Fences make for good neighbors,
Slabs of wood painted bright white
And it’s my world that it holds
I used to believe in an open free for all
Hippies caressing under a sweltering sun in the red mud
I called that love
Telling unsafe people my secrets
And contorting myself to appease the un-appeasable
It didn’t work
Just made me tired really
Maybe it was the way I was raised
But I’m tired of pointing my finger out
Because all I gotta do
Is build a good fence
This is my world, not anyone else’s
I decide what comes into my little paradise.

Do you see my hands,
My open palms
Clamped
Sometimes
Because I close
And I find it so hard to open to you
Love has always hurt before

You said you’re independent but tender
You make me feel so warm inside
Like fireworks or rainbows expanding inside me
Like the sweetest melody
Brewing inside my heart
You give me hope
Beautiful love.

I feel hollow,
Thrum thrum thrum,
See? Hollow.
It hurts to feel hollow
I miss things I shouldn’t miss
I’m remembering incorrectly
It hurts, it just hurts
I want to feel the sun and be whisked off my feet by joy
But my heart is heavy
I miss things I shouldn’t miss
That relationship, was a drug
An addiction
I miss things I shouldn’t miss
My mind and body and heart
Are craving a hit
I’m in withdrawal
Ouch
Shaking, hollow, thrum thrum thrum
Who am I?
I’m missing things I shouldn’t miss.

Pull me in with the tide
Green frothy foam rising up my thighs
Translucent teal
Bubbles popping, waves crashing
My imagination, whole
Home
At home
In the big green sea
Who’s hand should I hold?
Who’s bed do I want to inhabit
I spend my time thinking of the people I may love
But I always end up alone
But that’s ok
Because it’s safer to sleep
To keep this distance between us
Don’t worry
Just because we’re away
Doesn’t make this love unreal
Everything is real which I can feel
If I can feel it in my heart
And dream it in my mind
I know,
It’s real
But sometimes I have trouble distinguishing dreams from reality
But is it all really the same?
An undivided stream
Weaving threads, together in this tapestry
Who’s hand should I hold?
For now I hold my own.

I want beauty like the blue sage
Beckoning the hummingbird,
Petals open
Fertile ground between throbbing lips
******* like mountain peaks,
Round and supple
Yearning to be touched and devoured in his hands
I want beauty, deep beauty
Raw beauty
And aliveness
Fully alive
I hunger to be fully alive
With this earth, with creation, with the pulsing energy of the cosmos
I’m alive
On fire
Pulsing
Awake and dreaming
I know what I want
Life,
To live.

So this is how the story goes,
I think I fall in love
But when I seek deeper
There are no roots
Just empty promises that never bloomed

It’s funny because
I always wonder what they think of me
How they feel for me
But when I look in my own heart
I find that I don’t even love them, just like I know they don’t love me

This one thought of himself as a knight in shining armor,
He said he was a romantic
But really he was so cruel,
Giving me what he knew I wanted in the beginning
Only to gain power over me to tear me apart

And I just couldn’t take it, one more day
Of him yelling at me,
Criticizing me,
Telling me to change
And then with his victim story
Of anxiety about the pain he caused me
He’s such a fool,
But so am I
I abandoned myself for his love
That I could never fully grasp no matter how hard I tried.

She’s a red, hot energy coursing through me
Awakening in my heart
She’s daring and unruly,
Truly wild, and set apart

She’s a blue flame
Dancing fluidly with the wind
Her blue courses through my veins
And washes through my beating heart

I thought maybe, I had to be different
To have her live in me
But that belief made her enraged,
She absolutely disagreed

But this belief was ingrained in me by the people who make the beauty magazines,
And all the flashy displays of ‘this is what a woman ought to be’
Even the men have picked me apart
Scrutinizing my features as if I’m not a work of divine art

They program us women this way so that we don’t feel good enough,
And when we don’t feel good enough we’re more likely to hand over our money
To be injected into and pumped up
With plumper lips, thicker hips, bigger ****
But when is it ever enough?
We end up like fattened cows stationary, hooked into a milking machine
We lose the meaning to life
Because plastic can’t let life in

I don’t want plastic
I want real
I want Her
To take me over
And bring me to life
I don’t want to compare myself to other girls
And believe the lack of love in my life is because of my ordinary looks
Or because they is something wrong with me
That I’m not feminine enough,
Attractive enough to men, put together enough, smart enough, wifey-material enough
And this is why I’m on my own
But it’s not true
It’s a lie
I am lovable and I am kind
I have a lot to offer
And I’m going to give it all to me
I’m not going to mold myself
Into what I think men want me to be.