I might make this the year I tell the men in my life when they do something that hurts
Probably not but it’s what I curl up and close my eyes about at night and let soak behind my eyelids into my dreams.
Katahdin is not a volcano. You can’t come into my life whenever you want. The way you forget everything I did for you makes me feel like garbage. I would like you to acknowledge the hurt and not just how I’m reacting to it.
Will it make me a *****? Will you like me anyway? Will you be in the headspace to hear that? Do I care?
I used to say I didn’t make friends with men because I thought they wanted to hurt me on purpose. I think now it’s on accident.
Is that better?
I think this is the year I say something and don’t cover with a joke to make you comfortable
Probably isn’t but I really want that to be true
One day I’m going to wake up and make it so
And with myself intact, my day will go on

Everybody knows who they are until they lose.
But if I scrape together my earnings I have enough to show for at least a little time where things were probably true, and ok
It wasn’t the proudest I’ve been. Probably not even the second.
But my score is woven so deeply into the fabric of how people consume me that I shudder when they put the fork down before
they’re done.
I’m done too.
Too well for anyone’s taste and especially not my own. No one’s famished anymore they all ate what was up first.
Mediocrity spills out of me like a fountain rotting from the underneath. Nothing can be contained forever, least of all shame.
I can plug it up with all the sacred earth and dead flowers that I want. It’s still a broken vessel. It will still be an obnoxious mess that begs for demolition.
No one will care enough to even destroy it.

It will feel the seasons and cry the graffiti off of its sides while the moss grows over. No longer serving its purpose, it begs to be gazed at. Lounged on. Wondered about how beautiful and useful it was before time tore it down.

When the bugs crawl on me I am reminded that I was always earth.
The sticky detritus that folds in nitrogen and small stones
Buds and sprouts that yawn from the loam
Combing my hands through the sharp green shards of grass
I think of how we’re growing at the same time.
Smaller than is visible but large enough to hold between my teeth
To bite down and gnaw through the woody rush stems. Stretching out each strand of reed grass until they’re thin as violin strings.  
How would I live without the harsh air? Or the sun suspending me in a chamber full of fog and soft knowing.
I can’t believe I’m one of them: that I’m made of moss and memories and I live in a pocket of air between the ice float and river flow. Funny how
We’re on one side of the ground or another. There’s almost no difference at all.

Run two over 10 minute miles.
Feel sick on the treadmill.
Buy $15 worth of Whole Foods hot bar.
Go to work.
Drive slow, it’s snowing.
Drink some good wine to learn
Drink some **** wine to unlearn
Be seen, feel wanted
Don’t get forgotten
Leave while you’re still memorable
Run another 10 minute mile
Stop
Work when the sun comes up come home when it’s down
Base your entire self worth on one thing
Stop
Consider dyeing your hair back to brown
Change your mind. You won’t get noticed
Crack some wise *** joke about how you were ugly in middle school so now you have a real personality
Drink a bottle of wine
Make someone laugh
Cook a soft boiled egg just right
Make someone cry
Hate yourself but only an amount you can come back from
Don’t be perceived but definitely get looked at
Order a shot and a beer
Go to the bathroom and watch the door stickers spin
Go to the beach and find meaning
Water the plant that keeps trying to die in your perfectly ******* lit living room
Wake up and watch your partner
In stillness except for breathing
Leave your bed before the sun is up
Be the first thing the world sees

With my head all the way under I can hear it
The drain from the overflow
My lengthy breaths like brush strokes
The tinny crack of a joint in the vacuum, in the lone lake of one
The closest I’ll ever be to a sea monster
Not in a legend way, but in the way I’ll never be as still
I’ll bring my hand up and over, ride with the mist up out of the four rounded walls
The archipelagos of my body are many. They don’t all fit beneath the surface
I wonder if islands feel fractured, vulnerable and sparse
Or if they feel fortunate to be earth and sea
The water always tinges green, from my hair, no matter how many washes I’ve done
Like the way a green glass wave might be harnessing the sky
All I’m missing are rocks to tumble and coast to encroach on
Then I might feel what it means to watch something soften
Then maybe I’d know what it means to watch something roll under me so easily I don’t even notice as it leaves.

For as long as I can remember
I’ve wanted to be older
Older than I was
Old, like my friends’ parents
I couldn’t stand being reduced to kids menus
Cold grilled cheeses and apple juice
I wanted to drink wine like a 29 year old that had two jobs,
But not for the money - just to keep herself busy
I wanted to be old enough to be mad at someone and have it matter
Old enough to never have a tantrum again
Or to drive a car with all the windows down on the highway.
To live alone and only be a little scared
“Talk like a kid, eat at the kids table, you can’t give adults money in birthday cards, you’re too young to know”
So many rules from a group of people who didn’t have any
And so I did grow up.
Worked too many hours and stayed up late on the weekdays
Skipped some 8am classes and tattooed a dead bird on my upper thigh and still I’m so young
So much younger than when I was 9 and sure about every fact I made up
More naive than a child that saved all her money and counted it on the living room carpet
Less knowing than someone who would have a bedtime and ****** strawberry daiquiris. Saw her friends often and didn’t relay all my mistakes to anyone I met just to make sure
I’m still good
When I’m too old to be so wise for my age,
or an old soul,
I hope that means I will finally be myself
That me and time will meet in the middle of a familiar place
And continue our conversation like two old friends
And walk without looking behind us.

I’m a soft moan in the mewing darkness
Our skin is see-through just around the edges
Paler than we might remember
Softer. Always softer in a way not weaker
I follow my own line of symmetry
All the way up my body and out of Breath
Beneath the sea there’s more earth but never more than there are stars. Above you
There’s no other. Above you
There never was.