Look at this Moor,
with his dolphin
held like a bagpipe
splitting with water,

while beside him
tourists stack three deep
grabbing at their beer,
pretending to ponder

the veiled Nile,
while their eyes slant
towards the open seats
at the cafe and the Aperol

that issues so freely
you'd think Neptune
was pouring it out, too.
The sun is wincing citrus

above the high windows
that overlook the plaza,
laughter cresting above
the tourist scrum, and

children scream with gelato
strung between their fingers.
People like to be close
to history, but not too close.

If the old stones spit water
pleasantly, so much the better.
Browse the pamphlet,
tell the wife it's Bernini,

not knowing that Bernini
once paid a servant
to take a razor to the face
of his mistress because

she slept with his brother,
because history's scrawled
as much in blood as in marble,
and the colossal Pantheons

of the world are easier
understood with a dizzy
laugh and eyes shining
with afternoon wine.

I#m drunk
on the ***** I drank
after mushooms I ate
that just might have stuff that can **** me.

Iäm drunk
on the champagne that stank
of the cheap aperol
that I bought when on discount at LIDL.

I6m drunk
and I don't want to bank
on the pictures of mushrooms
that have no intention of killing.

I*m drunk
in my bed I just sank
to ignore all the horror
of leaving my kids with no mother.

I'm thinking of my old lovers all the time
All the time they are on my mind
I think of texting them
Unblocking them
Looking them up on Linkedin
And I can't
Or I don't
What if I'm disappointed?
What if I would be inviting the wrong energy into myself?
What if they come and the magic is gone?
But all I want to do is smoke a ******* cigarette
On the water
While I get too tipsy off an aperol spritz
And a hot man looks at me and rubs my calf
While he thinks about how to get me into bed
Or better yet,
He already has me in his bed
And he still acts like he's working to get me there
I want to be touched
Tenderly and aggressively
I want to be lifted and throbbed
I want to feel hot, tequila breath on my neck
While a sweaty, hairy chest looms over my back
While a hard **** enters me
And one hand holds my throat and the other holds my hip
Holding me in place to **** me just right

But then the problems arise in my mind
The problems are as follows:
1) who would I select? an old lover? Probably not, they are in the past for a reason, and yet a new one I can't be sure of
2) what if the *** is bad? And I give myself some new trauma to overcome. The vessel of my newly healing ***** is so tender and I could easily disturb the climate of peace growing there, rip the tender shoots from their roots because I want so badly to get manhandled

Aren't these problems just fears?
And why shouldn't I be afraid?
After the three assaults of 2018-2019 *** wasn't the same anymore
It's less to do about the assault of 2009
But even as I type that
"2009"
I remember that I was just a sophomore in high school
The womanness in me barely beginning to grow
And those roots were brutally ripped out of the new soil
The new leaves on my sweet spring green branches
Were torn and smudged
And the soft velvet of my body was ripped
And new pollen was discarded

So of course 2009 also matters
And it's so shocking
2009 sounds like a time for babies to exist
Not a year for brutal assaults
But what can you do? Things happen as they happen.

Anyway.
After the assaults of 2018-2019
I went back to Tony
My stallion
My perfect ****
My daddy
My sweet long beach lover
And I left shaking
Unable to connect
Unable to **** or *** or play in the same way
I left reliving the rapes of the summer, fall and winter
And then no *** was the same
No *** was as free
And now I still have this overwhelming feeling
That the good years are gone
But that can't be true. I know it's not true.

My ***** just needs to heal
And it's hard to heal from ****
When I crave a good, sweaty **** down
And I am afraid to have it
Because what if I get triggered
And then I feel like a broken woman
Or what if I get triggered
And I say hey I'm triggered
And I don't beat myself up for getting triggered
And I don't get embarrassed and I don't cry
And it's okay
So many what-ifs

But I know I'm not broken
And anyway my goal in life is not to **** well
The measure of wholeness is not how well I ****
If I don't enjoy *** exactly right now
that is okay and is not a reflection of my wholeness
I am whole

And yet still
I want a ******* cigarette
and a spritz
and an espresso
and a hairy man with a big chest
wearing an open button down
who looks at me
like he'd like to ravish me any minute
and within all of that
I want never to think
never to worry
never to feel unsafe
or triggered
I want my brain to dissipate
but my brain doesn't feel safe
leaving me alone with my body
with my body where dangerous moments have left scars
and that is why I am trying to cultivate safety in my new garden

Safety in the body
Safety in the body
Safety in the body

and even better would be then to feel safety against someone else's body
safety with someone else inside my body
I feel so lame feeling scared
Feeling scared makes me feel weak
It's toxic I know
It's utterly toxic

But the point is that I am actually safe
I am utterly safe
And if I were to decided to find someone to ****
Right now
Either from my past
Or someone new
I would vet them
And then
The **** would be safe.

How did I do it back then?
At 5'2, inviting strange men to my HOME
Men all above 6'2 by the way
Muscular, fit, strong, healthy
Total strangers into my house and never ever feeling afraid
Knowing they were safe
And you know what
The ones who I knew were safe actually were always ******* safe
And if they showed me that they were less than safe
And I had my faculties in place
I left them
Or made them leave
I did.

I did my best to protect myself at every turn as best I could
And it still didn't work 100%
but I guess that's not true huh?
I could have valued my gut more
Said no earlier
Not had the shot that felt strange
Because I had many many shots
That felt great with safe men
Who wanted to have a good time
And we did have a good time
And everyone went home or to bed or to wherever happy
So it wasn't about the shot
It was about the feeling in my gut that didn't want it
And the women beside me who said go ahead
And the betrayal of my instincts.

And isn't this all just a part of the journey of life
as a woman re-learning to listen to herself
And listening to myself now
having said all this
I suppose it's fine that no man
Is laying in my bed hoping to impress me by playing guitar
Ready to lick me and squeeze me and touch me.

But I would still love a cigarette by the water
and an espresso
and a man bringing me a cool, strong drink
who wants to rub my feet
and **** me mindless
as the sun goes down
I want to forget my name
in someone else's arms
who also forgets their name
inside my perfect, precious, healed *****.

"All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts"
-Shakespeare, As You Like It

Panic flocks to an actor's lip:
my perch and cackle cauldron eyes
grow to zeroes at the bed-end of this,
the only stage & staging of my play.

The plot unknotted shows that
money's short and friends are few,
the body betraying itself busily:
an absurd third act.

The audience talks over my lines,
ignoring the tree tops exploding,
the neighbors *******, the heavens
& the hells standing empty.

Yet they hush when the curtain rises
on mosquitos haunting a Brazilian cafe
dotted in cochineal - Aperol spritzes
scatter along a failing, darkling rail.

We can't pick our audience;
neither can we deny that they
can only do their best within their needs,
nothing else or more,

& midnight confessions, truest
& heart-rent soliloquies, are nothing now
but furtive scrawls across a torn ticket,
swept up when the house lights come on.