Posts for June 12, 2020 (page 7)

i wish i could blend my words as well as my colored pencils. i wish my obsession with my reflection manifested in self love, rather than the endless need to create an indefinite series of portraits of my naked body.

the absolute narcissism of opening my sketchbook to me, true blue and poppy red. the absolute narcissism of displaying the two molds of my left boob in my bedroom doorway. the absolute narcissism of someone with three mirrors on the same wall.

and still! i can’t recognize the face and body that fluctautes the longer i stare.
please look at me! i can’t look at myself!

i always wanted to grow too tall to be scared
to just shoot up into the sky, past the clouds,
into the atmosphere where i’d wave at satellites
and the air would be thin but i’d save my breath
id be silent and smile dumbly at the stars
but i drank too much coffee as a little kid
and smoked too many cigarettes as teen
and only eat ashes and banana peels now
and talk loud so everyone notices me 
and i read to many books so i’m too smart
i read somewhere that no one grows that tall
then i learned what stars are made of
then i mixed the ashes into my coffee and drank up
then i thought too hard with my smarts about life
then i couldn’t get out of bed too scared that i’d fall 
straignt through the floor and into the mantle
then it’d be too late to finally grow too tall.
 

The most human invention is
The pile:
Chaotic and sprawling,
Monument to “I don’t care,”
To “I don’t want to,”
To “I can’t”—
All of the ways in which we fail ourselves
On our way to failing others.

What’s the word for being both completely restless and exhausted at the same time?
When you repeat yourself like a broken record only for someone to stamp a big red label on your forehead that says “feminist” so that everyone knows to disregard your pleas of “stop raping us!”?
Why must the phrase “me too” carry feminism like a war flag?
Why must I carry myself as a war flag?
I don’t want to be a war flag!
No one says “Mommy, when I grow up, I want to fight a constant war with the world around me to prove that my body is mine.”.
No one says “Mommy, I want to be a war flag”.
I want to be a dancer
an author
a poet
a doctor.
I want to be a person that lives in a world of people.
Right now, we are simply dandelions rooted in fields of elephants.
Right now, we are being taught to accept the fact that being crushed is inevitable instead of learning that our seeds are the way out.
We don’t want to be known as the 1 in 5
the 1 in 3
the 51.1%
the 8 in 10.
We are not statistics.
We are daughters
sisters
mothers
wives
friends.
Not that our relationship to the world matters but that’s what we have to say so that we matter.
We want to be people that are allowed to say “I’m not okay.”
“I’m scared”
“I’m hurting”
“He did this.”
without having the flaming coals of society forced down our throats by
“You’re lying”
“He would never”
“Boys will be boys.”
“Well, what were you wearing?”.

When I walk into the house,

she calls out from the kitchen

to be careful.

Something has fallen in the living room.

One of my piles

of clutter

has fallen

and I have lost at Jenga.

She is too busy cooking

to investigate.

I find a shattered Tinkerbell figurine.

Like a message from the Universe.

“Use your fairy wings more often,

or you’re going to lose them.”

I have never forgotten your kiss, and the places we loved, and
Why I loved you, and your head in my arm while we slept; 
Where, the years, haunted, easing over to us and clutching
The satin, would whisper our findings to us… and M—

I remembered too the other loves that are gone forever.  
It almost hurt, but not as much as this wasting season 
Remembering you—long icicles falling off Kentucky barns,
Black snow sloughing off the undersides of cars.

Under the Virgo moon where I met you, I possessed you.
I cannot speak of the whos, or their whats, and then
Their wheres that have happened in the time since, 
Or before—for too, they flew— leaving my tree stark, nude.
All I know is I used to sing for them, and for you.

~This poem was adapted from/inspired by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) 
From her “What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why.”