I am broken glass
I am shattered porcelain and beer bottles I emptied into my belly
On every night like this
Loving me is wading through a beach littered with my broken parts
Because everyone that broke me never wanted to clean up their mess they made
I am moldy laundry and stink in my clothes
I am staying in bed for days
I am purging what I ate, because I do not love me enough to feel full
I am so angry, my whole body shakes
I am hating you so much that I want to tear out of my own skin for every time I think of you
I am Hiroshima
I am boiling
My blood is boiling in me
I am a time bomb
I am a hurricane
I am phlegm and blood coming out of my throat
I am a fucking wasp
I am losing my shit
I am losing my mind
I am losing
I am losing it
I am losing you
I am losing it
I am done.
Thursday, November 28, 2013
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Open Letter To My Boss
Please, do not yell at me.
I know I didn't do my job right this time,
Just like last time.
I know, I'm not cut out for this job.
Please, do not yell at me.
I work tirelessly
For five nights a week
Until my bones are weak and
My muscles fight in protest.
I go home when the Sun is rising
With my body defeated.
I work with all kinds of people.
With mommas, trying to feed their babies,
With convicts and criminals
With old men and baby- faced men
With immigrants who don't speak a lick of English
With a woman with a Bachelor's degree in business
With people who I have never heard speak
With people whose laugh I recognize from across the factory
With liars
With Christians
With Atheists
With brothers
With sisters
With Choctaws
With people whose language I cannot even recognize
I do not know what it is to reap the benefits of arduous labour.
I am not a rolled- up sleeve working- class hero.
I am a writer.
I cannot take apart a machine and put it back together.
But I can take apart e.e. cummings' work and figure out what he meant.
I cannot back a million- dollar industry with my hands,
But I can write a soliloquy made of no complete sentences
And make a million people relate to it.
I am not made of elbow- grease and the sweat of my brow.
I am made of staying up all night just to write poetry.
I am not made of oil- stained hands or black grit under my nails.
I am made of ink stains on my hands and smudges on paper.
I am made of 4am Spoken Words
Made of writing poems in the dark about my lover while he's sleeping
Made of haikus
Made of coffee stains on the poem I wrote about it
Made of a thousand words on any situation
Made of seventeen syllables on my worst days
Made of The Pen Is Mightier Than The Sword
Made of collections by Plath
Made of crying at anything by Jeanann Verlee
I do not know what it is to take pride in my job,
But I know exactly what it is to take pride in my work. -xx
I know I didn't do my job right this time,
Just like last time.
I know, I'm not cut out for this job.
Please, do not yell at me.
I work tirelessly
For five nights a week
Until my bones are weak and
My muscles fight in protest.
I go home when the Sun is rising
With my body defeated.
I work with all kinds of people.
With mommas, trying to feed their babies,
With convicts and criminals
With old men and baby- faced men
With immigrants who don't speak a lick of English
With a woman with a Bachelor's degree in business
With people who I have never heard speak
With people whose laugh I recognize from across the factory
With liars
With Christians
With Atheists
With brothers
With sisters
With Choctaws
With people whose language I cannot even recognize
I do not know what it is to reap the benefits of arduous labour.
I am not a rolled- up sleeve working- class hero.
I am a writer.
I cannot take apart a machine and put it back together.
But I can take apart e.e. cummings' work and figure out what he meant.
I cannot back a million- dollar industry with my hands,
But I can write a soliloquy made of no complete sentences
And make a million people relate to it.
I am not made of elbow- grease and the sweat of my brow.
I am made of staying up all night just to write poetry.
I am not made of oil- stained hands or black grit under my nails.
I am made of ink stains on my hands and smudges on paper.
I am made of 4am Spoken Words
Made of writing poems in the dark about my lover while he's sleeping
Made of haikus
Made of coffee stains on the poem I wrote about it
Made of a thousand words on any situation
Made of seventeen syllables on my worst days
Made of The Pen Is Mightier Than The Sword
Made of collections by Plath
Made of crying at anything by Jeanann Verlee
I do not know what it is to take pride in my job,
But I know exactly what it is to take pride in my work. -xx
Saturday, November 16, 2013
November
This time, last year,
I cut my hair very short
after wearing it long.
It was down to the middle of my back,
but on my nineteenth birthday,
I became very depressed
and cut it into a short boy- style.
I took my cut- off hair,
and threw it outside,
off the porch of the house I shared with my two friends.
My best friend at the time,
a sweet Choctaw boy from McCurtain County
said I shouldn't have thrown the hair outside,
because Choctaw legend says cut hair left outside,
will attract bad spirits to find me
and give me bad luck.
You came into my Life about the time I cut my hair
This time, last year, with my hair cut short,
and my foolish Heart on my sleeve.
I cut my hair very short
after wearing it long.
It was down to the middle of my back,
but on my nineteenth birthday,
I became very depressed
and cut it into a short boy- style.
I took my cut- off hair,
and threw it outside,
off the porch of the house I shared with my two friends.
My best friend at the time,
a sweet Choctaw boy from McCurtain County
said I shouldn't have thrown the hair outside,
because Choctaw legend says cut hair left outside,
will attract bad spirits to find me
and give me bad luck.
You came into my Life about the time I cut my hair
This time, last year, with my hair cut short,
and my foolish Heart on my sleeve.
I Exist
But I'm not completely there
Like the entity of blackness inside and empty tree- without concreteness
I am the hollow blackness
Like the entity of blackness inside and empty tree- without concreteness
I am the hollow blackness
Monday, November 11, 2013
My Definition of Love
Fall is rolling in, and I am reminded, again, that I am damned to end up with a man like my father.
A man, cold to the touch, with a soft mouth and blunt words.
His body would be solid and warm and calloused.
His body is train tracks that lead to me.
He will strike me with his meanness,
and I will stay.
Because my definition of love is learning to keep still when he yells at you.
Don't move a muscle.
Don't flinch.
You made this happen.
Don't ever fall in love with a man with beautiful eyes.
They're going to see right through you.
My definition of love is constantly searching- striving to be enough.
Always competing with the ex.
Always competing with the pretty girl with beautiful hair.
My definition of love is feeling perfect when he says "You're beautiful."
It is disregarding that look he gave the girl in skinny jeans at the store,
because right now- right in this moment-
he thinks you're beautiful.
My definition of love is stripping for him when he asks you to.
You both got into a fight because he refused to talk to you, but you're a good girlfriend, so you take off your clothes for him.
My definition of love is disregarding your feelings to make his okay.
It is hours of being on the phone, screaming internally I'M NOT OKAY, but keeping quiet, as he tells you I DON'T WANT TO TALK.
My definition of love is wanting to swallow your mother's sleeping pills after the fight you lost because you couldn't leave him.
And then waking up in the morning to his sweet, calloused hands cupping your face.
You were made for this.
Sunday, November 10, 2013
Cry Wolf
You spit your spell on me
And now I cannot run
When I tried,
You chased me down
Now I'm captive to your love
You howl your songs at me like a wolf,
Strewing your words at me like rocks to the sea
And if I try to go,
You will miss me
If I try to run,
You will chase me
You dig your claws into my Heart
You sink your teeth into my skin
You cling to me,
Until I suffocate
Under your fur
Under your weight
Under your love
You're the Cry Wolf
I'm a captive to your love
And I don't mind
And now I cannot run
When I tried,
You chased me down
Now I'm captive to your love
You howl your songs at me like a wolf,
Strewing your words at me like rocks to the sea
And if I try to go,
You will miss me
If I try to run,
You will chase me
You dig your claws into my Heart
You sink your teeth into my skin
You cling to me,
Until I suffocate
Under your fur
Under your weight
Under your love
You're the Cry Wolf
I'm a captive to your love
And I don't mind
Friday, November 8, 2013
The Aftermath of Calling a Girl "Ugly"
When I was a kid, I got bullied a lot. I think it started in second or third grade. I had glasses and crooked teeth and a mole on my chin. It started, at first, with just having glasses. As I got older, my face matured. Then kids in my class found more things to talk about, like my skin or my nose or my lips. I refused to cut my hair anymore after Grade Four, so that I could hide my face.
This is me in Grade Five:
I was small. I weighed sixty lb. forever. I had dimples and spidery hands and brown hair that grew all the way down my tiny spine. Everytime I see this picture, it infuriates me.
When this picture was taken, I was ten years old and thought I was ugly. I look at this picture now and I see that I was not ugly. I only felt ugly, because I was told to feel that way by kids who picked on me and made me miserable. I was ten years old.
High School came and so did puberty... Err, for most girls. I was thirteen and freshfaced. At age fourteen, I was plagued by acne. My mother, horrified her beautiful baby was struck by nature, spent a ridiculous amount of money on moisturizers and masks and creams and ointment and facewash. None of it ever helped much. At fifteen, other girls had developed breasts and were kissing boys- I was a defeated and plagued Punk in a little girl's body with with braces and bad self- esteem and torn combat boots. I responded to the bullying mostly with a bold face and a quiet acceptance of their insults as the truth on the inside. No one outside of my family had ever told me I was beautiful. Boys didn't look at me. I was pretty much invisible to most everyone, except my abusers.
At sixteen, I had my first real boyfriend. Let me tell you something: After someone has been told for nearly their whole Life that they have never been and never will be beautiful, trying to convince them otherwise is going to be a battle you will fight for the rest of your Life. He was seventeen, tall, sculpted, with long, blond hair and teeth like ivory. I was small, fragile, with stained teeth and bad skin. He was everything I wanted, because he was everything I was not. His laugh was thunder, and he smiled, big. I never smiled without covering my mouth with my hand. And forget about laughing out loud. I was trained not to do that in front of anyone.
Letting him love me was a lesson on taking everything I was taught and unlearning it. It was fights of him brushing the hair from my face just so he could look me in the eye to tell me I was beautiful. It was going into public with him and watching him carefully to see if he looked at girls. It was hours spent on looking at his girl friends and his exes and comparing myself to them, by every strand of my hair. It was nights spent staying up, looking for some confirmation of my suspicion that maybe he loves someone prettier, not because I didn't trust him, but because I did not believe I was ever worthy of being the only one in anyone's Life because of my face or my shoesize or my brasize or my skin. Because I didn't know I would ever know love without a catch or a punchline- some sick joke that was being sent up for me for months.
To this day, I cannot let myself believe anyone who tells me I'm beautiful. I can't just accept a compliment. I have to read into everything, every detail someone says to me, looking for the punchline. Waiting for the snicker. To this day, when the love of my Life, my best friend, brushes the hair from my face, he kisses me from my forehead down my nose down my chin, over both of my cheeks, I still will not believe him when he tells me he loves all my imperfections. He kisses me, hard, and I still do not believe him when he calls me cute. To this day, I hate it when anyone calls me pretty. Partly because of the simple fact that I have done nothing to achieve being pretty. Partly because I do not genuinely believe anybody who says it. Partly because when I walk into a room with men leering at me, I know they are not thinking "She must be a fantastic poet," or "She must have worked so hard to be where she is now," or "She must have big plans to change the World."
If you're out there and somehow this relates to you, let me tell you this: You are beautiful. Not because of your genetic makeup and your phenotypes and your haircut and your clothes. No. You are beautiful because you made it this far. Something in you pushed you along and you survived the kids at School and you're still here. You are breathing, organic, miraculous greatness that's going to make the World a good place. Let somebody love you just as you are, as ugly as you sometimes feel. And if you still feel ugly, I will kiss your forehead and keep rooting for you.
-xx
This is me in Grade Five:
I was small. I weighed sixty lb. forever. I had dimples and spidery hands and brown hair that grew all the way down my tiny spine. Everytime I see this picture, it infuriates me.
When this picture was taken, I was ten years old and thought I was ugly. I look at this picture now and I see that I was not ugly. I only felt ugly, because I was told to feel that way by kids who picked on me and made me miserable. I was ten years old.
High School came and so did puberty... Err, for most girls. I was thirteen and freshfaced. At age fourteen, I was plagued by acne. My mother, horrified her beautiful baby was struck by nature, spent a ridiculous amount of money on moisturizers and masks and creams and ointment and facewash. None of it ever helped much. At fifteen, other girls had developed breasts and were kissing boys- I was a defeated and plagued Punk in a little girl's body with with braces and bad self- esteem and torn combat boots. I responded to the bullying mostly with a bold face and a quiet acceptance of their insults as the truth on the inside. No one outside of my family had ever told me I was beautiful. Boys didn't look at me. I was pretty much invisible to most everyone, except my abusers.
At sixteen, I had my first real boyfriend. Let me tell you something: After someone has been told for nearly their whole Life that they have never been and never will be beautiful, trying to convince them otherwise is going to be a battle you will fight for the rest of your Life. He was seventeen, tall, sculpted, with long, blond hair and teeth like ivory. I was small, fragile, with stained teeth and bad skin. He was everything I wanted, because he was everything I was not. His laugh was thunder, and he smiled, big. I never smiled without covering my mouth with my hand. And forget about laughing out loud. I was trained not to do that in front of anyone.
Letting him love me was a lesson on taking everything I was taught and unlearning it. It was fights of him brushing the hair from my face just so he could look me in the eye to tell me I was beautiful. It was going into public with him and watching him carefully to see if he looked at girls. It was hours spent on looking at his girl friends and his exes and comparing myself to them, by every strand of my hair. It was nights spent staying up, looking for some confirmation of my suspicion that maybe he loves someone prettier, not because I didn't trust him, but because I did not believe I was ever worthy of being the only one in anyone's Life because of my face or my shoesize or my brasize or my skin. Because I didn't know I would ever know love without a catch or a punchline- some sick joke that was being sent up for me for months.
To this day, I cannot let myself believe anyone who tells me I'm beautiful. I can't just accept a compliment. I have to read into everything, every detail someone says to me, looking for the punchline. Waiting for the snicker. To this day, when the love of my Life, my best friend, brushes the hair from my face, he kisses me from my forehead down my nose down my chin, over both of my cheeks, I still will not believe him when he tells me he loves all my imperfections. He kisses me, hard, and I still do not believe him when he calls me cute. To this day, I hate it when anyone calls me pretty. Partly because of the simple fact that I have done nothing to achieve being pretty. Partly because I do not genuinely believe anybody who says it. Partly because when I walk into a room with men leering at me, I know they are not thinking "She must be a fantastic poet," or "She must have worked so hard to be where she is now," or "She must have big plans to change the World."
If you're out there and somehow this relates to you, let me tell you this: You are beautiful. Not because of your genetic makeup and your phenotypes and your haircut and your clothes. No. You are beautiful because you made it this far. Something in you pushed you along and you survived the kids at School and you're still here. You are breathing, organic, miraculous greatness that's going to make the World a good place. Let somebody love you just as you are, as ugly as you sometimes feel. And if you still feel ugly, I will kiss your forehead and keep rooting for you.
-xx
Friday, September 6, 2013
The Waiting...
One month...
It has been one month, and I have not seen my Period.
Can't be pregnant. Can't get pregnant.
Wait, is that it?
Nope. No, that's not it.
It's only been a month. I once didn't get my Period for over three months back in 2012.
I don't mind that it hasn't showed up yet. It's just the anticipation.
But I know better than to force it. I'm a firm believer in listening to my body. My body is smart. My body knows what's good for it. My body is smart enough to know when it's time for my Period to start and end.
I press my fingertips to my lower abdomen. Could there be a baby in there?
It feels pretty squishy. No baby in there. Just my organs. My procrastinating organs. Stagnating. Functioning. Functioning properly.
I haven't been getting adequate sleep much. Maybe my body just doesn't know what time it is- or even what time of the day it is.
I put both my hands below my navel. What are you doing, Uterus? Why are you so shy? Don't you know how important you are? I am a Woman. You're are the reason I am a Woman. If you do not work in me, what am I?
Must be patient. My body has been good to me. My body will not fail me if I treat my body with kindness.
Although this waiting can become tedious.
I'd like to start soon. I have been especially hormonal lately. I do not like this. Most of my emotions have consisted of depression or irrational anger. I am terribly sorry to those who have had to tolerate me in the last several days.
Pheromones emitted from women who are already menstruating can jumpstart the hormones of other women. When women are around each other for enough time, their cycles begin to sync. Perhaps I should spend more time with my lady friends who are on their periods.
But what a strange thing to inquire.
"Hey, are you having your period right now? Can I come over and stand really close to you?"
I don't know that I even have lady friends who I'm that close to.
So, I wait.
Womanhood. You can be so bittersweet.
It has been one month, and I have not seen my Period.
Can't be pregnant. Can't get pregnant.
Wait, is that it?
Nope. No, that's not it.
It's only been a month. I once didn't get my Period for over three months back in 2012.
I don't mind that it hasn't showed up yet. It's just the anticipation.
But I know better than to force it. I'm a firm believer in listening to my body. My body is smart. My body knows what's good for it. My body is smart enough to know when it's time for my Period to start and end.
I press my fingertips to my lower abdomen. Could there be a baby in there?
It feels pretty squishy. No baby in there. Just my organs. My procrastinating organs. Stagnating. Functioning. Functioning properly.
I haven't been getting adequate sleep much. Maybe my body just doesn't know what time it is- or even what time of the day it is.
I put both my hands below my navel. What are you doing, Uterus? Why are you so shy? Don't you know how important you are? I am a Woman. You're are the reason I am a Woman. If you do not work in me, what am I?
Must be patient. My body has been good to me. My body will not fail me if I treat my body with kindness.
Although this waiting can become tedious.
I'd like to start soon. I have been especially hormonal lately. I do not like this. Most of my emotions have consisted of depression or irrational anger. I am terribly sorry to those who have had to tolerate me in the last several days.
Pheromones emitted from women who are already menstruating can jumpstart the hormones of other women. When women are around each other for enough time, their cycles begin to sync. Perhaps I should spend more time with my lady friends who are on their periods.
But what a strange thing to inquire.
"Hey, are you having your period right now? Can I come over and stand really close to you?"
I don't know that I even have lady friends who I'm that close to.
So, I wait.
Womanhood. You can be so bittersweet.
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