 To be a woman
Is to know fear Insidious It alters how you speak How you walk What you hear As if by simply being You are poking the bear Climbing stairs You scan the periphery Is there a man behind you? Should you have taken the elevator? You imagine it as a race Legs driving you up Away Hoping he chooses a lower floor As he watches you recede There is a button At the top PUSH FOR HELP Please don't make me need it Please let it work if I do It is only eight o'clock You are two blocks from home You've had dinner with a friend She says she will walk you home Because you don't have mace And she does It's such a small town You think Everybody knows me But there is what if Gnawing at the back of your mind And you let her You are a statistic Waiting to happen You may have happened already You might again Can you admit the trespasses? The stranger slapping your ass The man blocking your way on the sidewalk Hey girl The best friend who held you down and No His parents came home Doesn't count The measures and mitigations Of boil versus simmer
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 We spend our entire lives
Accruing and losing Memories And people And things we think are important We are trees in autumn Shrugging off our leaves Like heavy shawls Growing bare to accommodate new seasons Your mother would make homemade pudding Spooning it still warm into cut glass goblets The skin formed by cooling still intact And your father He would put milk atop it Swirling white with chocolate brown This you would eat so slowly With your special spoon Letting it glide sweet and cold and warm at the same time Over your tongue and down your throat This thing they made together Consumable proof of their combined love for you Polyester footy pajamas Red as Bozo's nose Scratchy on your skin After a bath The feet crackling as you move A sound you hate You're a light sleeper You've woken to it too many times Rolling over Stiflingly warm Your only option To grab the zipper at your neck Pull it all the way down to your belly button Spread the flaps wide like fins underwater And breathe back to sleep Because you may hate that sound But there are others you hate more A fall day Light playing on the still green grass As the blades wave in the wind You're wearing your favorite dress Kelly green It's a twirler And you're spinning So fast But you've forgotten to keep an eye on one spot And you stop suddenly The world turning around you still While your body has ceased Everything tilts in the golden And you fall Knuckles scraping stone As you try to brace for impact Raising a hand to your mouth Sucking away the sting The tang of metal and salt You're sitting in freshly disturbed earth And everybody else is crying You've driven hours to visit a friend Your legs sore from lack of movement You didn't want to stop Only the once Only long enough to empty your aching bladder The house is warm Heated by two wood stoves Late to bed Early to rise Or your breath will freeze before you You have a nervous habit Of playing with your necklace Sliding the clasp Back to the precise center of your nape But your fingers Touch only your bare throat The fine chain disappeared You spend hours Searching the cracks in the floorboards Hoping to catch a glimpse of Startling blue star sapphire Or the glint of Delicate gold swirling over itself Your mother gave it to you When you rode with her in the ambulance Your father had given it to her years ago He thought it looked like a Yes album cover But you'd made one stop And the wood here isn't giving up any secrets Though your parents had given up years before On each other On you Will these memories cling Drying Browning But whole To your branches? Or will they be replaced by something else? Greener Fresher And whole  There are wildflower seeds
Tangled in my midnight blue hair From my position at the bottom of a natural bowl I can hear the wind breathe as Waves through the trees The sun is receding from me Over the opposite side of the hill Shining as an unreal spotlight On a maple glowing fiercely despite the chill I can't smell woodsmoke yet The homes surrounding me Stubborn to let summer end But nobody is so proud as to grill their dinner, either My shadow is impossibly long Stretching at an angle from my feet I feel small next to it I expect to go inside and smell something cooking To take off my shoes And see my mother in the kitchen "You smell like outside" she would say Planting warm lips on my cool forehead Cheeks pink against a pale face No tan to fade She is not here Nobody is but a clutter of shoes Around a junk-mail strewn dining table A pair of cats chirping for an early meal I would speak to them But my voice is a croak No amount of throat clearing will remedy Because I have been sick Run too far for too long on too little With no one to tell me to slow down I am not lonely I am simply suffused with The tang of melancholy on my tongue My favorite season spent alone For the first time in my life The sweetness of autonomy mingling there It tastes like possibility  Anxiety has been getting the best of me lately. I can see it in the unfolded laundry sitting wrinkled in the basket. It's in my refrigerator - I've been cooking too much and eating too little. Tsking at myself for the things slowly going rancid. What a waste. Of money. Of time. Of space. These things I also think of myself.
Blank slots of time are to be filled with activity, mindless and unimportant. Checking my phone, tidying, working out when my body is already sore. I try to read, but I'm distracted so easily. It's taken me months to finish a single book. Running out of things to do, words to say is a nasty chasm begging to swallow me. When I get in bed at night, when I finally stop moving, exhaustion rolls over my body like a supercharged steamroller. I'm flattened beneath it. And the thoughts, without a task ahead of me, without a goal to focus on and finish, they roam to sad places, seeping through the same cracks where the exhaustion crept in. There isn't room enough inside me, so they make it for themselves by displacing saline that runs hot down my cheeks. I don't even try to stop it anymore. I just let it wash over me, allow the sobs to rack what's left of me as I pull the blankets over my head and wait for it to pass. I never say "I'm not okay." I never say "I need help." These would be lies. Okay is an eventuality. Help won't get me there any faster. To those I trust, I will say "I can't stop crying. My eyelids are too swollen to open all the way. I just want to sleep and maybe not wake up." There are times when they will tell me that help is only a medicine cabinet and twenty minutes away. That I don't deserve to suffer alone or to suffer at all. Those are the moments when I will listen. I will kneel at the altar of modern chemistry and take the communion that separates me from the riot inside. But these moments are few. I can so easily recognize how these little yellow helpers can become a way of life. The ability to see the same thoughts in a completely new light, as if they belonged to someone else and can't touch you anymore, fanged butterflies in a bell jar.  Ten months ago today
He moved out Garbage bags filled with clothes Our dog His cat I steadied myself Against the shoulder of my friend As sobs shook us both "Take care of her" he said "I can't stay long" she told me "Come back to the shop where We will feed you and kiss you And let you cry with people who love you" I refused this offer Chose instead to disassemble The first bed we'd bought together Letting my catching breath echo Over the bare walls Too many realistic expectations Stacked upon his incapable back I had unburdened myself Of the things he should have carried Declared I would not lift them again A shocking revelation From an overtired pack animal A sudden recognition Of self indulgence and not sacrifice One week ago today I ate pie for breakfast In a brand new dress And red lipstick Brave face, Buttercup For hopefully the last time Free finally of the things that held me down But even after so much time The tears still come unwanted Missing the bite marks in blocks of cheese The smell of the inside of his ear after he'd woken The quirky hop-step as he hurried on his way I sleep better now Sprawled across the too big mattress Limbs akimbo No longer wary that the body next to me Will stop breathing I don't dream of him leaving me Waking with a start Cold tears still wet in my hair Because for once He did as I asked  And so you go back to what you know
To the thing that stole you piece by piece That left you a gaping maw of what once was A wishing well Where all the loose change thrown has been lost Ferreted away Hoarded A cash cow for the one who keeps you You tried to go back into the world The universe from which you were snatched But everything changed in your absence The sun replaced by a dark spot Houses empty Their chimneys crumbling Moss proliferating in the cracks Trees grown wild Limbs reaching for you as you passed The echoes of lives lived buffeting you You were so well groomed To a specific set of skills That adaptation no longer applies as an option You became a tool To be carefully wielded By one pair of hands Customized to their grip Nothing else will fit You will return Ask nicely To have back the comforts to your creature Welcome the opportunity to atone I'll be good I'll never leave again I'm so sorry I need you  I woke to a lightning storm
Confused by the flashes in the dark There was no sound yet I woke to a lightning storm Confused by the flashes in my heart There were no tears yet Storm fronts simultaneous In their arrival Shaking the trees Shaking me Leaves loosening from their limbs Before they're ready Torn by straight line gusts Robbing me of their airborne pointillism But my storm has already receded I planted my feet as roots Brave face to wind and world Crying now as I'm picking up the splintered pieces Sound and fury Signifying everything A grief delayed I thought I'd already felt it all This wasn't in the forecast  He arrived
As we were discussing proceedings He'd cut his hair Was wearing his wedding shoes He looked small Broken Bereft I rose to meet him I'd dyed my hair Was wearing my wedding brooch I looked tall Chic Proud I put my arms around him I'd forgotten how much shorter he is Breathed in his smell for the last time He sat alone Uncounseled As I said yes I do Irretrievably broken Not pregnant It was over so quickly Fair and equitable Defined as me with all the leverage Thank you, Your Honor He chose a variation Of his Irish goodbye This with a subtle wave He knows how it's always upset me Leaving without a word I saw the back of him recede Three tears escaping As I tipped my head skyward Since I left him All that time ago My life has been filled with love Instead of loneliness I took those from him Harnessed them for myself I want to reach out to him To share what I have But I know From long and weary experience That he will take it all Leave me hoping I won't wake tomorrow So I turn A subtle wave Goodbye Best wishes I loved you  I am a portrait in chiaroscuro
Projecting light Tinged with stark darkness A smile on my lips That won't reach my eyes Sadness pooling there I've been crying a lot lately Something I don't show unless I'm caught unaware The moment in the coffee shop "Like missing a step at the top of a flight of dark stairs" All the looking up All the don't fucking do this right now Didn't stop the tears from slipping out the corners Shaming me For the feelings I still have I was in the water for fifteen years Treading Arms and legs rhythmically waving While you sat on my shoulders Sure I inhaled a little water here and there But I made sure we both made it Every minute Of every day I didn't think I had a choice We both go down together The wind picked up Tossed you away With a wave I didn't know I'd have to brace against Shore was so much closer than I thought I've been standing here in the sand My toes are cold and pruny And I'm watching you drown Torn between getting in with you again Or turning my back on the storm tossed sea Walking away down the path through the bluffs  The DNA of trauma runs in my veins
A legacy of generations of violation and Personal violence My mother And her mother And her mother And me Survivors of physical onslaught With eyes on the fronts of our faces We are meant to be predators But as women We are prey Trained by experience To scent hunters on the wind To feel boozy breath On the small hairs of your neck Before it lands To deftly avoid strong fingers and palms That will grasp you firmly and not let go Until pale flesh blossoms blue black To hear the words Bitch Whore Cunt Before they're spoken To save your life Before it's taken from you Cells are encoded with Hidden switches Waiting to be thrown Connecting the circuit Illuminating our potential Become large with the threat Beat back the assailant Send him yelping back into the woods To lick his wounds When you have nothing left to lose Nothing else can be lost Contribute everything you've got Breed ferocity in your daughters Instead of fear |
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