On Holding Your Tongue

On Holding Your Tongue


She thinks she remembers the way the girls hands hovered.
She wanted to know the touch of them. Wanted to feel fingers
massaging her memories back to before she forgot
to pay attention. Bit her lips pretended it was the girls kiss.

Morning on the other side of I miss you is not her happy place.
On those mornings she sleepwalks her way to forgiveness
gets stuck in regret and barely manages to keep her bones
above quicksand. She checks her pockets. Finds her tongue
attempts to re-anchor it so she can finally speak. It’s a bad fit.
Falls to the floor. She can’t remember the last time beauty
made her jaw drop.

The girl with the hovering hands wore an apprehensive smile.
Mona Lisa, but darker. The girl held secrets between her thighs
and sometimes when they shared she knew everything.
She would float sometimes, the girl with hovering hands,
hold clouds between her teeth. She would blow kisses
over her right shoulder. She thinks she remembers catching
those kisses. Placing them in her pocket right next to her tongue
promising to blow them back to the girl once she figured out
how to disguise blood spatter.

She thinks she remembers why things failed. The girl with
the apprehensive smile never knew that she cut out her tongue
so she’d never say anything to drive her away. So the girl,
her hands and her smile mistook silence for disinterest
instead of the adoration it was born to be. She thinks she
remembers trying to speak. No sound came.

Midnight on the other side of I miss you is failing moonlight
and false memories. Those nights she roams an empty house
checking the corners for hovering hands. She collects the dust she finds
sprinkles it on her open wound heart and hopes for concrete. She fumbles
with sewing needles and razor wire trying to stitch back her tongue
so she can finally say what she feels unafraid of letting the blood show.
She thinks she won’t forget this time because she can’t remember

Familiar Territory

I think I know me.
I think I do, but I have thought this before.
I was wrong.
The time before this time, I threw caution to the wind
and learned regret. I don't ever want to repeat that time and yet I do.
Every time I convince myself that I am not enough.
I am doing it again.
When helplessness wears me,
strolls around like she knows me better
I give in. She knows I will. The problem with living this life
is I forget I have feelings sometimes,
forget the impact of punches to
the head the heart.
I believe what others believe
especially when I know it is not true.
I want them to tell me it
is not true.
They never do.
I think,
I want more than this,
I think, but
I have thought this before.
I was wrong.
And I am terrified that I am wrong
again.

4/30

the corners are dirt free
nothing lingers like your smile
hanging in the brances of trees
covering everything in comfort
cleaning is the word of the day
free up some space arms lenght
the moat surrounding full of things with teeth
they bite whatever comes near
hands hearts anything with flesh
clean to the bone even the bones
makeshift mourning tears are not welcomed
night holds close
no detritus can be seen
even when it litters
the corners are dirt free

Smdh

Temporary love called me by name last night. And in the midst of skin clad comfort hands searching for just one more time for old times sakes, an image of you pops into my head. I am doomed!

I am also trying not to love backwards. It would have been a great release, I think. Where is my inner harlot when I need her?

The Flaw

“When unrequited love is the most expensive thing on the menu, sometimes you settle for the daily special.”
― Miranda Kenneally


A piece of a tooth broke loose today. I am reminded that at the moment I have no real health insurance and while distressing, the tooth doesn't have any real pain associated with the loss of the piece. I attribute the ache in my jaw with clenching my teeth and worrying at what is left. I was not meant to have a mouth full of perfect teeth. Maybe if in my youth I'd have taken better care, maybe if with my first pregnancy I had realized how completely the baby takes everything it needs first, maybe if I had stayed in a relationship built in failure, but rot with health benefits maybe then I would have been blessed with pearly whites that flash against the dark of the not so perfect life I would have been privy to. Pretty teeth, but a very awful existence. Not for me. Not for my children.

This is not the first broken tooth I have ever had and I am fairly sure it won't be the last, and teeth are not the only broken things that have laced my life. As humans we all have the luxury of being flawed. Some will attempt to fix those visible flaws, give the appearance of perfection or physical flawless but it's a kind of band-aid. If looked at in the right light the flaw can still be seen. Some flaws are acquired like debt. Like memory. Like regret. My teeth are flawed but it's my heart I worry about.

Is it possible that denying myself love when it was first presented has doomed me to never have it? I don't want to believe that but there are days when the notion slaps at me and well, it gets my attention. I do not believe that I am in love now, but the idea that I could one day be intrigues and terrifies. I am not so much terrified of being in love but I am truly terrified of being rejected. So my usual tactic is to cleverly, I think I'm being cleaver, run from it. Not in a fast paced, heavy breathing kind of way but more a pretend I don't feel and am not bothered, or hurt but responses or lack of response to any expression of interest or affections I offer. A flaw. This has never worked in the past and I don't disillusion myself by thinking it will happen for the twentieth time, it won't, I know this, but still. I am human and to deny that wanting would create yet another flaw and I am all flawed up right now. No need to keep piling them on when I have a stockpile already.


My son, who struggles with my sexuality, has lately taken to asking me if I am happy several times a day when we are together. So my veneer has cracked and I am no longer capable of keeping the lonely out of my eyes. Another flaw. Seems I'm chock full of them these days. I know it is unrealistic to think that the children I have raised will not pick up on my moods, I mean I raised them to feel, not a flaw. The lonely can be taken care of. And who knows in the pursuit of chasing away lonely I might run into a heart that wants to run into my heart. Maybe, maybe not. I haven't tried because I think I know what I want. But I don't have a great track record of getting what I want so maybe the additional flaw is that I really have no idea what I want. So I will assuage my lonely with the soft skin of another who wants nothing from me, which seems appropriate since I don't seem to know what I want for myself.

This feeling of inadequate, I don't consider a flaw. I am human, and humans all over the globe have felt this feeling. I do worry that I'll get stuck here and lose pieces of my heart but unlike the broken tooth, more breaking of my already flawed and broken heart will be pain I can't ignore and no amount of healthcare can fix that. especially since I don't have any healthcare right now.

Poem I found cleaning out my notes on my Ipad written 347 days ago

if you were everything I needed
I wouldn’t be writing this now
I couldn’t be writing this now
I was trying to have a goddamn conversation
with you but it was about art and you don’t do art
and it was about politics but you don’t do politics
and me wanting to take you out on a date do something
other than fuck for a change
and I say theater,
you say movie
I say a play
you say I don’t do plays
and I ask why?

and you say let’s just be close
then you go to rubbing and shit
taking advantage of my sexual adhd
and suddenly we are fucking again
and you are letting me
and I am letting you
and belts are breaking
beds are breaking
and then you are passed out
and I am laid up next to you writing a poem
about how I don’t need to be with you
and the fact that we can’t even talk about this
because this is not the first time I’ve broached the subject
and the distance between us is further than it appears
close enough for fingers to stroke clits
but never close enough to meet in the mind
cause you don’t do that
and I haven’t approached a conversation
with you in the last six months
without a fucking drink in my throat
because it was the only way you made sense
and the distance between us is addiction
we crave the separateness like alcoholics
craving a fifth of whatever's cheapest

you want my touch less than I want to give it to you
and this is how we've stuck ourselves
into an existence neither of us will walk away from
because we don’t know how
even though we know we are not who we used to be
and the best thing about us is bottom beauty and strap-ons
and because I am hopeless romantic and you are lazy
the way we lie,
the way we lie here
it is almost believable
almost

soon there will be nothing left to anchor
us to each other we are going to crash
and burn and drown and I don't imagine
you reaching out or throwing me a life preserver
why would you save me when you couldn't
wouldn't save yourself from me
this shine we've put on this shitty relationship
should shame us both and the fact that I am
in bed with you listening to you snore
writing a poem that you will never read
because you don’t do art
makes me realize how blind we are to the reality
that we actually don't like each other

I love you like a root canal is not sexy
neither is I love you like an exit wound
we are sick in need of a twelve step program
one where we walk away from each other slowly at first
then run like hell and never look back
when you told me you loved me
I was splayed beneath you all moan and cum
I wasn’t even wearing my charm
and I noticed you never loved me with my clothes on