Glass
I flush words out of my ear drums, sneeze ink onto the page. Outside a chorale of kazoo players make noise. There is skepticism in the shower drain. I think about the future and I feel the place where fear and love meet within me. At the bottom of my ribs where they stand at a crossroads and play rock paper scissors. I know who won today. As the lava seeps over my eyelids, as I whittle arrowheads with my fingernails, as I write names in the tiny book from my back pocket. I know who won.
There are termites under my floorboards and inside my kidneys. I see hope on the edges and wonder if I can fold the horizon in on me, live inside the paper airplane laced with idealism and strategies for change.
I live in a world where men tell women to sit down. They set them in chairs and put them in dresses and stilts. They laugh when the women ask to get up and piss. They laugh when the women grow humans inside them and push them out their pores.
I pee out fires and bare my breasts and smear mud across my face. I scream underwater and eat the last slice of pie. I don’t smile when creepy men tell me I’m talented and sexy. Like they’ve given me a present. I zip open my sweatshirt and show them my beating heart, my ribs with snakes wrapped around the bone. The ventricles calcified, built up like sandstone around the edges of my soul.
When they look at my snakes they turn to glass. See through, shiny, frozen in time. They chip away. A shattered nose, a splintered finger; and when long enough has passed, I melt them down. Blowing from my lungs into that lava glass, molding them into bowls and vases. Fine china to rest upon the windowsill. I tell them to have a seat. And as I sip coffee from my little green glass cup, I throw my head back and sniff the sun.
Why Don’t We Call It a Night (crone)
I’m softer now. Softer than I was. We used to punch each other in the stomachs just to feel, used to kick each other in the shins to say you’re one of us, used to ignore each other to hurt less, to not feel the space in between, the time that passed while we grew apart. I wrote a letter that I never sent. Hand written, ink on drawing paper, with sketches of my home around the edges, bananas and chili peppers, looking like Christmas lights, dancing around sentences meant to seduce him in the desert, when he couldn’t get to me, just remember my good side.
I have a few sides. A few corners, the kind you reach your hand around, so toddlers don’t bruise their foreheads. Like coffee tables, or curbs, or cliffs. Oh I wont hurt you. But you won’t let yourself touch me all the way if you’ve had an education.
There are plenty of ways to get an education. Plenty of ways to watch the same movie years later and not know how you missed the point. I was so young. Still am. But I’m learning fast.
I pick things up quickly. Like the clothes off my floor or how to say I’m sorry when I haven’t done anything wrong. I’m good at blaming too. Learned that one early. And I’m sorting roots, cracking them open for rot, finding the black edges that lead to the oozing centers, tossing them in a bucket to be tossed on the ground, infecting the soil with disease. It’s all about containment. And I’m brewing, bubbling, blowing my lid. Pissing myself over what can’t be told or seen. About the love i’ve given that fell to deaf ears. Oh yeah I’m great at blame. A master. Told him it’s your fault I’m giving it up. It’s your fault I don’t make dances any more. It’s your stupid side business that makes me cry. He doesn’t make me cry. I make me cry. holding myself like my own mother, as i vomit blue into the toilet. I just want to be held. I’m learning to pick myself up.
I keep picking up my nephew in my dreams. Only knew him for his first week, and he’s growing fast. Like I did. In my dreams he’s three. running and swinging and looking for his mother as I try to hold him. He won’t recognize me, but he knows me. He looks to me with his side eyes and tells me secrets in a language that’s just ours. The future writes me letters and I’m writing back, with the way that I run and swing and look for my mother. She’s not far, never far, always right where I left her, in the creases of my hands
sisterwives
I’ve always loved women. Always had a wife. The first was Miranda from the cul de sac. We painted our nails and then stuck our hands in the bird bath. Her cousin told her water would dry the polish faster but it just floated around and stuck to our hands. I would walk behind the two houses between ours and use the gate in the fence. I was six and I was allowed to go alone. It must have been safer back then. I mean what is safe? And there was our ritual. She showed me her underwear. Disney princess. Mine were day of the week. It wasn’t sexual, just matter of fact. When Titanic came out she gave me the scoop. There is a part where they lay naked next to each other in a bed. I didn’t get it. It sounded boring. But it was the first thread of mystery. What secret lives in the bed of two lovers? I would wonder this for years. We tried to start a jam company in the basement. I drew the labels and we harvested raspberries from the yard of an old woman we didn’t know. Then I moved. I don’t remember saying goodbye. Miranda’s face always looked dirty. I can’t picture her clean or with brushed hair but she probably pays rent now and drives a car and makes money doing something other than making jam. But maybe she makes jam. There were a few wives in between. A kindergarten wife and then Megan my new school wife. But they were nothing compared to Paige. She was tiny and freckled and walked like a gymnast sticking a landing, her scoliosis giving a deep curve to her lower back. I saw her across the room and I prayed to Jesus that we would get paired up for the ice breaker as Ms. Bond pulled names on popsicles sticks. And when she read our names next to each other, I knew God was real. Paige had a horse and a clingy little sister. Her parents hired a decorator to design their Christmas tree each year and let the girls watch tv in their rooms. I spent whole weekends in their house with the glass wall and in ground pool. Paige dreamed of growing up to own a white Dodge Ram 4x4. I printed a picture of one on a poster for her 9th birthday. Her parents were high school sweet hearts and when she was 15 she went to homecoming with Evan. A nice farm boy with a wirey beard. He was predictably nice one hundred percent of the time. I thought he was boring but she said he made her gush like a waterfall. They were the first of my friends to get married. I wasn’t invited to the wedding.
I’ve always loved women. Always had a wife. The first was Miranda from the cul de sac. We painted our nails and then stuck our hands in the bird bath. Her cousin told her water would dry the polish faster but it just floated around and stuck to our hands. I would walk behind the two houses between ours and use the gate in the fence. I was six and I was allowed to go alone. It must have been safer back then. I mean what is safe? And there was our ritual. She showed me her underwear. Disney princess. Mine were day of the week. It wasn’t sexual, just matter of fact. When Titanic came out she gave me the scoop. There is a part where they lay naked next to each other in a bed. I didn’t get it. It sounded boring. But it was the first thread of mystery. What secret lives in the bed of two lovers? I would wonder this for years. We tried to start a jam company in the basement. I drew the labels and we harvested raspberries from the yard of an old woman we didn’t know. Then I moved. I don’t remember saying goodbye. Miranda’s face always looked dirty. I can’t picture her clean or with brushed hair but she probably pays rent now and drives a car and makes money doing something other than making jam. But maybe she makes jam. There were a few wives in between. A kindergarten wife and then Megan my new school wife. But they were nothing compared to Paige. She was tiny and freckled and walked like a gymnast sticking a landing, her scoliosis giving a deep curve to her lower back. I saw her across the room and I prayed to Jesus that we would get paired up for the ice breaker as Ms. Bond pulled names on popsicles sticks. And when she read our names next to each other, I knew God was real. Paige had a horse and a clingy little sister. Her parents hired a decorator to design their Christmas tree each year and let the girls watch tv in their rooms. I spent whole weekends in their house with the glass wall and in ground pool. Paige dreamed of growing up to own a white Dodge Ram 4x4. I printed a picture of one on a poster for her 9th birthday. Her parents were high school sweet hearts and when she was 15 she went to homecoming with Evan. A nice farm boy with a wirey beard. He was predictably nice one hundred percent of the time. I thought he was boring but she said he made her gush like a waterfall. They were the first of my friends to get married. I wasn’t invited to the wedding.
Koolaide and kumbaya (whore)
I keep trying to like pickles. keeping checking if my adult tastes buds have come in. And every time I swallow it down with a gag or spit it out with a hiss. I'll try anything now and again. I'm open. Open for business, laid back, go with the flow, chill as fuck, low maintenance. I keep trying apathy, hoping love will stumble by or push through, maybe violently like the koolaid man bursting through drywall and spilling bright red sugar water on an unsuspecting crowd. I keep hoping if I turn on my heals and laugh louder than necessary and leave without saying goodby that someone will miss me, will ask for my number, will long for me. I stamp out longing. Like when I fired him. for stalking me, for loving me, for caring too much. I started double locking my doors. He made me do it. And when we finally sat in that circle like a fucking kumbaya intervention, seeking our highest options and pretending it felt good to feel vibrations and hearts and hold hands, when it came time to choose, I did it alone. Like always. I made the choice and I said no, like I was giving him a gift. And he wept, curled over himself, his lean back muscles convulsing with sobs. He looked like a child, malnourished and afraid. As I watched the long hair around his face turn wet, I felt nothing. Maybe anger. Anger that they make me say no, make me draw lines and draw blood, draw conclusions and deliver the sentence. I can't help him. I can help myself. I remember helping my dad in the yard. He would trim the hedges and I would carry the debris. And I hated it. Thought I hated the branches for all those years. Hated the mulch and the plants and the hot sun. But it turns out I only hated servitude. Only hated following him around and carrying his discards, doing the part of the job he liked least. And servitude doesn't go away. Not for us. But I find ways to survive. And I cope with the side effects, cope with the places around my edges where I'm corroding. And no, I'm not holding my breath, but I am praying for love to chisel it's way in.
I keep trying to like pickles. keeping checking if my adult tastes buds have come in. And every time I swallow it down with a gag or spit it out with a hiss. I'll try anything now and again. I'm open. Open for business, laid back, go with the flow, chill as fuck, low maintenance. I keep trying apathy, hoping love will stumble by or push through, maybe violently like the koolaid man bursting through drywall and spilling bright red sugar water on an unsuspecting crowd. I keep hoping if I turn on my heals and laugh louder than necessary and leave without saying goodby that someone will miss me, will ask for my number, will long for me. I stamp out longing. Like when I fired him. for stalking me, for loving me, for caring too much. I started double locking my doors. He made me do it. And when we finally sat in that circle like a fucking kumbaya intervention, seeking our highest options and pretending it felt good to feel vibrations and hearts and hold hands, when it came time to choose, I did it alone. Like always. I made the choice and I said no, like I was giving him a gift. And he wept, curled over himself, his lean back muscles convulsing with sobs. He looked like a child, malnourished and afraid. As I watched the long hair around his face turn wet, I felt nothing. Maybe anger. Anger that they make me say no, make me draw lines and draw blood, draw conclusions and deliver the sentence. I can't help him. I can help myself. I remember helping my dad in the yard. He would trim the hedges and I would carry the debris. And I hated it. Thought I hated the branches for all those years. Hated the mulch and the plants and the hot sun. But it turns out I only hated servitude. Only hated following him around and carrying his discards, doing the part of the job he liked least. And servitude doesn't go away. Not for us. But I find ways to survive. And I cope with the side effects, cope with the places around my edges where I'm corroding. And no, I'm not holding my breath, but I am praying for love to chisel it's way in.
“I know everything” (child)
I know everything. The trees tell me about their first year. The stars tell me which way to the next realms. Strangers tell me their middle names. The wrinkles around her eyes when she winces tell me what she compromised when she chose to marry. I know everything. I have purpose in my belly, and it doesn’t digest or move through. Just gestates and kicks against a body unready to birth it. I incubate. I’ve got ideas. I’m full of them. Answers and solutions, the questions on the tips of tongues. And I’m not afraid to speak them to embarrassed ears. Ask away.
I’m older than my grandmother. She bakes me meatloaf and I read the diaries under her fingernails and the secrets in the way she knots her apron. I’ve been here before. When my mother opens her arms to me, I cradle her and she lets me rock her into reassurance, her rigid body riddled with fear and the unknown. With my patience, I tell her it will be okay, letting her squeeze all my air out, just so she can feel something certain, alive, and fallible.
I know everything. I know when the milk will go bad, when the apples will fall, when the batteries in the flashlight will dim and give up. I ask questions to remember. To piece it together. “Oh yes, I recall,” and the way through the fog opens like an old friend, the bridge we built below our feet.
And I ask the air to clear and she remembers me back. She opens herself to me. I’m playing doctor with the elements. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours. I feel stories in stones and smell home in crooked corners of the pine trees. I’ve been here before. I recorded this terrain, noting the direct path, the scenic view, the shortcuts. I know everything.
I watch them fall out of love. I watch her scribble desire in a reused spiral notebook. I see him trimming hedges and leaving a dent in the couch. I see her remembering the first man who broke her heart. I see him wondering what it feels like to live alone. I see her shoving piles of unsorted papers into closets and onto the seats of chairs in the formal room; the under-ripe longings of her soul slid between the sunday coupon specials and an unsigned permission slip past due. I see her blaming his snoring and making her twin bed. I see her get younger and smaller, shrinking, yet opening her heart, yearning to feel ahead of her the expanse of time. My chin and my handwriting look like hers. My heart too; deep and watery. I look into her eyes and I know everything.
I know everything. The trees tell me about their first year. The stars tell me which way to the next realms. Strangers tell me their middle names. The wrinkles around her eyes when she winces tell me what she compromised when she chose to marry. I know everything. I have purpose in my belly, and it doesn’t digest or move through. Just gestates and kicks against a body unready to birth it. I incubate. I’ve got ideas. I’m full of them. Answers and solutions, the questions on the tips of tongues. And I’m not afraid to speak them to embarrassed ears. Ask away.
I’m older than my grandmother. She bakes me meatloaf and I read the diaries under her fingernails and the secrets in the way she knots her apron. I’ve been here before. When my mother opens her arms to me, I cradle her and she lets me rock her into reassurance, her rigid body riddled with fear and the unknown. With my patience, I tell her it will be okay, letting her squeeze all my air out, just so she can feel something certain, alive, and fallible.
I know everything. I know when the milk will go bad, when the apples will fall, when the batteries in the flashlight will dim and give up. I ask questions to remember. To piece it together. “Oh yes, I recall,” and the way through the fog opens like an old friend, the bridge we built below our feet.
And I ask the air to clear and she remembers me back. She opens herself to me. I’m playing doctor with the elements. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours. I feel stories in stones and smell home in crooked corners of the pine trees. I’ve been here before. I recorded this terrain, noting the direct path, the scenic view, the shortcuts. I know everything.
I watch them fall out of love. I watch her scribble desire in a reused spiral notebook. I see him trimming hedges and leaving a dent in the couch. I see her remembering the first man who broke her heart. I see him wondering what it feels like to live alone. I see her shoving piles of unsorted papers into closets and onto the seats of chairs in the formal room; the under-ripe longings of her soul slid between the sunday coupon specials and an unsigned permission slip past due. I see her blaming his snoring and making her twin bed. I see her get younger and smaller, shrinking, yet opening her heart, yearning to feel ahead of her the expanse of time. My chin and my handwriting look like hers. My heart too; deep and watery. I look into her eyes and I know everything.