The moon rose in my window tonight
A half moon
The kind of straight-edged split pea that
Reminds you of math
Real eldritch math that hides under high school Algebra II
Like a hole in the earth that could swallow you forever
Sitting prettily, disguised under a manhole cover
The force that shapes mad dust into planets, spheres,
That folds light just-so around one single, even half of the moon
It rose perfectly in the middle of my window
While I talked on the phone
And then rose up past the top of the casement
As the sky got truly and properly black
And if I were a certain kind of person
A happier person, no doubt, even for all the trouble I would cause,
Its disappearance might be proof enough
It had never been here at all

1.
He said
You’re so thematically inconsistent
What are you? A ghost? A vampire?
I said I am a more old fashioned thing
Before monsters had to be **** and well contained for the screen
A specter- solid when it wants to be
And blurry when it does not
Think of me as the mistreated children
And the wreckage in your wake
Think of me, and my hands will grow substantial around your neck.

2.
I don’t self-diagnose.
Don’t trust myself to know myself,
I take personality quizzes with
A moderated panel of objective observers.
What mythological creature am I?
“A fairy.
Step light, speak quiet, hard to get in touch with.
If you weren’t right in front of me
I might think you weren’t real.”
A fairy.
A sweet thought, pleasing to the ego.
Who doesn’t want the graceful bearing?
The mischievous face peeking out from holly bushes?
Who wouldn’t want to feel ladylike and airy?
I don’t self-diagnose.
If I did, I’d never end up with something so pretty.
A ghost, I would say.
Long-dead and fading every second.
My tangled hair and pale face,
My cold bare feet padding silently over the hardwood floor,
My too-big clothes swaying in some invisible wind.
Step light, speak quiet, hard to get in touch with.
Better organize a seance before the veil draws closed.

I want a clean raw heart
Like a house cat’s heart
Light and string and feathers
And sleeping in the sun
I want the pricking up of ears
And the eyes that miss nothing
A heart that knows little and tastes much
I have grown too long and traveled too far
The cat heart and the bear heart
The elephant and whale heart
They are behind me in the distance
And I am the overgrown thing sleeping
Beneath my own weight
I would slough it if I could
Oh to be unparalyzed
To pick up and move house with the wind
And stir leaves under my feet like the wind
But I could never embark
Dragging some heart
Some strange heavy heart
Not without leaving a crushed world in my wake

i never believed in a soft God.
the one that kisses birthmarks onto babies
and sends angels to watch sleeping children
He is blond and white, like honey and milk
and the baptist hospital gift shop sells statues of Him
enthroned in pastel puffy clouds with roses on His cheeks.
He calls me "lamb" with a voice like a grandmother's,
He puts casseroles on potluck tables, and
i never believed in Him.

i do not know what hard God would look like
but if i did, that knowledge would be my undoing.
in the old bible, He is called "my sword" and
"my shield"
and that is how God is used today
the shelter over the head
the weapon on the hip
to whom you raise your arms in self-defense
only if you want them marked in blood forever.

hard God knows that birthmarks are made by splitting skin cells.
hard God knows that infants die for no reason in their cribs.
He puts price stickers on pink statues of soft God,
reminds me that lambs go to the slaughter,
and doesn't let just anyone into the church function.
He killed the man who taught me
that even if i could not believe in a soft God, i could love like Him.
hard God said "no other Gods before me"
and He killed, slowly and painfully and publicly,
the kind man who had believed so earnestly in a soft God.

I am like all other fools;
Nothing broke my heart.
I am told I was a happy child,
And I remember it so:
Happy alone in the dark,
Happy apart from the rest.
The little princess, the secret garden,
Ariel in her grotto with the hearts of untold music boxes...
I cannot shake the feeling that nothing happened,
Nothing!
A childhood of blithe gray happiness and
Nothing!
I am so upset and why?
So I have to go back and look for the reasons,
Stir the *** for carrots to float to the top,
And trot out what I find like fluffy show dogs on Thanksgiving:
"See this one,
This one is pure.
Its grandfather is its uncle
And it is pure.
It does not heel, and its bite is fierce.
It explains everything."
I'm not sure if I believe it, or if anyone else does either;
It was wrong, and it happened,
But if it didn't bother me then, why should it now?
How did I live happily with such rotten filling?
With a missing father, or a cramped existence,
Or a present so empty of true love it engenders a future of death by seafoam?
What wakes me at night with the terror
That I am the last person left alive on Earth?
Is this the horror of not recognizing?
The audience sees the shadow of the monster creep behind the girl,
But in that moment, her mind is still peaceful.
She won't scream until it's too late, anyway.

I am a Passover meal without honey
A salad of parsley and salt
I am the face babies make when they taste
Lemons for the first time
And when the riptide yanked you under as a child
The brackish fetid smell of your lungs afterward
The breath of the drowned-dead corpse that lingered
Even after listerine and the end of summer vacation...
What the **** is wrong with a person who hates happiness?
Why does my skin dry and shrivel at heartwarming moments?
Why do hallmark cards make me wanna yartz?
What the **** is wrong, here?
Rupi Kaur split her poetry in sections:
Hurting, loving, breaking, healing.
I want to like her but I can only stomach the first fourth of the book,
The rest feels like a betrayal written by someone I thought I knew.
My coworkers express their sadness at current events and all I can think is
Finally!
Finally, you feel it too!
Hurt people hurt people.
I'm in the crab bucket and you're ******* coming with me, pal.
I've heard it said that I'll get better,
In body or mind or soul, the something that's got to give
Will give
And I will get better.
No one ever says exactly how, or when.
Until then I will sit among bitter herbs
Licking tears, uselessly, off my cheeks.

There are things we do not talk about,
Nor speak their names, nor bring them in the light;
The picture that gives injury through the eyes,
The song that kills, while sleeping, through the ears.
What watercolor of yellow poison blooms
When from the void steps something new to fear?


There are maps to places I should never go
I colored them with blue and green crayons
Made indentations in my grade school desk
And a tight-lipped teacher whispered phantom breaths:


“There are sights you never will unsee;
Flowers cannot regress into seeds,
Steps can’t be folded back into the legs.”
So I closed away what I should not have known
And my face flushed as I stilled my twitching legs


“There are things you never should have known,
And never dwelled upon; can you be smoothed?”
I try to reassure, by bolting down
Pandora’s empty chest, whence specters sprung
The raging lungs billowing in the night
The murderer’s knife a curvy white rib bone
One ***** left, weak-beating heart of hope


There are things, and things, and things, and things, and things!
Oh honesty, couldn’t you have struck a balance with me?
Couldn’t you have shut my eyes and ears,
Rubbed sunblock on my skin, and drunk my tears?
And left me in the dark where I belonged?
Cool in the dark, forgotten there for years


There are things grown people know and talk about.
There are people far too weak to find them out.
Too late. I should have known. I know it now.