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?

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.

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/

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.

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.

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.