Today is an anniversary. A small yellow one, but notable still. I bought a house four years ago. I've managed to make every mortgage payment, pay every cent in taxes, keep it insured, the lights and gas on. I've planted more flowers than I ever thought I could, dug shotgun shells and crockery shards out of the soil.

I suppose it's some proof of adulthood, this ownership of a plot of land and the wooden box nestled into its hill. I don't feel like an adult. I feel like I'm still the same bumbling, unsure creature I've always been. Minor catastrophes arise and I flail briefly before rectifying them and celebrating my victories.

At the time I bought it, I was married. I thought it was happily, but there was already so much wrong, had always been wrong. I'd fooled myself into thinking bone-gnawing loneliness was contentment. The night we closed and moved in, we completed an application to adopt a dog. A replacement of the children he refused to have with me. A ray of happiness in a muddle of angry grey, she sounded the death knell of our already sparsely active bed.

In the time since, I've built shelves, painted rooms, repaired plumbing, hosted parties, contemplated suicide, bedded new partners, cried so hard I thought I would dry up and blow away. Through it all, my house has stood around me. As it's stood for generations before and will stand for generations after. To know my home will outlive me is a balm in times of chap.

I'm happier now than I ever have been. I've surrounded myself with people who love me and aren't ashamed to show it. I'm safe and secure within the walls of both my house and my body and I'm doing it alone, mistress of all I survey. The alone isn't frightening or sad or lonely, it is empowering. Because alone is something I want and can have whenever I choose while lonely is a marrow-sucking thing you can feel with love sitting next to you, your soul slipping out one wisp at a time.

There are times now
When I see my mother
Looking back at me in the mirror
And there is pain

I haven't physically been presented with her
In almost eighteen years
Haven't spoken to her in seven

It's not that she is unattractive
In her younger years
She was stunning
An object of envy for women
One of desire for men

The conflict is in her cruelty
Her instability
Her untreated mental illness
The wounds that caused it

I see myself at twelve
My blackened eye
I see her at thirty six
Moonlight shining on her blonde hair
She's drunk again
And telling me stories I've intentionally forgotten
The upturned corner of her lip
As she sneered

It may be the haunt in my eyes
The stubborn jut of my chin
The worry lines in my forehead
The firm set of my lips
None of these are hers
They are uniquely mine
And yet the combination
Reveals that I could be her

If I chose the other path
If I drank alone
If I drowned my insecurities in men I don't know
If I allowed instincts to override logic

I fear having a child
I fear a healthy committed relationship
I fear passing the tainted legacy
Of abuse and diminished worth
To those who don't deserve it

Because those who aren't looking
Don't see her there
Shimmering beneath my surface
An apparition within my iris

Look me in the eye
And I will look away
Unable to bear the scrutiny
Of another's penetrating gaze
Rooting around inside of me
To ferret out all I hold close

Because my eyes will betray me
They will reveal truths
I don't intend to tell
Shed light on my darkest parts
Just to see them slither

I glance down and to the right
Always
Retreat to the safe space
That sarcasm provides
Draw up one corner of my lips
A glossy smirk
Just to watch you reel
At the rapidity of my response
How I can cut to my own quick
And bleed and bleed and bleed
While you flail and try to stop it

Let this be a lesson in compliments

Laying here
It smells like you
The sheets still rumpled

It should be a comfort, your lingering
But we've fought
About worthless things
Miscommunications
Words released too soon
And poorly thought out

You're hurt that I'm hurt
That you're the one did the hurting
The comfort of you gone stale
I'm cold
I'm exhausted
My guards worn thin from overuse
Struggling to keep my eyes open
To keep telling you I don't want to
Can't fight

If I'm worth all you say I deserve
If you want to be those things
Listen when I speak
My words can be taken as they're spoken

On a quiet Sunday afternoon
I sat down at my kitchen table
With a glass of water
And a sharp, sharp knife

I made some decisions
And I began to cut

I winced
Anticipating the pain
Slowly plunging the cold metal into my chest
Snagging the bones of my ribs
A jerking downward thrust

I exposed the four chambered thing
Looked down
Watched it thud and wetly thump
Red, garlanded with blue
The muscle striated
So much smaller than I thought it would be

I reached in with one hand
Took a sharp breath
Grasped and pulled
It came free with relative ease

I placed it on the table in front of me
It continued to beat
I continued to breathe
And again I took up my knife

I sliced with precision
Separating it into equal parts
And still it beat
And still I breathed

I washed the pieces carefully
Dried them with soft towels
Placed them in velvet lined boxes
Tied them with black bows
Wrote a name in silver atop each container

I proffered them with arms outstretched
The recipients surprised at the contents
And I asked simply
Please take care of this
I cannot be trusted
You will know when to return it
If at all

Go ahead and just throw those words out into the world. The ones you've been afraid to say out loud. Pray nobody uses them against you.

Will they be more harmful now that they've been released? They were already there inside your head. Riding around in circles on heavy hoofed creatures. Treading paths where nothing will grow again.

The refrain "but words can never hurt me" is a bold and persistent lie. Words possess the power to wound. Words can cut more deeply than any blade, lodge more shrapnel than an explosive device. Words fester and infect, refusing to heal or even scab.

By exposing these things you are more open than any intimate physical encounter would make you. You are unguarded and naked in ways a lover could never exploit.

May your revelation make you beautiful and relieve a burden you've long carried. May your late night ponderings no longer rest on this collection of letters and punctuation.

Though it is only early August
I can feel fall
Creeping in the morning breeze
A chilled smell
The taste of the first fallen leaves
The sound of ripening apples
Thudding to the long grass
Geese congregating before their long migration
A last blowout before they might not all make it south

Laying in my bed
The fireflies and crickets sing
A melody of their own eventual departure
As I pull the covers more closely to me
To remedy the sudden goosebumps
That have risen over my skin

As much as I love the summer sun
I yearn
For frost to tip the blades of my lilies
I want
The sugar of fresh cider doughnuts
Melting on my tongue
I crave
The scratch of wool on my shoulders
I need
The heft of boots encasing my feet
I know
That for next year to live
This one must die
Slowly
Painfully
Over long months
A hospice patient
Who's chosen no medication
Color bleaching from its surface
A sloughing

What is it in me that keeps calling out
Only to hear myself echoing back
Yet still hoping it will be you?

My love is an eraser
I can blot myself out so perfectly
Nobody would ever know I'd been there
I can extinguish the fire in my eyes
Allow yours to light the darkness
I can silence my voice
So yours is the clearest bell in the room
I can be your chameleon on a leash
Point out the ones you want
I will become them
Draw them in for you to charm
After I've done the real work
Uncredited

You will lose sight
Of simple facts

I've made you star of your own show

You will forget
That you are just a boat

You will forget
That I am the sea

You will forget
That if I pull myself off the paper

Relight my flame

Sing just one note

Unbuckle the tether

Your dinghy will splinter
And you will sink
Spluttering
To the bottom of me
The only sign you have been there
A shift from cobalt to aqua

Because I may be able to erase myself
But I can erase you, too
And you can't bring yourself back

I was sixteen the first time I experienced shame. I'd been intimate for the first time with someone and chose to share the information with my best friends. We'd always shared everything else, so I didn't see a reason not to also share this. I don't remember who I told first. Whether it was Liz, or Morgan, or Stephanie, but doors were slammed in my face each time. Steph was the biggest shock. She had a boyfriend. She'd presumably been doing these things for some time. I knew Morgan had already been up to something from the vague allusions she'd made about inebriated evenings at unchaperoned parties. Liz, though. Liz was where I knew it would come. If I couldn't spend time with someone who wasn't her, she'd leave me nasty messages, so sexual activity outside of a relationship was definitely not going to be congratulated.

I wasn't raised with shame. Catholicism was casual for me, sex wasn't discussed. My body was mine to do with as I pleased in large part. When I choose an opportunity to take, I don't debate whether it's good or right to do so. My emotions don't and shouldn't have anything to do with it. Granted, my body houses who I am and I respect and appreciate that fully, but I've never understood why simply giving in to its base desires is something to feel badly about. I eat ice cream because it tastes good, not for its nutritional value. Sweet and fat and salt satiate specific physical yearnings, but there isn't nearly so much shame in eating as there is in sex. Because our culture says food is something we need but sex is not and you don't have to be in love with your food in order to consume it. Is it better when the person you're with makes you feel giddy and you'd spend every minute with them if life allowed? Yes. But that's also comparing a Michelin starred restaurant to Burger King. One is so much more readily available than the other. Some would argue quality over quantity, but there are also those who would take fries over potatoes dauphinoise. Me, I'll have either depending on my mood and so it is with other things, too, because neither is bad.

Perhaps my approach is brazen, unconventional. And yet, I'm still the person who finds a reason to leave the room during a sex scene if I'm watching with my parents. They don't need to know in what I engage and nor I they. Doors are closed for a reason. Pillows hurriedly placed over mouths. Because it's always my business and I don't want it unwittingly shared. While I'll still do what I want, when I want, and with whom, it's the distribution of information I try hardest to control. Maybe because when I was sixteen I told my best friends what I'd done one drunken night with a boy who didn't belong to me or anybody else and they yelled at me.