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.

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.

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

written a few weeks ago, left alone then

It's getting colder outside and so here's what I'm thinking about.

I'm thinking about how every time I step out of the shower
I can feel my hair against my neck and my back
and it's chilling, I feel like I'll never be warm again.

I'm feeling the impending doom of approaching holidays
that I dread.
I despise the cold and the holidays
I adore the cold and the clarity
but I never said that I wanted to see.

I'm thinking about how every two days
my nails need to be repainted, These are things that I can control
I can see how nice they look or how bad they look
and I can fix it or ignore it as I please.

I can fix my makeup when I want to look nice
and I can let my hair dry so it is curly
and I can wear earrings (or not) and
I can choose whether to pick up the phone and
I can pick my own clothes.

I am thinking about how she feels sleeping next to me
Or how she leans against me when she feels lonely
or how she reads to me. Oh god, she reads to me and
I want to bathe in the way I feel when she does.
I think about how the first time we spent time
she saw me naked in every way
and never faltered never foundered
never treated me as less than, just kept on talking

Call Off Your Ghost

That sounds so pretentious. I like to pretend like I know anything at all about the nature of evil but the only thing I can even begin to understand are the stories I hear.

Growing up, I knew I had a grandfather that I'd never met who was described as evil. I didn't know what that meant but he died before I could ever know him so the only way I ever knew him was the way everyone told me he was, and I was told with no uncertain terms, that he was evil. As I grew older, I've come to maybe thing he was a sadist. From the stories I've been told, he seemed to like hurting people, I don't know if he found pleasure in other's pain, or if he was just acting out in the way he'd been taught that love looked like. I never met him. I only knew the stories.

This year, I spoke to a relative though who had other things to say about my grandfather, the one I'd never met. After years and decades of hearing horrible stories about a person, it can be hard to be quiet and listen to other perspectives, especially if they don't fit the narrative that you have been piecing together for your whole life. A thing that I've heavily toyed with all year is the idea that no one is totally a monster. There are so rarely people in life that occupy one role with 100 percent of them. They may occupy this role to you, but you can't see all the perspectives, so you are still only really seeing the side of the story you can see. This should go without saying, but this doesn't make the viewers bad, only limited.

In any case, this relative told me about his dad (who was my grandfather) and even though I wanted to argue, I listened. I tried to widen my perspective. He told me about how his dad rescued him at the last second when they went out fishing together and how he spent time with his dad learning to fish and how his dad valued and treasured him and loved him. He talked about how much he missed his dad and how hurt he was when he died. His dad was funny and snarky and always quick enough to save him. At the time, I thought I was doing him a kindness by listening, but now I think he was doing me a kindness by telling.

I often am guilty of only seeing one or two things about a person. Of course, I can only know what I'm told, but I should be more active in seeking the information. I have no doubt that my grandfather's monstrous behavior was the truth, but now I know other parts too. I know that he was smart and vast and vicious. He was many things.

I'll never know my grandfather or what he could have meant to me. I never got to see any slice of him that wasn't a story being told to a little girl.  I'm not sure if this is a blessing or not.

Sorry for the hiatus

But I'm back, and writing again.

Written in October, obviously

October has been brutal,
vicious, more than I am used to.

And yet, there is a crisp, cold
glow to the air.