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The grey of old cedar

11/20/2017

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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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These stakes

11/12/2017

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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
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Where the narrative should never have gone

11/11/2017

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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.
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When the gap closes

11/5/2017

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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
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My subconscious’ custodian

11/3/2017

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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


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What they take from us

11/2/2017

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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






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A dead language I never learned

11/1/2017

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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








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Value and virtue

10/15/2017

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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




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Wouldn’t and will

10/14/2017

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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
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A prayer for girls

10/11/2017

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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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