flowers from the Faire

Yesterday I had a hard time. I was having a hard time and it was looking like I might not find support. But support arrived. It arrived bearing gifts of affirmation. It arrived and didn't shun me for being a mess. It arrived drinking Pellegrino and smoking cigarettes. It arrived. It looked me in the eyes and told me I was worthy of love. And when, at these words, I began to cry, it kissed me. The kiss of kindness and understanding. So much so that today I am still tempted to believe.

Hope is a delicate thing.

It is also a hard thing.
How difficult it is at the onset to let it into your heart.
Your stubbornly armored heart.
Then it is harder still to hold onto.
And before all is said and done you may be asked again
To muster your courage.
For the hope that has to be let go of.

I almost left you

last night
without reason.
You would have
come out and
found me gone.
Light touches all
manner of flesh
indiscriminate
and even,
illuminated
for a moment
by love. 

singlular

For every man I've ever truly loved there is a corresponding part of me that could almost separate itself from the whole in order to make him happy.

Except I can't. And as long as I'm living in this same world which requires that I be singular, that I be a whole and even more than that - a more whole-er whole than I thought possible - there's no room for splitting off and other worlds, only this one. It's all I have. And I'm so, so sorry. Can I ever stop being sorry? And will anyone ever forgive me for not being enough?

collateral damage

That's what I am every time I'm caught standing next to a person the moment they decide to self-destruct. 

rolling with the punches

"Fig. to absorb the force of a blow"

March is almost over. Given the last three months I'd say 2012 is shaping up to be a year fraught with personal difficulty. I'm certainly not shaking my fist at the sky, taunting God to bring it on, but perhaps I can accept this as a challenge all the same. Can I hold the center? Find my place within the flux of everything changing. Do I have any stability with me? Can I feel loss, can I suffer and yet hold fast to the knowledge that these are impersonal - these are natural, they are bodily, they pass. 

Prevention is a pretty word. It's a word you seldom hear in Western medicine. Over here you don't worry about a thing until it hurts. This is not how we treat our hearts though. I can't make time for my yearly physical, but I'll make damn sure no one has an opportunity to break my heart again. You lose something or someone and it becomes easy to wall up, to begin viewing your attachments with suspicion. Which one of you will leave me next? We demand an answer and when one doesn't come sometimes we make one come. 

In my experience, energy spent obsessing over prevention and protection is energy wasted or worse. Pain and loss and suffering happen and will always happen. They are part of the deal. If we try too hard to protect ourselves from these inevitabilities we run the risk of shutting not only the bad, but also the good out of our lives. And, though it may make us feel a little safer or a little more in control how effective is it, really?

the golden rule

It is impossible to violate another person without also violating yourself.

possession

How could you know you'd remind me of my godless days? Those days when I'd stopped singing. His hands around my throat. His fist in my mouth. My happiness choked completely out. I was the farthest from myself I've ever been. This is not a metaphor. It happened. First I was a lover, then an object to him. Objects don't suffer, they don't hurt. You take what you want and discard them. No part of me left untouched, unmolested. No part of me too sacred. By the end his reach had gone so deeply in, I never thought I could feel safe from it again. And yet, here I am. Here I am. Here I am.

Most of what I don't see I don't see because I don't want to. 

my dark horse,

my underdog,
favorite of my choosing,
I'm done cheering for teams that
can't win unless they're losing.

people hurt

Sometimes I wish people's ability to hurt me would finally outweigh my capacity for forgiveness. Then I realize how stupid that is.

I've never broken any hearts - nor has mine been broken by any other.
We break our own hearts when we fail to see what is in front of us.

lovers

a short poem from one stranger to another. handwritten, it was there then it was gone. in some pant pocket. set accidentally free amongst the keys or digging for the phone some grow in depth, in dimension. some are just an apparition. they flash then disappear. some hang shamelessly in there. words of smoke, of an early morning mist that burns off slowly. it was the sun on our last tuesday.

the "ex"

I met someone tonight who thought she knew me. She didn't. She thought she knew you too. I can't be sure, but I seriously doubt it. My love for you wasn't casual - like most things.

sensitivity

Today I feel like a scar. Some scars are beautiful. I had a crescent-shaped burn between the thumb and index finger of my right hand for years. I was reaching into the oven to pull out a batch of cookies while trying to hold the phone to my ear with my shoulder. My hand touched a coil. But that's not the kind of scar I feel like today. Today I feel like the kind of scar that's become numb to the touch - prone to insensitivity. Some nerves don't always grow back quite right after injury. If it's your scar, the desire to avoid another accident might make you preoccupied with yourself, with self-preservation. If it's someone else's scar, it's hard not to want to hurry the process or be hurt when you caress this part of them (be it small or large) and are met with insecurity or worse, no response at all.

thrift

where all lost, unwanted, ill-fitting or out-of-fashion things go. someone, someday, will pull my love for you out from under a pile of "Virginia is for Lovers" t-shirts and have found a treasure and a great bargain. 

if you take me

for god's sake take everything. use everything. fill each corner of your room with my ornament. wrap my skin around you like a blanket. fill your stomach with my muscle. my fat. until there's nothing left to taste. until I'm empty and there's nothing left to waste. nothing to spill. I want to be part of life, damn you, not just another reckless driver's road kill.

I was a huntress.

I was an arrow. I was a deer on the floor wailing. My cries shook the walls. They cracked the ceiling. They ricocheted off buildings. All our neighbors beer in hand coughing up their addictions began weeping. The sound echoed through the streets. Through the scent of potatoes roasting in butter and laundry steaming sweetly in the dryer, the dark musky odor of marijuana and nag champa burning together, as in a chorus. I was a huntress. I was a deer. Next time you shoot, shoot to kill. Gut and eat me. Don't just leave me on the floor of your apartment bleeding. 

caterpillars

we spin a tender wrapping around one another. a golden
chrysalis. all hearts eventually break against.

impotence

snake charmers are said to hypnotize with

song burmese pythons, carpet vipers, egyptian
cobras or some other beast captured

when I found you that's how it was hungry
and wild, writhing in your pot, your beautiful
freckled mouth already sewn shut