"crusted" poems
I'll be eaten alive one day:
one day, i see it in my mind
so close to closure along an empty street
late at night
(owls just retired and birds
not yet up),
orbs of light tethered to tall electric poles
cast dappled circles on cracked pavement;
illumination and safety
(for that two metre radius).
Stepping between them
like a girl child on stones
across a garden,
I anticipate each missed step
as sinking into sand or frightful waves.
Singing drunk back-alley lullabies
i'll soothe the skelebabies in their sleep,
their poor crusted noses snuffled against
a cold shift of air
(their private torment plastered over billboards
with corporate logos and dim colours,
suggesting the city's lights have gone out and
the local government is in frantics.
That is, after all, what you'd focus on)
Girl child games were so tipsy and magic
(and so close to real coldness);
between two orbs of light i'll slip
through the cracks
in the pavement.
THE END.
(eat me alive,
eat me alive,
eaten alive by the
wolf at the door)
Sep 25, 2014
Sep 25, 2014 at 6:36 PM UTC
Life has run away from me as I play this game of chance.
One at a time you have fallen before me, you fabled soulmates.
The scars run deep, my heart crusted over with the soles of those
who have so carelessly trod on my lifeblood.
You who have made me, could you not have shown me the danger of a love untrue?
I have been chained to the players of hearts throughout all time.
You have been quiet for too long. Can you not hear my call?
Why do you keep silent in my time of need? Why do I not hear your comfort, your voice?
My soul calls out to find a love that binds with more than a gilded ring,
created from a spirit so true, intertwining with mine and becoming my own.
I’ve searched my whole life through for such a love;
one who is drawn to the life and soul of the me within.
Aug 24, 2012
Aug 24, 2012 at 2:40 AM UTC
Feel empty in your post apocalyptic City of Angels,
Where not even your pets are real!
An electric android, a sheep or a frog,
The whir-flutter of micro-electrical wings of a butterfly.
Good, and so you ought.
Now grab the handles of your empathy box,
And in a shared virtual hallucination –
Feel: empathy, depression, pain, delusion and despair,
The outré myriad gifts of consciousness.
Billions of discombobulated and disconnected wrecks:
Adam's sons; Eve's daughters,
And among them simulations too,
Fakes! androids!
A phony circuit of implanted semi-conscious memories,
A hive of neural malaise!
Welcome to our world;
know how dead inside I am.
You, yes, you:
Need a pet to make you more complete?
Maybe you can afford
A Fake Fakir Flake like me who looks like Jude Law,
Sounds like Richard Burton,
And silently romances you like Rudolph Valentino.
Come and stick what’s left of your mind,
In here,
In hair,
Hear her:
har, har, har…
A box of lies...
A voice, Mercer's,
With texture from an age you neither lived in nor dared in:
Al Jerry's, a TV actor,
Droning on in pre-selected tones.
The real thing, the men, the women, the children - their animals -
Made in the wild, wild desert,
In the green pulsing savannah,
On the open crusted sea;
Now too, washed, choked, and drained,
Too many spliced and diced mutations,
Iterating your image:
The thing that was my heart,
My Child, now its imitation.
Oct 15, 2017
Oct 15, 2017 at 7:42 AM UTC
Plaid slacks
Feather cap
Argyle socks
Flip phone
Mullet hair
Greasy hands
Crusted fingernails
White belt
Sketchy beard
Members only
Casio watch
Deck shoes
Muscle shirt
Tribal tattoo
Chest hair
Plumbers crack
You look great, Mom!
May 13, 2013
May 13, 2013 at 7:28 PM UTC
Charming lass, the shark she did trust , was a nimble one,
softly nibbled the dead cells laid crusted on her heart
genial it was so she felt like closing her tired eyes a bit,
her bed, lukewarm water, ominously bobbed all the while.
A woeful clown, she dreamed, tried everything to make her laugh
with his pathetic pranks; a jellyfish wearing a wedding dress
seeing this, smelled blood, tried to raise an alarm.
The shark was the one responded, "Don't you wake her up"
the waves were lapping on the shore, then dense silence reigned,
as expected a sanguinary sunset it was,on water blood lay splattered.
Sep 29, 2014
Sep 29, 2014 at 5:58 PM UTC
The outsider is inside,
Inside the house, staring from the crusted window,
The latch calls to her in rusty tones.
She stares upon its existence,
wishing nothing more than to answer.
But the outsider, she is inside,
Her back turned to what she’s built,
Her eyes upon those who are outside,
Can they save her? Would they care to try?
Her elbow rests upon the dusty sill,
Eyes glossy like Rapunzel, the Golden One,
But she has grown old inside the house,
she has grown blind and deaf and dumb.
The outsider, she once wished,
to leave the depths of her understanding,
to venture into the clashing world,
to face the blatant nature of love,
But the outsider, she is inside,
over much has cried, died and lied.
The weight of gravity holds down the fort,
and her as well; she doesn’t fight.
She holds the hope she’ll someday be tempted,
to leave that which protects her so,
to venture through the grimy view,
lifted by that which holds her low.
The outsider, she’s still inside,
Forever more, should she still hide,
You could say that she should have tried,
She wanted to, with all her pride
To leave that which keeps her inside.
To leave that which keeps her inside.
Mar 11, 2015
Mar 11, 2015 at 3:02 AM UTC
As the sun reaches the other pearl shores
Your eyes are waited on by the universe's starry doors
It's okay to say that you miss me, you see
But you'd better miss all of me
Miss the way that I talk about you
Miss the way I laugh and the way I croon
Miss my voice when it sings out of tune
Miss my touch when we lie under the moon
As the stars blink into the sun
Your life is young and it hasn't yet begun
Do you remember the good times or bad?
Do you miss me or just a companion to be had?
Miss my paranoia about the way you feel
Miss the darkest things I tried to conceal
Miss the spirit of my unconfined relief
Miss my questions and my constant disbelief
Are the things that you remember too old?
Did you coat the dust in veneer crusted gold?
Are your memories too good to be true?
You say you miss me but really, you miss you
Aug 28, 2015
Aug 28, 2015 at 2:49 PM UTC
Laying in the darkness
Stars glimmer brightly
You hold me tight
This cold winters evening
Whispering in my ear
Saying how much you love me
I turn away
Pretending to sleep
Ashamed to face you
Wishing to be somewhere else
Anywhere else
But it’s not because of you
That I turn away
I’ve dreamed once, trusted once
Loved once but now I can’t
No matter how I try
I do try
But all I see is
My heart ripped in a million pieces
Thrown
Fluttering to the white crusted river of tears below
And now
Like an old photo in the sun
I’m fading
Fading from dreams, fading from trust
Fading from love…
Fading from you
No it’s not because of you
That I’m afraid to love
It’s because of him
He who I gave everything to
I gave my time, my mind, my trust
Shared my fears, my dreams, my thoughts…
My bed
No it’s because of him
That love has become
The thing I
Fear
The most
Aug 6, 2013
Aug 6, 2013 at 4:10 PM UTC
I have hairy legs.
The dishwasher is broken.
I have been reading books.
I have been solving stupid math equations
I have to wash the food crusted dishes.
I’m writing a novella
I’m also researching sodium chloride
My novella is only six pages single-spaced so far.
Comment vous appelez-vous?
Why doesn’t anyone participate
In the
Wash Your Own **** Dishes Program?
I’m studying French.
-b +/- Square root of b2 – 4 (a)(b) over 2(a)
Anyways.
I have been teaching myself
How to play my
Black
Stretchy
Accordion.
[I don’t know why,
But it’s stretchy
Like mozzarella cheese]
I have to help my sister-in-law move
Into my house.
Into the basement.
Heh heh heh.
Daiya non-dairy cheese:
“Melts and stretches!”
Now I have to scrape the
Black tar gunk
Off the plates, because
Mother told me to do so.
Oh, the odium of sodium!
There is
No more time
For me
To shave
My legs.
Apr 6, 2011
Apr 6, 2011 at 7:15 PM UTC
for the 111 yr. old young lady from Mars
<•>
fluids in, fluids out
wake up at midnight, lips, throat, even eyes, California Death Valley parched, white crusted-stuck together,
it takes Poland Spring water from the Northeast to unlock the throat, ****** not sipped, from a plastic gourd the chilling wetness slap to the body and brain screams metaphor, poem in there somewhere,
so what if it's spat-past midnight,
isn't this one of those soul-criticality's,
staying hydrated, (is) disco staying alive
make sense to you?
the older I get, thirstier I am, could be I'm drying/dying out from the inside out,
doctors clueless, but then again they don't reveal all they see out of poetic professional courtesy and they are tired of
yeah yeah yeah,
my professional courtesy answer to their dire warnings repetitious
tonight tho the metaphor runs strong like a mountain stream,
a Mt. Marcy beginning trickle growing into a mighty Hudson,
and the driving urge to drink, simple replenishment, birth fluid
is strong transformed into words
water is words, the water is wide, the poems hydrate what's left on the inside, and the metaphor transforms itself again
water is words, words are water,
the difference huge, the difference minuscule,
both pour, both refresh like a mother's body fluids,
all for one, one for all, and as closing time grows nigh,
staying-hydrated is primate
place a new cold bottle in readiness for my
3 o'clock feeding
Nov 14, 2017
Nov 14, 2017 at 1:50 PM UTC
This is too far,
I know I’ve gone too far.
As if the light of day were enough to wake
my dormant wit,
But I know it’s not.
My children lay dead. My wife lies cold and still.
How long I sit in silence
I can’t know.
My arms are lifeless weights along my sides,
My hands are crusted
With my family’s blood.
I cannot know the horrors of last night,
Echoes of screams
And a rage not my own
Are all that I can manage to produce.
At last I gather
their once warm bodies
and lay them down beneath the high noon sun.
Our house is now a broken shell,
Much like me.
The door hangs from a single copper hinge
A parody of
my fragile mind.
No windows remain, only empty holes
Beneath a partially
collapsed thatch roof.
I fall to my knees and begin to dig,
Every handful of dirt
Is agony
To my shattered hands, I welcome the pain.
I dig the hole
wide and deep to fit them.
At last, my greatest fear has come.
The grief arrives,
and bears down upon my chest.
I lower my children first into the ground.
And kiss their brows,
holding each, one last time.
My tears raining down on their broken bodies.
I gather my wife
And softly place her
Alongside our children.
I kiss her lips
And whisper all my thoughts
Into her beautiful deaf ears. I moan
And heave, tasting
salt and earth and blood.
“Bring me death if you have any mercy!”
I shout to the clouds
and blue above.
I wait for death but there is no reply.
Gods do not answer
pleas of the insane
I ask for their forgiveness one last time
And heap the earth
Onto my happiness.
I walk away towards nowhere, anywhere
But this place where
My murdered family lies.
Oct 13, 2013
Oct 13, 2013 at 10:30 PM UTC
You won't recognize them I bet,
your secrets, even in broad day light,
if they walk towards you smiling,
wearing dark glasses to hide their eyes
in a humid day.They now wear clothes
of different styles to take you for a ride,
even cross dress and change the accents,
they play games with your hazy mind
--the secrets you once buried deep under.
They stand peeping behind blinded windows
prowl as shadows soliciting behind half open doors,.
Time flies in a hurry like migratory birds left behind,
you have to strain your ears too much
to hear even the faint foot falls of the past!
Old memories have changed their manners
they try to distract one with invented details
Like the muffled voices in an attic dark,
on a fateful day so long, your old secrets
speak an archaic tongue, that needs to be interpreted.
One has to be artful as the turbaned village elders
who would for your astonishment interpret
the vocabulary of lizard calls, key to nature's intents.
Or the trained eye of an elder who in flashes
of meteor falls, reads the secret messages of universe.
To get a true sense of your own secret
you have to tread the places they hide.
Make them shed their crusted hides
by which they conceal their true color,
which one has been waiting to see,
with a palpitating heart, walking back
to where one walked once, long forgotten.
That is why elders on days of yore
would exhort, embarrassingly repeat too,
not to have any hidden secrets that hurt
even if breathtakingly beautiful like a courtesan.
In some moment one won't expect
dreadful they could turn and become witches,
with fiery eyes, dreadlocks, and long nails.
Mar 25, 2017
Mar 25, 2017 at 4:11 PM UTC
I held out my hands.
I placed a drop of soap on each palm
and took hold of my ***** spoon and washed it with my hands,
cupping and spooning it
like my gentle hands were trying to make it croon.
Like it were mated and flipped and slapped
against threadbare slacks.
That spoon is cleaning me,
is washing my hands as I wash its tarnished feet,
it is forgiving me.
For the scalding soups and bitter ice cream,
and not washing it but watching it grow crusted, disgusted.
And while I swoon for my spoon,
and grinning the spinning dizzy grin of Love,
I remember, and give thanks for my feast.
This spoon feeds me like a child on Mother God’s lap,
and kisses me with life, with food.
This soap, and my hands, and this bubbling love between my spoon and I,
it is clean.
My soul is more clean with my spoon.
Cleaner than dog’s saliva licking at old wounds,
but that’s alright,
cause everybody knows ******* love scars, dog.
And women love beautiful spoons,
maybe because of its viscosity, or its gentle curvature,
or the deep loving laugh it invokes,
when it sits on my nose.
My spoon communion left me with pruned hands,
bright eyes,
and a coy smile for what flowers in my mind may bloom.
Nov 8, 2012
Nov 8, 2012 at 2:31 AM UTC
Oh Sally Lightfoot
With your limpet-crusted shell -
What a well dressed crab.
Crayfish, how is it
That your skeleton is on
The outside of you?
The female lobster
Lays a hundred thousand eggs:
Thermidor for all.
Furry crustaceans
Found in the South Pacific -
Can ***** be cuddly?
Can you fall in love
When your heart is in your head?
Wish mine was too, shrimp.
Jun 25, 2010
Jun 25, 2010 at 8:30 AM UTC
Winter, winter how we feel your icy touch
The earth is now under your freezing clutch
All that falls in our ears is the howl of gales from far
The night sky is covered in grayness without a single star
In the dawn, nowhere can one spot the buzzing bees
Icicles hang from boughs of leafless trees
Birds sit with drooping wings in their woody nests
Within eye shot, no trace of any roaming beasts
Trees stand sleeping in the biting cold
And the sun has lost its bright sheen of gold
From nowhere comes the song of a single bird
On the slopes, one cannot sight the grazing herd
Roof tops are crusted with flakes of snow
Which the sun with sharp beams alone can thaw
Piles of snow lie heaped on the barren ground
And the entire Earth lies in a sea of ice drowned
Busy streets and pavements are now lying bare
People stay indoors and to be out, they hardly dare
The rodents have gone into hibernation in their ditch
And life altogether has gone out of pitch
In the smiting chill of a dreadful wintry night
When through every fiber n’ nerve is the cold bite
How we like to sit cocooned beside the hearth
Sipping a cup of steaming tea in rising mirth
In such quiet hours, one can peruse into the pages of tomes
That will transport one to enchanting magical zones
Or engage in a hearty chat with friends and family
Thus turning even the bleakest hours sweet and lively
Jan 5, 2017
Jan 5, 2017 at 5:59 AM UTC
There is nothing darker than the putrid soul of your heart
Crusted by burnt desires and pyroclastic ash
Tortured by your existence, dipped into the hells of mankind
Bubbling skin and singed mercy embrace me whole
Turn up flames and burn me alive
Hear my screams ****** your mind
Cast me out of the dead, for I am not leaving
Laid in a forever coma then awakened
Pompeii is dead, Pompeii is dead, Pompeii is dead
Oct 12, 2015
Oct 12, 2015 at 5:33 PM UTC
under the sludge of this depression, I am awake. it’s morning outside but that doesn’t change a thing.
tiredness takes me to quiet places. I follow like I’m devout.
this forest is new. there’s a drumming of a heartbeat within the trunks of these trees.
it thrums under my fingertips. blood rushes forward to touch this rhythm.
songbirds nest, plume against plume for love and for rest. the birdsong is sweet as saccharine.
I taste the sap on my lips, its nectar, thick with agape. a salve for myriad laments under the roof of a single bell jar.
the indigo sky convulses, telling of fortunes. the clouds retch gilded roses.
blades of grass fence the circumferences of leaves in gypsy winds. the forest warms like a flame.
my body sways in solipsistic wonder. the crescents of my nails are crusted with lichen.
my limbs are drawn into its boughs, like gravity. like the bark is starved.
my mind is foliage and my crown is littered with inflorescence. my sky is finally cerulean and lilac.
each gall is an ancient hurt. each wound is a knot.
I breathe my mourning. I wait to bloom.
Apr 24, 2020
Apr 24, 2020 at 3:07 AM UTC
I know there will come a time where the only moisture will run out, and the ground will crack and crumble
And we will have to leave from this eternal drought- in this land many have called home
In two or two-hundred years- would we still have the one thing to nourish our bodies and repair the crusted soil?
Jun 27, 2014
Jun 27, 2014 at 11:45 PM UTC
The Mountain keeps all secrets. Crusted lichen on timeworn boulders. High altitude longing for alpine daisies. Carefree blossoms, long ago plucked, gone to seed, restless in the fertile ground. Wildflowers bloom shortly sweet, fleeting paintbrush to layered canvas. Fairy slippers lost on crumbling doorsteps. Glacier lilies pressed between avalanched pages. Forget-me-nots in forgotten blue hollows. The common harebell feels anything but common when seen through a lover's eyes. Forest tiger, your bulbs taste bitter. Purple lupines sage with fuzzy-leafed logic. Fireweed, ***** unadorned, eternally reaching. Lousewort, spreading phlox, leave this scarlet alone. Listen to Indian Henry, it's bad luck to trample what is sacred. The devil dreams behind steep and sheltered walls. Keep to the Wonderland, bypass this Trail of Shadows. Seek ancient hunting grounds, steadfast shelter in the wooded clearing. There is no pearly everlasting along these old trails. Paradise lost may never be regained.
Mar 14, 2016
Mar 14, 2016 at 8:25 PM UTC
Of ***** roasting pans and racks and island fog!
*if you love me, then you know poems wright themselves when standing, driving, bus riding, ********** and especially when
doing manly battle, ******* ***** dishwashing midst island fog
a passing remark goes noticed and summoned to a
Friday night feast, roasted fowl, wild rice with golden raisins and mushrooms, English spring peas, was it a Montrachet?
for dessert the washing up is obligation mine, a traditional desertion,
separation of church and state, her cooking a church in which I worship, she states eloquently:
“Unto Caesaria , Render Her the cleanup”
this is hand to hand combat, no dishwasher mechanical
can scrub like the human hand, and with body english,
water hot, but no gloves employed for this is ***** man’s work,
not for sissies, cleaning roasting pans and roasting racks
that are at least twenty years burnt and crusted with a blackened
finish, residue of other lovers and dinners P.N. (pre-nat)
array three kinds of sponges and some human & metallic *****
no one asking which came first,
the scrubbing away of life feasting residues,
or the poem writing that comes with pre & postscript sleepiness
when I say the dark stains and the grease buildup are
flavor enhancers, am beknighted with starry stares of
“how stupid do you think I am?” and sadly return to the
Battle of Agincourt, the one the American lost….*
but they do source poems that flavor life
2020
Jul 17, 2021
Jul 17, 2021 at 11:54 AM UTC
A curtain held by one nail
Faded blush pink, tilted
Ratted hair into knotted beauty
Eyeliner set as feathers
***** crusted stage, crackling with every step
Audience of the haunted, ghostly clapping
Amused by the audacity
She twirls
Egotistical, making her toes blister
She closes her eyes, her thighs tingling
Meat hanging on a bone barely
Hells lounge
What a crowd
The devil sharpens his hair
Perfect horns of despair
He smokes his cigar
"Keep going my queen
Famous was the only request
You never said where"
Satan's personal entertainer
He kisses her forehead,
carressing her mangled body
He loves her the best a man can,
when being the king of hell
A ferocious request, "bow everybody"
May 12, 2016
May 12, 2016 at 7:01 PM UTC
Mariana in the Moated Grange
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
With blackest moss the flower-plots
Were thickly crusted, one and all:
The rusted nails fell from the knots
That held the pear to the gable-wall.
The broken sheds look'd sad and strange:
Unlifted was the clinking latch;
Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated grange.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
Her tears fell with the dews at even;
Her tears fell ere the dews were dried;
She could not look on the sweet heaven,
Either at morn or eventide.
After the flitting of the bats,
When thickest dark did trance the sky,
She drew her casement-curtain by,
And glanced athwart the glooming flats.
She only said, "The night is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
Upon the middle of the night,
Waking she heard the night-fowl crow:
The **** sung out an hour ere light:
From the dark fen the oxen's low
Came to her: without hope of change,
In sleep she seem'd to walk forlorn,
Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn
About the lonely moated grange.
She only said, "The day is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
About a stone-cast from the wall
A sluice with blacken'd waters slept,
And o'er it many, round and small,
The cluster'd marish-mosses crept.
Hard by a poplar shook alway,
All silver-green with gnarled bark:
For leagues no other tree did mark
The level waste, the rounding gray.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said "I am aweary, aweary
I would that I were dead!"
And ever when the moon was low,
And the shrill winds were up and away,
In the white curtain, to and fro,
She saw the gusty shadow sway.
But when the moon was very low
And wild winds bound within their cell,
The shadow of the poplar fell
Upon her bed, across her brow.
She only said, "The night is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
All day within the dreamy house,
The doors upon their hinges creak'd;
The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse
Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek'd,
Or from the crevice peer'd about.
Old faces glimmer'd thro' the doors
Old footsteps trod the upper floors,
Old voices called her from without.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
The sparrow's chirrup on the roof,
The slow clock ticking, and the sound
Which to the wooing wind aloof
The poplar made, did all confound
Her sense; but most she loathed the hour
When the thick-moted sunbeam lay
Athwart the chambers, and the day
Was sloping toward his western bower.
Then said she, "I am very dreary,
He will not come," she said;
She wept, "I am aweary, aweary,
Oh God, that I were dead!"
3k
i wish i could have that sweet 16 kind of romance.
kisses that are ardent and chaste
not forced, feeling like a mouthful of nails
hugs that are comforting and soft
instead of repulsive, a cage i violently try to break free of
hands that are holding mine, a loving reminder and consistent warmth
not calloused extremities stealing me by the wrist towards my demise
words that are gentle and sincere (beautiful, talented, queen),
instead of ones described only as ***** ******* ***** *****
intimacy that arrives only if and when i'm ready, youthful and gentle
not ****** onto me years before sweet 16, hardly intimate but instead bluntly illicit
bodies (especially mine) that are unscarred, untainted, unused
not the opposite, crusted in an inscrutable filth impossible to remove
love that is fun and bright, something I can boast to all my friends
not a sickening attraction shrouded in the depths of my mind, only to see the light through poetry written in the early hours...
i wish, i wish, i wish.
i wish i could have that sweet 16 kind of romance!
but i don't.
wishes are just flimsy desires; a tear-soaked plead to the void of night, words on a poem no one may care to read, something i say as i blow out the candles. hopeful and yet, hopeless.
so, i'm still 16. and at least my favorite dessert is sweet. but the romance? ha! my romance is dead; burnt to ashes, like a delicate rose bathed in kerosene and set alight by the burning match of a devil's lust.
Mar 13, 2018
Mar 13, 2018 at 7:16 AM UTC
Early afternoon rain
crusted eyes cracking open
at the trickling sound of
pattering puddles
Moisture conforms you
hugs dry skin tight
frizzing stray hairs
leaving them a flight
There is peace
tranquility in this moment
Waking the mind
resolving the heart
Jun 23, 2014
Jun 23, 2014 at 3:10 PM UTC
the first time i felt like a woman
the ends of my fingers polished, lashes crusted to the sky, and sticky gloss that glued my mouth shut,
cotton bullets on strings in cardboard casings and demonstrations of crushed
flower petals—feminine virtue
defined by the presence of a *****
the first time i felt like a woman
fingers curling around the rubber fetus in
my pocket, nine year old hand
pressed to my nine year old womb, as
my classmate’s mother, donning culottes
and the armor of God, issued
Psalm 139 bookmarks to the class
the first time i felt like a woman
the stain of Life, wine dark and blooming
across my blue Fruit of the Loom’s
during fifth grade band class, at home
my mother demanding to know why i didn’t tell her of my first period, she asks if
i am a compulsive liar and leaves the
Wal-Mart bag in my room, unaware she
bought me the wrong bra size
the first time i felt like a woman
my first love said “I’m not putting it away until you touch it” and i hear his voice
when i check for ankle slashers
under my car before i climb in
the first time i felt like a woman
in tenth grade the chapel speaker’s mouth saying “the most precious thing a woman can give to a man is her body” to a room full of teenagers, i wonder if
my future husband sits among us,
and if he wonders what i look like naked
the first time i felt like a Woman,
my girlhood had to die.
Jan 9, 2023
Jan 9, 2023 at 4:27 PM UTC