Nonchalant, like a toddler who pulls your hair out of your scalp with strong, damp little fists.

Nostalgic, like wet carpet and dusty, musty, summer camp drawers.

Ticklish, like a scratch you can't itch that seems to live just between your collar bones and your chin on the thinnest part of your skin.

Bitter sweet, like days old, left over red.

Whole, like cows milk ripe with chewy, sticky cream still hot from her utters.

Bright, like sunset on a day that you never wanted to end, haunting the night that you never thought would begin.

Days where I'm nostalgic for poems I haven't written

For  words I haven't said

For feelings I used to have

But now I can't remember what they felt like

Anything can be sad if you look at it the right way

Anything can be glorious if you sit low enough

He was a meteorite
that night.
She was a lamb.
Not innocent, but soft.

He didn't know
he was such a meteorite though.
Hurtling through her pasture,
blazing out her sky,
raining down sweet fire,
upon her winter coat.

She ate it up.

Wanting nothing more than his meteor heat on her throat.

When it’s no longer that contrast
The purple and blue and brass
I can’t grasp

When nothing’s juxtaposed
When there’s nothing to compare
When I’m naked and no one but me’s there

There’s you

I love the slate blue sky
Lightening over the gloomy, moody, swooshy sea
I love my pale skin that won’t tan
I love my hairy knees and calves and thighs
I love the cool breeze tickling my back
I love my oily, sea-salted hair
I love the plush sand from the high tide
I love my hairy hairy hairy waiter, covered in the cutest curly cues I’ve ever seen
I love the palm trees, with their fronds bent across each other from the wind
I love the muddy brown bumpy road
I love the rain and humidity, the wet.
I love the mist over the sea, making its surface a sweet mystery
I love the green and the blue and the brown
I love the happy, sleepy travelers
I love the happy, sleepy sea and my mind breathing it all in for keeps.

Sad like Valentines Day 2018 with my lover I loved no longer beside me in my bed, watching Inglorious *******, spaghetti I slaved all day on in the garbage because I spilled it in my haste, the words 'leave you' on my tongue.

Slowly and then all at once
I was beneath the sheet
It touches my nose and sways as I breathe out
Is it pink? Or white?
Who knows

Sheet touching my nose
And I crave nothing
I’m sweet on this sensation
Of cotton wooing my nostrils
And breath circulating beneath my chin for the sake of this prose

What do you want?
A fragile heart responded:
'To be alone in the dark with you'
A comfort she longed for but had never known.

Now in the shower,
                                          lights off

                                                            ­              alone.

Good. Goodness.

A good that only a 'you' can know and no one else can know it.

Like dusk: created. An Atmosphere, A Mood.
A place to mend the temptation of that want.

Alone in the dark with you?
                                                                ­                   No
                                                    Who is you anyway?

Only a feeling, an idea, a fragile comfort of someone else's something else?
                                                           ­                       No
               What she wanted then, was this moment.

It just hadn’t happened yet.
The comfort of this space.
Existing in her body.

In this musky, soft, grainy mood of dusk.

It is all made of she and she, and she are one.

Even when the night is dusky and when the mood is gone,
When she looks out the window and knows there is nothing,
She doesn't see nothing.

As long as she has her mind, she always has so so many somethings.

She sees herself. She sees a face she knows.

She sees cheekbones for days. She sees a face that she has watched grow into its nose.

She sees ambition and potential.

She sees lovers easily lost. She sees haters torn from her.

She sees a smile that she guards only for herself.

Loneliness has never been so sweet and so satisfying.

She feels true love. She feels an ernest quench to the dryness that used to be in her throat.

She feels safe. and free. and had. and good. and bad.

She sees all that she is. And she ******* loves it.

Captive mind her own. She feels good alone.

I’m good.
No, but like
Really
Really good.

You’re just a tall bachelor I guess I never knew,
Took that flight with poor Lu
You were faded and probably wearing black
Suffering a separation anxiety attack,

So you high tailed it to your coast
And took back the peanut butter toast

It was a beautifully clean break
But it’s a shame we never socialized the snake.

Vulnerability
Makes me feel
kind of strange
very strange I'll be honest
it makes me want to overeat
it makes me feel like Im an alien learning to swim with no feet

But none of that's true and I'm a human
and I have feet and ankles
Vulnerability makes me feel
Very aware of my shins
It makes my head swirl and the back of my neck feel more naked than a dog shaved for summer

But in a way
it feels like home
is that too much to say
Do i really feel that way
go with it
try it out
its probably true

I used to like vulnerability

Maybe this is where I get my creativity back
Actually maybe this is how I combat
My detach

Maybe this is where my strength lies
Maybe in this honesty I am more myself than ever before
Maybe I've shed the fear that used to make other people a bore
I've been coming to this for a while
Now that I look back on this year
I've been craving this earnest collective of presentness being picked up by my ears

Little hairs swaying back and forth
A strange notion

Simpler and fully in
Learning to remember that I know how to swim
My calves engulfed in blue
feeling fresh and new

I did always say that I wished I was a fish

You're still my vice baby
It scares me how much I love the thought that I could be yours too
The idea that I'm not
I push away
As it tries to confirm old beliefs that I am not enough
That what I want will not come to me

Because I live anew
Now
What I want lands in my path
"I am abundance" I repeat as I fall asleep

I hope with tearful eyes
And shaking breath
And that sweet earnest quiver in the bridge of my nose
That one day you won't be my vice
That you'll be my good morning
Or my Tuesday afternoon
That we'll be in tune
Like we were in June and May and October and December

I don't want anything from you that you don't want though
And how hard to know what to want
When I'm afraid.
I don't want to live in fear
So I must live apart

But is it all so dramatic anyway?

I don't want to always be so deliberate in my wants

It's not all love and romance

It's just a normal day
Meaning passing between us

Is what I pretend.
But really.
Fervently, I love you.

I love your jaw and your voice.
I love your laugh
How giddy you become like a child smiling at the sun
I love your mania
I love your crazy eyes alight in the moon
I love your BELIEF I love your ******* earnest sincerity.
Who the **** else is earnest like that?
It's gorgeous, I'm obsessed.
I could drink and bathe in your sincerity.

A bless or a curse to be the object of my obsession
I worry how my attraction to you would affect you
Would it be too much?

I think so.
Read the signs, see the facts
When someone tells you who they are believe them and all of that...
But, I'd rather not?
Instead I want to think that when we stood behind your house smoking that joint trying to stay away from the wind that you felt the tension too.

I love the way you wear boots.
I love the way sweaters hang on your shoulders.

****, each time I revisit your room in my mind I must confirm again and again with growing certainty that I am obsessed with you.

Nostalgic kind of love
The kind that hurts kinda nice
In the sweet places

It feels old and familiar
Worn out
It doesn’t keep you warm anymore
But you love it for its wrinkles and holes

Sugar sweet
Like a pinup girls pouty lip
In a magazine from the 40s

Something is wrong with it
But it looks nice

And now
On quiet nights
It comes to you
Unexpected

‘I hope I’m welcome’ it says
As it seduces my psyche
As it takes my cheek in its palm
As it looks into my eyes and soothes the pain that it brings.

Isn’t the wasp
Who acts like a bee
More a bee than the bee
Who all day, only has to be

Your psyche would shatter,
Your veins turn blue,
Your bones surely would melt into glue,
Just a glimpse of the dreamscape of my year without you,
The magic moments in my mind,
Would burn out your eyes and leave you blind.
Your heart would wrench.
Your throat would catch.
And vengeance would never be mine.

I like that I still get scars on my shins
I like that I prioritize play
I like that I roughhouse and shriek in joy
I like that I’m still entranced by soil
I like seeing earth in my nail-bed
And feeling sunshine on my towhead
I like giggling in fits late at night
It makes me feel young and bright

The childhood I left so long ago has returned
Its a new home I’ve been so lucky to earn
Made of companions, pals, partners, art, pets, plants, rocks and lovers
Feeling safe but free and deep and wild
Belonging and nomadic at the same time

The glimmer and **** of youth will never fade
So long as looking silly and getting scars doesn’t make me afraid

I'm realizing that I'm always right
About what is right for me
Or rather, I'm realizing that I always know
My body always knows
She tells me what is right and what is wrong
I must learn her language
To know earlier, better, more clearly what to do next

Starry eyes and gnarly lies.
It's all just a trick.
All of it. Every bit.
Every sensation.
Every ounce of what it is to feel is a trick.
That sneaks up on us,
That mutes us,
That frees us,
That mutates us, if we want.

To think that not so long ago I was looking at starry eyes and falling swiftly into fits.
That I was captured by a heightened feeling of 'only you'.

Those two sentances need not have been. Just to say "To Think", is enough.
There, you've done it, you're a human, congratulations.

But for the sake of my self and the purposes of this prose:

I used to think: only you.
But now I know: every me.

The heady deep, that starry gaze, the sensation of falling into the night with your fingers on his lips...
It's not love, love.

It's just you. Experiencing you. As you decide that you want to.

you made me feel like the hundred acre wood
and then you slowly rot my oaks where they stood
you burned the grass
soaking my soil with redbull and whisky
the maple sweet syrup you once adored now you find too sticky

I don't know you anymore and that is good.
Better than the falseness of your wind blowing through my wood.

Neon
No neutrals
New and glowing
Green and wet behind the ears
High on nothing but the night

When the bee doesn't buzz,
And the fleece doesn't fuzz,
When the drones die out in droves,
And no pollen dusts our alcoves,
When the holy taverns echo,
Y nuestra miel acaba y esta seco,
The sweetest verse ever crooned,
I'll always buzz for youned,
Bzz, Bzz, Bzz,
My sweet honey bee,
Bzz, Bzz, Bzz,
'cause only a Queen knows a Queen.

Steal down the stairs won't you?
Come into my quiet heart
Here in the dark
Undress me
Savor my quiet parts

Turn your mouth inside out
Let me know your taste buds
With my fingers my nails and my tongue
Put your knuckles in my lungs
Tear the flesh
Beat it numb.

Why did you break it when you knew it was broke?
Why did you take it when you what they'd wrote?
Why did you taken me to you rivers when you knew I couldn't float?

I was somber and blue
But I lit up like a fool
You blonde goddess
I lit up like a fool for you.

The thought of you and I smiled in the dark
Whispering "Undress me
Savor my quiet parts
And please don't hurt me
Here in the dark".

I think private lives are cool
And I would like one of my own

Hairy knees and skin that’s just learned to tan,
I’m here and I’m not and loving a lot and I’m ******* as much as I can,
A woman alone in strange cities is never alone because,
When she has her self all the rest has been and is and was.

Retreat and respite for a mood that shifts from good to better when the sun shines brighter and she gets some sleep,
Doing as I please is my bliss,
Going a way that looks good, saying goodbye when I decide,
Pleased and rested with an hour of sleep and feeling like I ******* shine.
Divine and mine with pleasure cooing in my spine.

I just like this tiny little bonsai tree
Of feelings for thee
Growing in me

I like to pretend I don’t know it’s there
Like I don’t groom it with the highest of care
Then it taps me on the shoulder when I’m in my wardrobe
I remember that I miss the shape on your nose
I remember that I miss your t-shirt on my collar bones
That I like having you around
That I like your laugh sounds.

You’re good egg
And a tall tree
That I really like to climb

You’re a skinny bird
And strong boat
That I trust to float

You’re a glass of room temperature seltzer water
And a strawberry top.

But I think you’re the strawberry too.

I like how you let me fall for you slowly
You let me pretend you don’t know me
I’m satisfied with wondering if you think I’m gorgeous
And for now not knowing
And for later still wondering
And forever maybe you’ll tell me

But I never want to ask.

How do I quell these cravings?
When the longing flees from my mouth and ears
Just to linger in the back of my knees

When I can't get you out of my minds eye
When I wish I had known you longer
So you would still know me now

Should I have memorized your finger tips your hand prints your pink lips... more?
And should I have you touched you twice more at the door?
Then should I have wrapped my legs around your knees and not lay coyly atop the sheets like a cat also teasing your breath from your cheeks?

Should I have devoured your lips a hundredth time?
If I had would you be in my bed tonight?
Beckoning me
Eyes aglow as I parade myself around the room.
Like a horse at the races ready to make me croon.
Desires more than met when I lay on your chest?
You’d look at my mouth and feel pride
Knowing just what it’s like inside.

Or maybe no,
You would still be gone,
And I would still be better for it,
And the backs of my knees would still feel sweet
From the touches you chose to forfeit.

I don’t know,

Simple, simple, simple.

Divine. To not know.

That you that very extra part of who you are
That extra you
That refuses to be blue
That indulges in the new
That loves things examined and profuse
That darkness in your rhythm
That glory in your spine
That faded glow
Of mornings light
Living in the dusk of your smile
That raspberry bliss
That kiss on the lips
From these tips
The little pout of skin
On the rim of my digit
Is belightful
She’s a white stone
And a blue moon
A dark morado heart
And mint ice cream in her tones
She’s tralificent
Piercing eyes like a taradactal's call
Nose as knowing as the bill of a heron
She’s green corn
And green lights on Santa Monica Blvd
Cars passing before her on parade
Wizzing ever to her aid
She’s maple syrup
And pink Helvetica
16.7 or 32 pt font in bold
She's wistful
She's perfect
She's Buster Keaton
And Jessica Rabbit
She's Chicago in Paradise
She's Arnie's Vegan Pizza Palace
She's A to Z as many ways as you like
She is passion sizzling on a stick
She is upside down and inside out and abiding in her own bowl of Magic Soup

Recently, she’s baby blue, too
A color she’d never met that she never knew
A color she’d never thought she’d be
But now,
In this new season of weeping
Cerulean and turquoise go sweeping by
She’s heard blue in her ears caught this blissful mist swirling in the corners of her spies
And now here they are together in a dance in the ether
Both surrounding each other
Neither knowing either
Strangers to the danger that must surely lie within
But deep inside there does abide a spoon big as the moon to lap up the soup she's stewed and brewed since June.

A 47 foot tall marble woman resurrected by some teenagers trying a spell in the park
Shades of white with royal blue speckles
Lilting away into the day with 1000 pound foot steps and unstoppable knees
Leaving evergreen and fresh pine leaves
In her wake.
Spring up life where I touch down with these cool marble soles
Massive and made of ancient earth not knowing anything but what she must
Forsaking the flaws of humankind that would do her harm
be her fall
Paint her speckles
Cry wolf calls
Awareness found apart from that familiar shade of jade is what she seeks now clothed in freshly spun flesh

Been lost in the dichotomy of black and white
Of dark and light
Of wrong and right
But there is a shadow and a dim and a bright
There is a disaster and a mess and a slight
Colors and shades galore; eggshell, magenta and quite a bit more I could go on
But rather I’d tell you that

She’s skirts hoisted up crossing a river at dawn
She’s the soft pectoral muscle of a sweet mare in the hot summer sun
She’s a lineback dun
She’s creamed corn
She’s soft core **** but give it a slap, a thwack
A proper ****
Again
With feeling

She’s neon nightscapes
She’s every book she’s ever read
She’s scheming tree nuts finding the perfect spot to burrow into the soil nestled by nature’s urging to sprout a root and grow into a baby leaf creeping up towards the sky and downward further downward rooting deeper ever growing always breathing never being the same never changing in any way but in all the ways she must
A 1960’s average family man’s mid-life crisis convertible
Something turquoise
Fit for the kids and the wife and the ego and the front lawn and the grocer and a hightail down the coastline
She’s cinnamon and thyme
She’s spicy
On the back of her neck in the crook of her spine where the stardust that she’s made of meets for the millionth time
She’s a wave breaking in your mouth

She’s pouring boiling water into a lukewarm bath
She’s love

Salt water spewing levitating you but not for long if you don’t carry your own weight be dragged to sea always with me don’t get lost in my motion in my ocean in my Trojan horse my gift you mistook as something you could own

Simplicity
In all its forms is good.
Simplicity
Simplicity
Sim pliss ittee
Even divinity has nothing on it
For simple things are not simplicity
It is the conduits and the nuances and very pragmatic essence of things that are simplicity.
Divinity is better than to be divine
Simplicity is better than to be simple

Be in the dark, in the quiet feel yourself, only yourself around you, feel just one bit of your skin as it exists on you, and be clear. That simplicity is where you find rest.

Oh, divine.

My key fumbled with the lock
But you found me in that pause

Invited me to immerse my eye line
To indulge my gaze
To throw my glowing eyes into
The lavender sky
The silhouettes of the trees
The rooftops stretching out to Beverly

You waited until I was giddy
And craving your shoulder beneath my chin
To steal away into the night
Leaving welcome sweat on my skin

The length of your arm tracing the length of mine
And your perfume at my wrists

Where is boyhood lost I wonder
And why must the sweetness there get lost
Swimming in a masculine parade
Of shades of rage
Does he know at 9 years old
That somewhere between 10 and 11
He must pretend
He doesn’t want to be held?
Looks from elders who were shoved  
Tell him to be rough
To give up girly stuff
To get big and buff
To be quiet and tough
To call girls *****
To disdain getting cuffed
To maintain
an illusion he doesn’t need love
Sameness painted across generations
Taking its toll
While sleeping giants get old

So let him be soft
Whimsical
Effervescent
Delicate

What is it like to be a man, I don’t know.
Ask him.
Does he know?
Is it cramped?
cold and hard?
Is it full and bold and large.
I hope
I hope
It’s a bit of it all of it
I hope
Every angle gets explored
And every piece gets adored
And that boyhood softens
Rough knuckles

I lie awake at night
Plotting revenge
Im not sure I’ll ever take
I **** the meat juice from my finger
While I cook a messy spaghetti sauce
And miss kissing someone
I delete distractions from my phone
Only to watch hours of Hulu
And also to sit for hours in the woods
I respond to a text from a week ago
For whatever reason
The stamina now in my fingers to type
I think of my sister
And cover my room in crystal protection
I feel bad about myself
And remind myself
Not to feel bad about myself
I pet my kitten
And wonder how she likes this new home
She loves my mom
Which delights me to no end
I feel my heartbeat
Pulse in my toe
And wonder what’s going on
With my circulatcion

My  LavenderPlum princess  
Badder than 2007 Brittney
My velvet bustier
My leather string around the waist
My lips like honey  
My doe in the wood
My renaissance
My ****** milkmaid
My baby
Holy fear of goddess escaping from my lips
Dripping at your command
Soaking for your hips
My silly girl
My flame
My charmed and robust queen
My harlot my champion
My starlet my sapien

I took a bath
The other day
After looking at your Instagram
And seeing a photo of you on your birthday
You are wildly different now
Then you were when I last saw you

You were so sweet with a sleepy in your eye
And smile in mind
So confused when you asked “What?” “Why?”

Now honey you’re almost ugly in your darkness  
But the curve of your brow, the shape of your teeth, the beak in the center of your face
I’m still fond I’m still sweet on all of it
I still want you in my bath
But I guess I probably don’t want you, you
I want old young you and old young me
Sitting in my tub
Making bubbles
Playfully disrespecting each other
You were a bit of magic in my potion bottle
That never stops giving
I have no angst or pain associated with our parting
Because our meeting was so perfect
I wonder if you remember it too
Or maybe you blocked me out

Either way, you’re in my mind
Always laughing in the dark looking so ******* sublime.

Go into the dark to love on the pain that hides there,
But don't shine a light on that what hides,
It's not ready to be seen yet,
To scalp a pain of it's darkness before it’s ready for the light,
is like birthing a babe too young to leave the womb,
Harm done for impatience

Thank you for everything you ever did to me
Said to me
Thought of me
Thank you for the awakening
For the clash
Thank you for letting a famished lion drink
thank you for the visions
The melodrama
The in-tents-ity of my late youth
Could have never been such a tremendous explosion
With anyone but you

Have you ever fallen in love like a cookie dipping into milk?
The milk is thick and whole and fills the holes
Where anxiety used to tick
It makes you softer, makes you better, makes you wetter and sweeter still
The only catch
My cookies beware
Is that if you get undipped
You’ll find yourself now soggy silt
Fumbled across a paper towel
Leaking your beloved milk.

The more I let my future be
The more she looks like me

How generous in winter
The trees show us their bones
Each birds nest high up exposed

They show us their ridges and edges
Now barren of leaves and hedges
Show us the bony way they trend upward
Some perfectly straight
Others leaning to one side
Others with curves and dips
Some heavy yet with thousands of whisper thin branches at their ends
Others evergreen
Others choking on ivy that has also shed its dressing
Some revealing their seeds
Usually cloistered in green
Now touched by the wind
By the birds that peck

For a third of the year trees are dormant
Reminding one of a cheesy horror film
Of Halloween
Some so hunched, gnarly and comedic
Really showing their personalities
All brown and grey
Or black against the sky of a new day
Fuzzy outlines looking soft from far away
Up close so harsh and jagged
Some holding onto their dead leaves well into the winter
Their lower branches sheltered from the winds power to lay them bare
Shorter naked trees their protectors
Wooden bone after wooden bone
So comes the promise of springs revival
From the dead of winter

These barren bones seem to whisper
In the crackling wind
See me, see who I am, see who I will be, for life is me and death is me
I am a tree

Today in LA
It’s humid and gray
And the pigeons are flying low

The air feels like wind
From a laundromat

Sad like Valentines Day 2019 at Fed-Ex, boxing up my husbands things, Papa on the phone spouting fear in my ear, tear rolling unchecked down my cheek, my thumb penning a pragmatic bullet point list explaining 'leave you'.

There’s a cool breeze blowing
And I can already feel the relief
After the rain

The rain may not even come
Fickle LA weather teasing

But the sweet emotion
The unburdening
The wet eyes in the sky

Reminds me of home
Watching a rain storm pummel the pavement outside the garage
Walking up to my fathers back
Turned to face the storm
And I stood with him and felt
I felt held
I felt made of Stone
But one with the storm

Heady wholesome relief

Just a cool breeze is a enough to rustle through these memories.

He’s just a boy
Who likes his friends
And prioritizes his comforts
And that’s so lovely
I can go to bed early
And feel like myself

I don't need you
But you help me
And I help you
And I like having you around

But I don't need you
And then sometimes I don't want you

Can you be okay with that?

Can you just exist with me?

Does it have to be so connected all the time?

Why do I so badly never ever want to hurt your feelings?
Why do I think you're so fragile?

I still think you're lying,
And that you did cry
Silently on my back when I pushed you away from my thighs.

Why can't I believe you?
That you're not as fragile as that?

I just think you're quivering
And that without me you'd suffer
Anxiety attacks.

Is that selfish?
Is that narcissistic of me?
To think that you need me the way your face convinces me you do?

The way you cling to my hands
Though you've stopped doing that so much
I suppose.

You leave me alone now all the time,
And that's nice.

I'm thinking of my old lovers all the time
All the time they are on my mind
I think of texting them
Unblocking them
Looking them up on Linkedin
And I can't
Or I don't
What if I'm disappointed?
What if I would be inviting the wrong energy into myself?
What if they come and the magic is gone?
But all I want to do is smoke a ******* cigarette
On the water
While I get too tipsy off an aperol spritz
And a hot man looks at me and rubs my calf
While he thinks about how to get me into bed
Or better yet,
He already has me in his bed
And he still acts like he's working to get me there
I want to be touched
Tenderly and aggressively
I want to be lifted and throbbed
I want to feel hot, tequila breath on my neck
While a sweaty, hairy chest looms over my back
While a hard **** enters me
And one hand holds my throat and the other holds my hip
Holding me in place to **** me just right

But then the problems arise in my mind
The problems are as follows:
1) who would I select? an old lover? Probably not, they are in the past for a reason, and yet a new one I can't be sure of
2) what if the *** is bad? And I give myself some new trauma to overcome. The vessel of my newly healing ***** is so tender and I could easily disturb the climate of peace growing there, rip the tender shoots from their roots because I want so badly to get manhandled

Aren't these problems just fears?
And why shouldn't I be afraid?
After the three assaults of 2018-2019 *** wasn't the same anymore
It's less to do about the assault of 2009
But even as I type that
"2009"
I remember that I was just a sophomore in high school
The womanness in me barely beginning to grow
And those roots were brutally ripped out of the new soil
The new leaves on my sweet spring green branches
Were torn and smudged
And the soft velvet of my body was ripped
And new pollen was discarded

So of course 2009 also matters
And it's so shocking
2009 sounds like a time for babies to exist
Not a year for brutal assaults
But what can you do? Things happen as they happen.

Anyway.
After the assaults of 2018-2019
I went back to Tony
My stallion
My perfect ****
My daddy
My sweet long beach lover
And I left shaking
Unable to connect
Unable to **** or *** or play in the same way
I left reliving the rapes of the summer, fall and winter
And then no *** was the same
No *** was as free
And now I still have this overwhelming feeling
That the good years are gone
But that can't be true. I know it's not true.

My ***** just needs to heal
And it's hard to heal from ****
When I crave a good, sweaty **** down
And I am afraid to have it
Because what if I get triggered
And then I feel like a broken woman
Or what if I get triggered
And I say hey I'm triggered
And I don't beat myself up for getting triggered
And I don't get embarrassed and I don't cry
And it's okay
So many what-ifs

But I know I'm not broken
And anyway my goal in life is not to **** well
The measure of wholeness is not how well I ****
If I don't enjoy *** exactly right now
that is okay and is not a reflection of my wholeness
I am whole

And yet still
I want a ******* cigarette
and a spritz
and an espresso
and a hairy man with a big chest
wearing an open button down
who looks at me
like he'd like to ravish me any minute
and within all of that
I want never to think
never to worry
never to feel unsafe
or triggered
I want my brain to dissipate
but my brain doesn't feel safe
leaving me alone with my body
with my body where dangerous moments have left scars
and that is why I am trying to cultivate safety in my new garden

Safety in the body
Safety in the body
Safety in the body

and even better would be then to feel safety against someone else's body
safety with someone else inside my body
I feel so lame feeling scared
Feeling scared makes me feel weak
It's toxic I know
It's utterly toxic

But the point is that I am actually safe
I am utterly safe
And if I were to decided to find someone to ****
Right now
Either from my past
Or someone new
I would vet them
And then
The **** would be safe.

How did I do it back then?
At 5'2, inviting strange men to my HOME
Men all above 6'2 by the way
Muscular, fit, strong, healthy
Total strangers into my house and never ever feeling afraid
Knowing they were safe
And you know what
The ones who I knew were safe actually were always ******* safe
And if they showed me that they were less than safe
And I had my faculties in place
I left them
Or made them leave
I did.

I did my best to protect myself at every turn as best I could
And it still didn't work 100%
but I guess that's not true huh?
I could have valued my gut more
Said no earlier
Not had the shot that felt strange
Because I had many many shots
That felt great with safe men
Who wanted to have a good time
And we did have a good time
And everyone went home or to bed or to wherever happy
So it wasn't about the shot
It was about the feeling in my gut that didn't want it
And the women beside me who said go ahead
And the betrayal of my instincts.

And isn't this all just a part of the journey of life
as a woman re-learning to listen to herself
And listening to myself now
having said all this
I suppose it's fine that no man
Is laying in my bed hoping to impress me by playing guitar
Ready to lick me and squeeze me and touch me.

But I would still love a cigarette by the water
and an espresso
and a man bringing me a cool, strong drink
who wants to rub my feet
and **** me mindless
as the sun goes down
I want to forget my name
in someone else's arms
who also forgets their name
inside my perfect, precious, healed *****.

Where do I martyr myself?
I ask
And I come up blank
I listen to my mother talk to a potential marketing team
For her political campaign
Republican
And I find me there
The little martyr
Writing poetry in her Mother’s kitchen
An artistic soul
Poor artistic soul
Being so good
So humble and just
Looking so inward
Daring to challenge herself
Against the backdrop of oppression
Religion
Shame
Republicans
You see my mom doesn’t believe anyone is gay
And I am bisexual
She thinks parents should be involved in children’s education and schooling
And as a child she abused me with her conservative ideals and punishments
And yet
I love her anyway
Here is the martyr
The brave little progressive
Here I am
In this beautiful kitchen
Cooking breakfast from groceries
I didn’t pay for
In a house I don’t pay for
And yet I find myself feeling
Utterly self righteous
In my sensitivity
In my progressive ideals
Even in my forgiveness of her slights against me
Even as the so called forgiven slights stand up and wave their flags readily and say “remember me! remember me!”
Even as my records shout that it’s not safe to forgive
Because you see her personal views make me feel
Uncomfy
The martyr runs wild in the spaces
Where I forget my privilege
I’ve never known my privilege to be so great
As I know it to be now
And my level of privilege has not evolved or dipped or lifted a hair
But I’ve been given the opportunity to be aware
And I do believe I’m brave
But my martyr live on the extremes
My martyr lives in the narrative
Around my choices
In the narratives I fabricate around other peoples beliefs and behaviors and choices
The little martyr lays down and disappears
For now
I’m sure she will reappear and pick up her flag later today or tomorrow
When I try on a pair of pants
And marvel at the way I used to suffer so
Oh, how much I have overcome
To now enjoy my body and not hate every dimple and curve
I see that my martyr thrives not only
In the blindness to my privilege
But also in the agreement to recall suffering
It gets caught somewhere between
A decision to not suffer today
And a decision to always compare todays lack of suffering to the ways I have suffered in the past
Because agreeing to forget the suffering
Takes trust
Much much trust
That in forgetting I will not
Fall back into the familiar arms of suffering and abuse
But I think those days are past
I am brave and smart
And I know a good thing when I see it
No need to hit me over the head
Maybe the martyr dies a little more today
As I sign a new agreement to
Not suffer today and to also detach from past sufferings
With blowing breeze that tickles my back
On this late spring day
When all I need to do is enjoy

Youuuuu
are
justlikeastrongcupofcoffee
in the evening before bed
to keep you uh-wake
on a day where the afternoon was so divine
it sloshed into the night
and now you don't want to close your eyes
and miss whatever else
magic might
befall your nest
So instead of rest
youjackuponcoffee
withmilkandsugarandcream
that feels warm in your throat
that feels smooth on your teeth
and you walk up to the window
and feel nothing but content
to let your feet peruse the hardwood floor
or to sit in your favorite chair
your lower back relaxes
and the lighting compliments your hair