 A bee in every blossom
Sluggish in the strange October warmth They want to be done Just as much as they need to keep gathering Bright pollen clinging to their legs Though not yet showing signs of approach The winter will come Stealing the heat from the sun From their hive From the delicate fuzz Of their impossibly round bodies and Delicately veined wings It will cling icily to bare trees Brown grass The edges of everything I watch them now The bees Tasting the salt of wasted months Trailing down my cheeks Mourning a summer that wasn’t Feeling a cold that isn’t yet here Letting go of the hopes I held Foolishly clutched to my chest Giving them to the wind Like milkweed feathers Leaving me a curled husk My bared insides pale
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 I can’t let go of your lies
Bad apples in the bunch Gathered in the scoop of my shirt Always threatening to fall So glad I didn’t share They tasted no different In hindsight, perhaps a touch sweeter Not enough to draw further suspicion I know them now Refusing to rot like the rest Shining red and inviting These last years Deception both a poison and preservative I can’t ask why you gave them to me Having already been explained But I ate them, you see And I don’t feel well Perhaps a touch lethargic Like I could sleep for a hundred years Kissing a prince won’t save me That’s how I got here  We kill ourselves
In the pursuit of perfection Because we’ve been told All our lives That if we work hard enough We can have anything we want We don’t want to be who we are No matter how kind Or loving Or giving Or fair We want to be somebody else What would we accomplish If we shared the message That kind And loving And giving And fair Are enough? That beauty manifests itself in those acts? What if we said You can only have your body And it is uniquely yours Beautiful and worn As sea glass? What if we allowed ourselves to feel it? Rather than telling everyone else I waste time And energy Being unkind Unloving Ungiving Unfair To myself For things I cannot change For damage I didn’t do For being a bottle thrown into the waves Tossed Broken Gloss dulled I was never a bottle But flesh Soft Rounded Marked by sharp edges and words I work to undo it all To unfight the battles I’ve won or lost To make firm my softness Camouflage my me-ness To be someone else Something else Another battle already lost Knowing it might kill me  Pen in hand
I sat down at the table And I wrote you a letter Whether from nerves or lack of habit I shook Ink clinging to my skin As it dragged across the page When I was done I wondered if I'd said the right things In the right way I laid it down Reluctant to seal the envelope To lick the glue that could be our undoing But I did Because you say you want me as I am And I am smeared ink, shaking, clumsy Some minutes later A bowl chipped I thought I was being careful Stacking it with another But the right angle The right force The right moment And there was ceramic between my toes Its core bare Plain and porous bone Beneath a cobalt glaze Sadness replaced my fear Because the bowl had been his Bought in preparation for his first apartment It survived beyond six moves Seventeen years Our marriage And its ending I hope he didn't want it back Though he's stopped asking for things When he learned I'd no longer give them  The corpse flower of American hatred
Blooms once in a generation Making people of sound mind Pinch their noses And curl their lips in primitive disgust It began with ourselves Borne across the Atlantic on the Mayflower Claiming a desire for religious freedom Succeeding where Jamestown failed They slaughtered the ones who lived here With muskets and diseased blankets Making children their brides And driving the unwilling onto reservations Where they still live impoverished today We let them have casinos Tell them they're sovereign nations But we'll pollute what we've given them for oil Almost simultaneously We began abducting Africans By the shipload Exploiting tribal warfare For our national gain Slaves built the White House Now the home of a veritable Klansman Thinking ourselves on the right side of history We sent thousands of young men To die in Asia Claiming a fight against Communism When really it was just an excuse To kill more poor brown people But it was just a conflict War never officially declared We built The Wall for our dead Grieved another lost generation And moved on The Quran was the next evil A branch of the same tree From which Judaism and Christianity grow Seen as diseased It had to be cut off When it was we who'd armed them Fed their radicalization Crying foul when they defended themselves Against the mightiest nation's renewed assault We sit now smelling what we planted Four hundred years ago Watering the soil with the blood of the other Blood is thicker than water It rots, too I don't know what we expected From roots dug so deeply in hatred  I am sitting here right now thinking about how far I've come and how hard I've worked in such a contracted period of time. I had no deadline, no concrete goals to achieve or exceed, but it's a lot, and it's been fast. In under two years, I lost an entire adult's worth of weight, I got divorced, I crawled out of debt and into enough savings to last me months should I become unemployed. I was promoted twice, started living alone, bought a car, began and ended relationships that I thought were fine but weren't. I learned to set boundaries and declare their violations. I spat in the eye of decades of abuse, and told them they weren't allowed to control me anymore. Looking back at it all from this chair in front of this window, I don't know how I managed. It was all encompassing chaos, and I was in the middle of it without a way to sidestep.
I've done all these things, but I still have so far to go, and it's daunting. I should be celebrating my achievements, but I'm still beating myself up for the ones I haven't made yet. I have an impossible time asking for what I want. It's even harder to ask for what I need. I release the words with a cringe because I expect "no" to come in the form of a lengthy and painful argument when all I wanted to do was talk. I am acutely, paralytically afraid of losing people important to me by exposing that I can't always do everything myself, and that vulnerability gnaws in the middle of the night. I do not want to need or crave basic comfort, to admit I ache with it because I'm supposed to be able to do and handle anything. In so many ways, I'm still six years old figuring out that the world doesn't want me but still wanting it back. I go through these exhaustive self examinations because I know I can be better. I refuse to accept that I am irreparably broken, but deeply know that I am. I may never trust anyone fully again. I might always look for the lies buried in a perceived half truth, sniffing out the rot in every omission. I will get searingly, shockingly angry at my insecurities and cry myself to sleep because you made me feel them. By my own measure, I simply can't compete, and I can't settle for good as I am. I can never be proud of myself or accept an earnest compliment. My imperfections hurt as they echo in my chest. So much is easy for me. I need only be shown a task before I can master it. But getting out of bed, planting my feet on the floor, those are hard every single day because I know I need to keep looking inside and trying to fix me.  Pain slips in
Through the edges Of the windows In the house that love built Settling cold and heavy In my bones I ache with the burden Wishing I could burn and banish it But I know It's impossible To have one without the other To seal the cracks is to suffocate And I still want to breathe Affection and ache ebb and flow Unceasing as the tides Covering and exposing me Without a moon to govern Or an almanac to consult You cannot sell The house that love built It's held in perpetual trust And only a fool would buy it O Captain, My Captain!
If I'd been thinking straight, I'd have stood up on the conference room table and shouted it. But I wasn't thinking straight. Instead, I was tapping Robert lightly on the shoulder to ask for tissues. In a way, I haven't stopped since, and it's been almost three days. Another coworker, sitting two chairs away, and whom I've always thought odd, rolled her chair over to me to put an arm around me. I wasn't the only one crying, but I was the only one doing it silently, letting the blow land, absorbing every pound of force behind the impact, anticipating the bruise. I don't cry in front of people. It's not my way. And I tried so hard not to, but this was too much to hear even though I'd known it was coming for hours ahead of time. On Tuesday morning, they fired my boss. The words don't seem like much. So what? People leave or get fired all the time. This is different. This is the result of petty, vindictive people acting in their own self interest and saying to hell with the rest of them, and I know who did it. I figured it out a long time ago. Before it even happened. Because I know people. I see the quality of their souls even when they try to hide them. It's my superpower, and while I use it all the time, I rarely unleash its full power. When you know what makes someone tick, you also know what will stop their clock. I want to stop this clock. I want to take my knowledge of this person and spill it blackly over them, sticky and suffocating. People don't like the truth - especially when it's their own - when they've worked so hard to maintain a veneer so shiny it blinds even them in the mirror. I've been gracious, polite, helpful, and kind to this person. Fuck grace. When they return, they will find me cold and unyielding. They may find us all so. So, what's the big deal? Can't I separate the personal from the professional? Ordinarily, yes. There are exceptions to every rule, and this one's been broken. Professionally, my boss raised me up, gave me my voice back, supported me, advocated for me, and listened. She was mentor, ally, confidante, and cheerleader. She found problems, and ways to solve them, by never ceasing to ask why until it was over. She did that for all of us. We'd been told previously not to ask questions, to trust the system, to accept what was as it was even while everything was wrong. It sat badly with me, and I was disciplined twice for being vocal, so I stopped talking. Personally, she texted me photos of her cats, of her beer, of her adult daughter napping on the couch. She invited me to Thanksgiving with her family when I was an orphan. She knew almost everything, and she was my friend. My heart is broken, and my job will soon become intolerable. She was the only thing keeping me here, and the wolf in sheep's clothing has taken her from me. I will wait a while for personal reasons, but I will leave, and I will take my inconceivable talent with me because she was the only one able to conceive it. She wants me to go. She wants me to stop being Robin Hood, taking money from an industry I oppose, and do something I love because she believes I can succeed in anything. She's a soul-seer like me, but she overlooks the worst of someone, and this undid us all. I don't blame her. I admire her hope. She's been so apologetic, and I won't allow her to bear this. Nobody will. O Captain, my Captain! I love you.  We are taught to use our words
The lie of sticks and stones While bone heals More readily than soul I can craft a compliment From consonants and vowels Punctuated with love Just as much as I am able To forge a sword in hatred Sharpened on the stone of my rage I can cure or cut with the assembly of syllables I have done both in a breath But it is in my silence where the volumes speak Verbs in a vacuum Sucked up and away That you know I am lost to you  We arrive here as beings
Bound by stardust The breaths follow Loudly expressing our disconsolacy Torn from the sky Thrust into a loud, bright world When all we knew Was a subtly thrumming darkness We want to go back Some part of us Always wishing for what was lost To be made particulate and floating again Or perhaps it's just me Desperate for the simplicity of aimlessness The pressure of goals The complexity of wholeness Held here by gravity My cells remember When I was widespread and weightless I must remind them I am temporary This time of jostling and bustle Will end more quickly than it began They will be free to roam again Many years from now When I am gone Having been here sufficiently long To begin asking for release From the bonds that held so fast My memories and those of me will fade Dispersed to wind and waves Absorbed eventually elsewhere In someones and somethings else |
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