I could love you better in blissful memory
Then your flaws would slowly dim
It would only be right to tell lies of how highly I thought of you
soon lies would come to be believed as truth even by their source
I'll forget the nights I fled from you
The nights the dog yapped
and the nights I ******* my hands in my hair
ripping it out strand by strand
wishing to God you'd stop talking, stop screaming, stop breathing and being

I want to shed you like a snake skin
Want to throw you up like too much whiskey

The sweet relief in the churning twisting convulsions of my stomach

You cling to me like an old man to his glory days

I only wish I could be the
Nirvana
            smoke
off incense
Transcending its earthly form

Dancing around your finger tips
Performing acrobatic
            Bends and gracefully thick swirls

But never to be touched, grasped ,or handled by you ever again.

You grab at me
but I am already gone

I dissipate

He slipped his hand into my hand
and I hated
myself

Hated the patterns I always fell into

He talked to me
He talked at me
To no fruition
For no part of me would listen

I close my eyes to listen to the water
the quiet water, gentle water, water keeping only the moon and
us as company

With my eyes closed tightly
He kissed me

He Stole a kiss from me
He stole from me

What is it. I would like to know

Such success at drawing so many in
Tempting them to touch, but no captivating prowess
like a venus flytrap with no teeth

Why am I always a stepping stone

Why?
Why would you ever think that you could ever mean that much to me?
You stare at the ink-spattered glove moving across my face.
No, it isn't the smudged mascara of a thousand tears cried there.
Not the dried stain of a
Rainy. Dreary. Day.

So sorry to most pleasurably disappoint

And what have you there? Gleaming in your keeper's eye?

You dress it up and dangle it about my head like a cicada flittering on a string during hot Argentine, incense filled nights.

I burnt my finger once lighting the incense for nightly prayer.
That summer I blamed my isolation on what the burn had left: a large, sticky, unsightly welt.
The only trace of blind, naive, ignorantly whole-hearted belief.
My slightly, yet debilitating, wounded hand prevented my holding or shaking of any new body, or old body's hand.
But perhaps I only speak out of the need for a scapegoat?

Still, I hid the finger in tightly fastened bindings, as if to shut out just one more imperfection.
As if my inborn afflictions simply were not enough.
I could not stand one more earth inherited crack, nick, or stitch.

My empty, wounded, prideful hand wrapped around a cold, night sweat ridden glass.
The odor of vinegar, my makeshift poultice, rose to greet me.
To seat me. To allow the painful memories to slowly pick at and eat me.
Zealously. They make a feast of me.
Night after sarcastically lonely night.

But
Why?
Why would you ever think that you had ever meant that much to me?

A monster waits for me
He sits.
He, the only gender a monster could be
He entertains the tantalizing prospect of his
tongue and teeth dancing over me
not just in my head
not just under my bed
not just there when the lights are off
But when I step outside my bedroom door
I can hear his roar
in my father's snore

This monster advertises what he'll do to me
on billboards, magazines, and movie screens
the scenes he paints
his paws on me and my kind
on us on we
begrudgingly our faces, our bodies on our hands and knees
below him, below it, that monster that thing
How the hell did we let him control everything
he makes us change our shape and size before
taking us to our demise
the siren mermaid framed to be an evil creature
merely just refusing to be prey

My hair falls in waves that curl around and
 frame my broad shoulders,
my clicking clavicle, and the beginning of my body's
latin waist

My hands, calloused, cracked and bruised
proclaim that I have lived a hands on life
I have struggled with weights
ten times my size both physical
and emotional
that I have dropped the reins
on an unruly horse
grabbed mane
and held on for dear life
terrified, excited
our nervous systems communicating
her centuries old wisdom  
in the marrow of my bones

My hips do not know how to be silent
as they walk
They flow in movement like a snakes serpentine
leaving statements of "I am here"
in the desert sand
My body walks into a room and these hips shout
I, me, my womanly body is here
together with my waist they etch out an hourglass
of time
but my body... is timeless

My feet that walk away from you and most of your kind
Wide and arched they have helped my body flee your kind's
prodding, squeezing, clasping grasp
many a time

My tongue short, smaller than most
that did not say what my body collectively
begged and pleaded for, for such a long time

Do not touch me, my waves of curl,
my outreaching shoulders, my latin waist,
my outspoken hips, my survivors feet.
Do not touch

because
Its MY BODY
MY BODY
MY BODY

My sister said she felt as though she had been *****
although neither of us had been
and yet both of us were

We each manifested it in our own ways
and in the same ways
The PTSD so characteristic of crimes against
those of our kind

She steered the little blue vehicle
while I charted the course
I argued in favor of what we had become

Through our inner battles our need to have built nuclear bunkers
in our hearts
our fine tuned herd instincts and our prey-like reflexes
Stronger I said, Stronger women we have become

Eyes fixed on the road she seethed

"I am a freak in isolation (as a tea kettle she would have boiled over)
I reach out but cannot, do not, will not touch
do not have the knowledge

to kiss?
to kiss another's lips...
I flinch  I shutter, turn away from and flee

The upper air not clear yet
my heart's bunker I do not leave
forced there, forced there by so many years of wear and tear
I Stay in my dragons keep"

as we on the road drive to the dragon lair
My sister steers
and I, baby sister,
in our noble steed of a powered blue;
I guide us there

- To my sister:
Know that this is just a snapshot in time, a photograph that we will later burn.
That we will soon move on and you my sister. You will always be my guiding Sun.

The moon is there and she is strong

She taunts the ocean
night after night
It makes waves that struggle to touch her, as I do.

The sea's Froth forming futile fingers  
that crumble

The moon is there and she is strong

You wish to need no one as she needs no one,
has never reached out
But many a time before she has been sought out

The ocean mourns her.
When she goes missing from the night sky.
Masochistic in its desire for her
But desiring her none the less

No longer a mirror without her
No longer a passionate body
No longer full of life

But ever reaching

The moon is there and she is strong

Her new face does not remember
She is ever forgetful
as you wish to be.

still that twinge of what is missing will not let you
It drowns everything you have come to be.
Like you were caught in a Tsunami.
The closest the ocean will ever come
to her.

She does not reach out

You unfold your arms and see her light through outstretched fingers

The ocean flails. It wants to touch her
First.
and Last.

You both will fail Neither will reclaim what they lost in her

The moon is there and she is strong

She does not reach out
She holds your missing piece in her palm.

why is it only the love of a man for a woman
written about in story books
only his excitement of pursuit for her detailed
like a foxhound with his nose to the ground
trying to squeeze himself into her den
with his hideous howls

Why is it only this that makes it into legend?

There is a more potent love
a more powerful bond
that requires no if…then proof
A love like I am the moon and she is the sun
Needing no exchange of an attempted quenching
of insatiable needs
I will revolve around her
nought but for the fact that I am of her matter
and she is of mine

I am so much happier without you.
I take the time to write this, only because it is such an unexpected revelation.

I go to sleep at night not worrying that I am not wanted in the bed in which we sleep. Not worried that I disturb your comfort. Not worried that you dream me away.

I wake up every morning fully rested. I stretch my body out so that I occupy more space in this universe. I brush my teeth to my favorite songs and fix my hair to happy thoughts and it falls just the way I like it.

I do not question whether or not I am loved by the ones who should love me, no not since your eyes permanently took their gaze off me. You, master snake charmer. I had been so coiled up. But I have remember me and my venom.

I look in the mirror and meet my eyes and smile. No longer to I scrutinize. Now its only your image that I despise.

I am so much happier without you. I am full of honey. But I have none to spare for you.

You silly little Bear.

eyes, they stare right past as,
cheeks i scorn you to blush
feet in you i place all my trust
all my trust for the moment
just for the moment
but the moment lasts,
still here,
it lingers,
persistent, content to hang like a fog
like a fog to remind you of the morning mildew on a leaf, on a snail,
on that new wound you never tended to
but you remember now the oozing bruising
the twig that snaps as you brush right past
your feet your weight
your fault
your fault
lift your foot
its too late

It lies there broken
the snapped and splayed fragments a token
a token of your toxic sick romantic notion
the notion that ends, like all thoughts do, with a love struck *******
lying
dead
in the mildew

Clean each blade of grass
yelling, "out **** spot"
****** ******
command you
your feet your weight
your fault your fault
lift your foot
its too late
you've tread too far
don't worry, the morning will forget you
don't you wish the same happy fate
(To let go sweet bliss of forgetful memory)

I hold fury in every space between my ribs
and in every hollow of every bone

Never before had I felt the strain and stress, the heart palpitations that result from the loathing abhorrence and simple seething self hatred that come from loving more than I am loved

Proper Nutrition holds that
the body must take in enough to replenish what it expends and still be left with a small surplus.
My body is undernourished.
My ribs are bare.
They feel the cold, though they've no nerves.
I feel the cold.

I am by no means insatiable.
But I must take in more than just the crumbs that would feed
a bird.

Feed me. Feed me. Replenish me.
Cover my bare bleeding ribs with your warm hands
Collect each drop of blood as it runs off
Bleed yourself and put the marrow back into the hollow of my bones.

I lay belly up now. But I am a hell hath no fury Hades Hound
And I will not hesitate to bare teeth and rip flesh from bone.

(The starving will feed)

constricted even in the way we move our bodies
told that awkward
little
movements
are
inexcusable

things to be laughed at, hidden, and learned to avoid
girls must dance by swaying their hips
in broad
round
circles
boys must shift their weight from
foot
to
foot

The motions must be fluid
like water through irrigation channels

no room for random gyrations
for the freeing movement
with no control

We have forgotten
we must lift our feet
to show our souls

How do we express how grateful we are to have found each other?

Amongst the throngs of lonely, incomplete, souls
not yet satiated
Befuddled in their searches
Their appetites growing with each failure.

Yet we gorge ourselves.

Who are we to be so happy?

What forces at play do we thank and pay tribute to, lest this glorious gift bestowed for reasons I know not, be taken away.

What price did we pay?

A new fear?
That now my well being and life depend not only on my sense of self preservation, but on yours as well, as we now share one heart?

I pay it gladly and I offer you more of my share

My heart is no longer my own

My mind no longer my own

My future no longer my own

OURS

How did we come to find ourselves so lucky? So, Blessed?

What favorable manner of beings were we in a past life?
Perhaps we knew each other then too.

Perchance you were the Buddha and I the Bodhi tree that gave him shade those 49 days

Or maybe we were something less grand, but somehow still equally deserving.

I cannot say
by what design, or whose for that mater, we found each other.

Though I would venture to guess

We were made for each other
Simply parts of a whole being united.