"You can't take a picture of this. It's already gone."

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

It's the Small things, really

Bed full of books
and bathtubs full of words
I'm soaking and swimming
in them.

I've spent so long
looking at everything through a lens
of pain that something this beautiful
burns my eyes.

Here
beauty looks like meandering forays
into starless nights
finding joy in dark places



e n o u g h

In the long scheme of things
I hope you brought cups
and buckets
and bathtubs
for my blood.

I hope you love the color
red.
I hope you like crimson and how
warm it all feels.

It's fresh,
I promise.

Every time you've asked,
I've bled for you.
It's only blood.

I just wonder
constantly
in the back of my head
how much blood can one person bleed?
When have I bled enough?

Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Work


I have nearly perfected
the art of the inane deferential tone
flattery in a few short sentences.
Lightly seasoning the words with idioms
based on location
but rest assured,
every heart is blessed with equal fervor.

I can make well wishes
and salutations sound like
curses.
You'll never see my long hair
or my cauldron or a single
solitary talisman.
My profanity is perfectly silent.


Monday, May 9, 2016

Late Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day!

Even though I doubt
there will be any sort of presence for this day
every witch should be given some sort of honor.
So here's yours.

The gift of comparison
you gave.

Occasionally, someone touches my hair gently,
I remember how you jerked at it
pulled and brushed and braided while I winced
and told me that beauty was pain.

When anyone makes a comment on my clothes
or how I look,
I think about how you told me that I was not pretty enough,
or so pretty that I'd never work hard enough
or the endless lectures and books about diets
or how mad you were when I finally had enough
and told you that you were wrong, my feet weren't fat.
And you cried.

When I tell the truth about anything,
I have a small victory
because you taught me it was safer to lie.

When I make a phone call
or take a phone call
and I don't feel fear or anxiety
I think about how
I cringed at every phone call until last year.

When I look at my skin
and the permanent decisions I've made
and the ink that lives there
I smile,
because you taught me that I only ever meant something
when you were proud of me
when I did what I was told.

This won't mean anything to you
but you were right about a few things
I like my hair better curly than straight
Practice doesn't make perfect,
but it does make things easier.

Happy Mother's Day/







Monday, April 25, 2016

Saturday Night Blues

I
don't really think
I'm a happy drunk.
I get full on the melancholy
that is my birthright.
My bloodline is compromised
addicts and alcoholics
sadists and martyrs
suicides and survivors.

I can drink for all of them
who have woven themselves into me
with love and lust and hate and pain
And I, who looks for grace,
exist because of and in spite of them
and I am grateful.

But I am still drinking.

Thursday, April 21, 2016

Constellations

There are days like today
that are much harder than others.
I've lost a little practice in handling my own fear. 
Hand me yours instead
and I can walk you through fire and floods
but hand me my own 
and I will deal 
my crisis
and then spend the next week
wondering why I am cold and shaking.

So to stave off the cold
and the shaking hands
which are constantly in front of me
I sit and swirl the glittering thoughts
in front of me,
making my own night sky 
and telling my own myths.

In a large dark room,
which smelled like beer and smoke
I put on my favorite shoes,
bright yellow sandals
and my mother taught me to dance.
We two stepped to the fiddle and steel guitar
and I fell in love with the sound
and we laughed at the way our curls
bounced in unison.
Her hands made mine look small
and she showed me how to lead and follow
and she told me to always let your partner think they were leading
that was the trick to it.
And eight year old me heard her clearly 
and always let her lead when we danced.

There's a movie theater near where I live
that I think has seen me in all the awkward moments.
It saw my first kiss
and it saw every heinous date that followed
and every group that I went in with
and every time I left trailing behind everyone
and it saw me in tears after Mass
and unbearably confused when he touched my arm
and I hate it for how it has seen me
in my teenage stupidity
and all the stupidity that follows.

I'm walking down the halls of the school
with her
girls with sharp edges and soft eyes
and we are laughing so hard we're crying
and holding each other up
and she's watched me be smart and vicious
and we've sat hip to ankle close
for months now.
There's photographic proof of this moment
where we were laughing
but we laughed so often like that
that I don't need to remember why we were that day.

Same place different time,
he told me he had never been kissed
and I wondered for several days how that could be true
wondered and pondered and
contemplated until
I couldn't stand it any longer.
I waited until I was sure it was only us,
halfway up the staircase
leaned in
pushed him against the wall
and kissed him
scorched him into my brain
and then finished the long walk to class.
He stayed there for a while.

I'm swimming in a pool
and trying not to notice the proximity
of the body close to mine
when the person I'm trying to ignore
asks me if I've lost my bracelet
and then pulls a small copper colored snake out of the pool
and holds it up next to my arm.
I love to be in the water
but it has somehow always been a place of turbulence
but I swim anyway.

I spent most of my life in a room
with a ghost that lived in the closet.
My dad built the closet so I had a large walk in one,
with plenty of space for my books
and once it was dark, I had to make sure the books
I wanted to read were out of the right side
of the closet because I didn't go in there after dark.
I never saw anything wrong there
No one ever hid in there
There's not a good reason for me not liking that side
but this year my dad made a joke about my closet being haunted
and I don't recall ever sharing that particular fear with him.








Saturday, April 16, 2016

Soft

Soft changes include:

taking jokes as jokes and not knives.
laughing so hard she cries.
Telling the truth.
Being okay with telling the things she likes.
Feeling safe enough to ask questions.
Eating in front of someone.
Asking to spend time with someone.
Avoiding eye contact.
Theory of Relativity.
Hugs that are too short.
The perpetual hunger.

A Few of my Favorite Things


The truths I whisper at night
when it's dark and quiet and safe to say
extend into the sunlight.

Sometimes you look at me
and your expression is so warm
and soft and
brilliant in your affection
so bright that I have to close my eyes.
It's potent.
It's the stuff of bad poetry
and things I've never seen before, only heard about.

I'm sorry I don't see all of your parts at once.
I delight in you
and our story is funny and charming and I've spent
as many hours contemplating the inches of your skin
as I have engaged in conversation with you.
Talking to you is having someone to wander out
into the cold bright dark with.
It's new music and telling the truth
and feeling lines drawn down my back in a movie
and avoiding eye contact
because I can't trust my self control, even in public.

You leave me wanting more in a million ways
I find myself with words and stories slipping out
that I never would have guessed that I'd want to say
or share.



Monday, April 4, 2016

Books on a Bed

I spend my time in the contemplation of skin.
I pretend to know my own
but I barely do.
I tend to avoid any kindness to my skin
I rip and shred and tear at my own
and leave scars and bruises and blood.

But today
I find myself in pleasant ruminations
of lips meeting skin.
I come to the memories of
the obscenities you whisper to me
in rooms where the lights are bright,
the way my stomach drops when your hands
run through my hair
and the surprised laughter.

I find myself stretched out
like my favorite felines
balking in the presence of the sun.
It's warm and kind and
I'm comforted.
And it's a torturous slow burn
lighting me on fire
until I can feel my hair alive with nerves
and everything feels so exquisite
that I can't breathe.


Wednesday, March 30, 2016

In Which She Was A Dork


It starts with a kiss.
Holy fuck, it's a doozy of a kiss
and I can't stop thinking about it.

When I finally touch you,
it feels like the first drop on a roller coaster
I'm frightened and my whole head is tingling
and I can't breathe
and I hate roller coasters, but I like this.

The way cold iron streaks down my back
and the fire rushes to my belly and
I can feel all the hairs on my neck stand up.
It's a desperate wanting feeling and I lose myself
in every second of it.
I can't decide if I like it or love it
or if it makes me sick.

I have never been in a room that felt so safe
or so on fire. I don't want to leave, every part of
me is burning.

It doesn't really start there.
It starts when I step into the room and
immediately want to take of my shoes.
I show my soft underbelly and my claws and
from a distance I watch myself resisting
the urge to curl myself around you like a cat,
social niceties be damned.
Watch the ice queen melt.
(Please don't hurt me)
(Please)

I could listen to you talk all day.
And I do.
And I wait and watch from across the room because I'm not sure
how close I'm allowed to be
how close I should be.

The thing I'll never say:
How the sound of you laughing
and looking surprised by your own laughter
made my stomach free fall.







Thursday, March 10, 2016

I will never be satisfied

The poetry is made up of the way
the hair stands up on the back of my neck
the way I can listen to his voice for hours
I could beg him to tell me a story or read me one and
I'm dying for the way he does.
I can't quite replicate the feel of his hands on my face
and throat.

"Tell me when you are lonely,"
she says.
"I wish I was there or you were here.
I'd run my hands through your hair and
hold your hand.
We'd be pack together with the cats and the dogs."
I don't tell her that I'm thinking about long red hair
twining through my fingers as I fall asleep and
I don't tell her that I'm thinking about buzzing tattoo guns
and acoustic songs via Pandora at one in the morning
because she knows
and I know.

I tell her about feeling fire down the iron of my spine.
I tell her how Pablo Neruda makes sense for the first time,
how he feels reachable now.
How I don't feel like stone anymore.
Ugh, I tell her, I was never built to feel things.
I was formed in chaos and he throws that feeling of order into everything.
She is laughing and crying
because even hours away,
through snow and miles
she knows when my hands are shaking.

Even though I'm trying,
I can't reproduce the feeling of hands and hair and lips and teeth
roving and roaming over my skin.




Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Subtle Victories

He said that in the last six years
the only thing that hadn't changed
was her kindness.


In other news,
the gut churning after effect of love lost
is that odd sense of quiet.

I talk to you and I think about
how we've lost our rhythm. I once knew you
so well that we spoke in sync. I couldn't really tell
you if this is a loss or not. I think it once was. I think I once
longed for you, yearned for you. Your sense of introspection grows
as I speak to you each year.

With another face,

I look and beg you to rip my fucking guts out.
Toss me up against this car and make me bleed
and you comply and I respond
but only in my head.

I'm yearning for marks and blood.
I'm dying to rip flesh from bones
to watch the drama play out in front of me