 Squeezing every drop from why
As I wring the answers out of you Asking the questions Whose answers I can’t bear And I bite my lip To keep my tongue From forming contradictions What you believe Compared to what I see There are worlds between them The journey so long I’d be dead Before it was one tenth done We sit so close Our hands could clasp My cold fingers Gathering in your warm palm You know Disappointments have weathered me To the grey of worn cedar But even old boards can be salvaged Made beautiful and new
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 It only hurts when I think about it
The secret of me Kept hidden not like a surprise But buried like a crime I’m an object of shame In spite of the pride in your voice This wasn’t what I wanted As the months pass us by But that doesn’t matter, does it? It can’t Not with these stakes Pounded into the ground around me Higher than I can reach Prison and paradise as the coin flips I perpetually pay penance For your perceived sin My integrity slips from me As I sleep Distracted by dreams of waking next to you My imagination making me real in your arms The curse broken It only hurts when I think about it And I think about it always  It was so cold as I walked home that night. I was in a hurry. I was hurt. I was angry. My hair smelled of bonfire and my breath of bourbon taken straight from the bottle. I focused my stride as a police cruiser went by, told myself to breathe, and I hoped that James would freeze to death behind me.
It was the holidays. Just after Thanksgiving and right before Christmas, the town was decorated and festive. My friend and I had eaten dinner at the local brewery earlier, but I always stop before I’m full. A single drink is enough but it’s never where we stop. The old schoolhouse glowed warmly. Local merchants had set up inside and everybody bustled merrily to buy gifts and catch up with one another. Cheeks pink and fingers blue, we wandered through town grabbing little things here and there. A friend invited us to a party. The ceramicist and the metal sculptor were doing drinks at their studio after everything else was shuttered. This is the place I call home. Catherine and I sat next to one another in front of the fire chatting idly but sticking close. This is what single women do. She’s happily single and not looking. I was in love with someone I didn’t think loved me back. Not like that. I told my friend Nick as he was leaving that I love this place. That it’s weird like I am, and the only place I’ve ever felt I belonged. As if to illustrate this, his wife ran across the street, a ham in her hands, yelling “Happy birthday! Have a ham!” Catherine and I still stayed. The mixers all gone, and being just drunk enough not to care, the bourbon was passed around the circle. I don’t even like bourbon but I drank anyway because comfort comes in many forms, and alcohol makes it easier to ask for some of them. It wasn’t my intention. Catherine and I had been flirting with him. He’d picked us each up in a bear hug over and over again, and I’d screamed each time. I got up to go to the bathroom and came outside to find him standing there. I asked him if he wanted to kiss me. He said yes and then he did. I didn’t want him. He wasn’t smart. He wasn’t intriguing. He was nothing like the man I loved. What I wanted was validation. What I wanted was to be wanted. What I wanted was the distraction and the power. Catherine became concerned about me. I’d disappeared on her, and she began texting me. I ignored it. My pocket yelling, “people, what a bunch of bastards,” over and over again. Eventually, she came to find me. I was pinned against the side of his car. I said I was fine. She said she was leaving. I said, “okay.” She said, “are you sure?” I said, “Yes.” This was where the narrative should have ended. Where the spell should have been broken. This is where I should have gone with her, let her walk me home. I didn’t. I stayed. The party began to break up around us. They left trailing by as they went to their cars or to walk home. The hosts asked me if I wanted to come with them. I said I was fine. They said, “are you sure?” I said, “yes.” There were warnings in their eyes. Later, there would be apologies from them. For their lack of insistence. This was where the narrative should never have gone. This was a bad decision. I made it. I stayed. It was cold outside, and though two bodies pressed together are warmer than one standing alone, we got into the back of his car. The back seats of the SUV already down as if he’d earlier transported something. It wasn’t comfortable, but it wasn’t exposure to the elements, either. We stayed there awhile. He kept trying to undo my pants, and I kept moving his hand away. He said he wanted to sleep with me, that he had protection with him. That was when I said, “no.” That was when he became angry. That was when he said, “your friends warned me about you. They said you’re a slut. You can get out now.” I gathered myself. I gathered my things. I said, “my friends wouldn’t say that about me because they’re my friends.” I got out of the car. It was so cold as I walked home that night. I was in a hurry. I was hurt. I was angry. My hair smelled of bonfire and my breath of bourbon taken straight from the bottle. I focused my stride as a police cruiser went by, told myself to breathe, and I hoped that James would freeze to death behind me. I also hoped he wouldn’t follow.  I touch my tongue to
The iron tang of an open wound Thinking of you Tasting the sting of your absence A swollen rawness I am not incomplete For missing you Being more whole each day than the one before And surer of it The space is a lesson of my limits or their lack I find myself in your measure A scale too big to break And when the gap closes When the flesh is new Pearlescent and smooth I will be better for you  I dreamed of you last night
And I wonder why it hurt so much My subconscious' custodian Mopping up the last drops of emotion From a spill that happened years ago The tears all since dried I go days sometimes without thinking of you You presence erasing from my spaces It’s strange now to say your name Once spoken like a prayer It’s a religion I’ve relinquished Having learned too late I was forsaken But there are boots in the basement Their grommets corroded Too big for my feet No good to anyone anymore I don’t throw them out Not for guilt or good luck Perhaps as a warning That those things which go untended Will fall to disrepair and rot  It starts when we’re children
They put us in their laps Staring at our chubby thighs Stopping there only if we’re lucky In adolescence Breasts bud and hips widen Naive and unsure of ourselves We trust them But they follow us Hold us down Grab us Stain us Blame us As adults Our senses of self distorted We flock to uttered love The waiting wolf Slavering at the scent of our need We don’t need to believe it Only to hear it said The proof in what they take from us And how they leave  Don’t ask me to define my perceived worth to you
Spoken in a dead language I never learned The scribes and scholars long dead Unable to translate now What I once may have been Boiled down to its barest parts The precipitate of trace minerals A nearly imperceptible dust On the whorls of a swiped fingertip So easily rinsed away Forgotten, fresh, and clean So I don’t know my whole Being nothing to myself Where you might see an entire world And are warmed by its suns I feel only the cold vastness of space The universe expanding away from me With the cloud of every breath As stars wink from my grasp Leaving me alone as ever  I wear a different woman every day
Knowing that value and virtue Will be selectively assigned And never all at once My closet is lined with her The rod bowed in the middle By the weight of her facets She - all of her- Doesn’t ask Because she will be told Fatal Flawed Finessed Freak Fractious Fecund Frumpy Fantasy fodder Well, fuck you They all have the same face Speak with the same voice Feel the same pain Of your blindness to her whole What you see is what you get Dooming her to incompleteness You will forget tomorrow Who she is today But I won’t  My eyes were the cold grey of October fog
The day you left Empty of wouldn’t and will Sea and sky had drained from me The dam of you preventing their return I could no longer wake each day As a dry bed of sand Fishbones exposed with open jaws Knowing they’d died gasping  Let her be strong
Let her be angry Let her run wild and screaming Her hair trailing behind her Let her dress muddy Scooping squiggling tadpoles in her bare hands Let her knees scrape Chasing her dreams and maybe catching them Let her cry Wiping her tears with your sleeve Give permission to her fear But do not be its cause Let her build Let her break Show her cause and effect Allowing her to recognize actions are impact Let her be whole Let her be ferocious Compassionate Worthy Hold her up and never down Leave the doors to her future unlocked Let her explore every room Hold her hand when she reaches for it Teach her a firm handshake To look men in the eye To tell the truth always To say no - loudly Tell her safe and sorry are not mutually exclusive But sorry can be better than safe some days And that you are always safe |
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