When I die, they will say:
It’s hard to be soft inside.
To let your fluffy, cotton candy,
guts stay sweet and pink
when your throat is full of bile.
I’m choking and choked up.
I spit honey and vitriol
and I hope it clings and stings.
I’m a grown ass woman but
I ain’t your fucking Mamaw.
You can’t butter my biscuits
without getting burnt.
And I hope it blisters.
I’m a blackberry pie
with pricks and briars baked in,
sugar scorched and encased
in pure cast iron.
My childhood home was an old, pale blue shack
with a tiny yard and a useless, rusty fence.
My stepdad had an annoying ADT alarm installed
that would squawk, “door open”
every time someone came or left.
The house phone would blare through every room
whilst a basketball game played over the stone fireplace,
and I’d be playing jail with my dolls
in the cabinet with the wooden bars.
We slept on air mattresses
and watched the fireworks every summer from the back deck,
where you could see without obstruction
the Cincinnati skyline.
It was the kind of neighborhood
that wasn’t quite ghetto,
nor exceptionally desirable in its own right.
We were smashed up against other old houses
with other families
with their own weird little quirks.
Next door seemed to have
a never-ending supply of different kids
running in and out their front door —
torn screen and falling off of its hinges.
The neighbors across the street
one night got into a fight with a firearm.
My siblings and I hid in our parents’ room
and turned all of the lights off,
waiting in earnest
for the cops to smooth it over, again.
It was fun when you imagined yourself as a spy,
capable of blending seamlessly into the background
like a chameleon.
My older siblings were always more concerned than I was.
The nearby train would occasionally shake the bed
throughout the day in my brother’s room,
and he convinced me
that there was a vengeful ghost trapped inside
causing the turbulence.
The shaking dissipated when we moved away,
so I assumed the ghost preferred the old place
more than we did.
Down the way,
there’s an old ice cream shop
where we would grab cones on a hot day
and swing our legs on the benches
outside the front windows,
admiring the sugary displays
and counting passing cars by their colors.
I don’t well remember the day we moved out,
but it felt eerily silent and still in our new house
when I walked in.
Homeowners associations suck, by the way.
I like wearing fabrics of many colors and designs:
plaid, paisley, bright or pale solids, calico print…
I don’t even mind much if the fabric is wrinkly,
but what I can’t stand is if it has nibs or lint.
I was never predestined to receive grace,
I’m always in a state of kenosis to fill the empty space;
I’ve been numbing myself this whole relationship with the smoke of blueberry in taste, as I’m weighed down by the inevitable regrets that I face. I did read about hope that I was willing to embrace, from the poet who wrote in the form of erase. I found it refreshing how they deleted the undesired text to leave something beautiful in its place.
I am heaviness thinking of you.
It costs me. I exhaust all variations on your theme.
Perhaps I unbutton your blouse,
and take a mellow bite from your mouth.
We toss aside comportment and composure.
I rip off my saddle to cover you.
We pause. Velvet night surrounds;
we look but remain without understanding.
At dawn I will cook between
every flame appearing—burning glints
surging thorns in the clarity
of your chocolate eyes.
And you shatter my teeth with a kick, saying,
No. This isn’t love. I’m every woman alive to you.
Waking for its own sake
as dawn insists
its way to the ridge
above my home, I
will arthritic bones
from bed.
Groping through
a chest of clothes,
I find the skin of grays,
dress myself in prayers,
worship all day
without saying a word.
Days drift as I rise this
way, two years since my
job was taken away.
Like meditation maybe,
I pray alphabets in my head,
weavingways of leaving my past…
to forgive.
they say
they like it when i write
hopeful
but i know
that my hope is
fake
i mask too well
no one ever seeing what
i am feeling
but i’m too honest
no one will ever not know what
i am feeling
so they know
that my hope is
fake
pretending to be happy
doesn’t make you something
that you are not
i am trying on different
versions of myself on the
daily
trying to find what fits
today, it’s hopeful
tomorrow is a mystery
they say
they like it when i write
hopeful
i’ll try to wear this
outfit
again
Hair loose blowing in the wind,
Feeling fearless, feeling free, no worries
Youth at its finest, top Down, feeling the sun
Feeling frisky, he side eyes me, one hand
on the wheel, the other on my bare thigh
grinning, pedal to the medal. Free ar last.
