age ritual in which your **** is so ******* important
that its temporary entrance to her body
renders her worthless.
you can tell she's a ****
because for her, there is no right answer.

you can find your **** at rallies
and in body-baring photographs,
alive in the anxious triumph
of finding something in herself that she can love,
of digging through a lifetime of rubble
and reclaiming small shards of forgiveness from the dirt.
her self-identified status
rips away your long-established privilege
of dictating who she can be
and defining her worth;
your resent her new autonomy.

you can march beside her,
or you can step aside.
she has stolen back her power.
she was made for revolution.

i want to let my hair grow long and tangled
and weave flowers and moss between the strands
so i can feel like i'm a part of something living.
i want to learn to love my broken vessel
the way i love the wild.

i want to sink my hands in rocky riverbeds
and feel every kind of earth between my toes.
i want to learn the constellations
so i can point at pictures in the night sky
and not feel so alone.

i want to paint myself
in mud and freedom
and scream in my own voice,
triumph ringing through the trees.

i want to bask in the sunshine and radiate
light and strength and wholeness,
absorbing beauty and reflecting it back into the world
in new arrangements.

i will climb high and
sing loud and
march on and
fly,
until at last i can sink back
in well-earned exhaustion,
hallelujah seeping from my skin.

This year,
I want to follow through,
But commitment has never been my style.

counting breaths and blinks
makes it easier to detach
from hands where hands aren't wanted,
and lips and teeth and tongue and ****
and heat and sweat and rhythm.
heartbeats and seconds in packets of four
are better for the brain
than fists and blood and fear,
and ticks of the clock and fingertips tapping in time
beat uncertainty and helplessness
and not knowing if he's going to live
any day of the week.

i can wash my hands until they're red
(beet red, beat, beet red, beat)
and raw
(and dry and cracked and bleeding and bleeding).
i can write and re-write
and control and perfect,
perfect the verb because
perfect as an adjective is
impossible
(but nothing less will do).
i can line everything up and count it out even,
in fours or
in thirty-sixes,
(six times six, six six times, perfect square, perfect square),
and i can hope
that my neat tall stacks of the things i need to control
will finally outweigh
the scattered mountains
of the things i never could.

i can tell you how and when and where and what,
just please don't ask me why.

They told me I was a drug addict,
and I refused to consider it.
I was scared and I was fearless
and I was
ancient and young
and
I didn't know how
so many things could fit inside of me,
but I knew that they were wrong and they
could never understand.

They told me I was a drug addict
and I thought maybe
they knew what they were talking about,
after all,
and I wanted them to be right because
I wanted them to fix me.

They told me I was a drug addict
and I went to meetings
and collected chips
and spoke in group
and preached recovery.

They told me I was a drug addict
and I agreed until
I got to go home
and even then I kept agreeing
for a while.

They told me I was a drug addict
and I sat in meetings
and got a sponsor
and said all the right things
to my parents.

They told me I was a drug addict
and I got high
because I missed it.

They told me I was a drug addict
and they told my friends
and said I'd try to convince them I was okay,
and when I did,
no one knew who to believe.

They told me I was a drug addict
and that I hadn't changed at all
and even when they said they were sorry,
I knew they weren't,
really.

They told me I was a drug addict
in recovery and that
the worst was behind me.

They told me I was a drug addict
and I never stopped for good
because I guess I was never sure
if I believed them.

They told me I was a drug addict,
but I think I'm doing
okay.