Seventeen

It hasn’t been the same since they changed therapy rooms. She hasn’t been able to be anonymous and obsessively poet doodle, short tight bunches of truncated prose, ugly word combinations uttered in her head as the energy from the room swirls and colors and dissipates. She is afraid that she says too much. She is afraid she doesn’t say enough. She realizes talking is granting help just as much as listening. She makes the ugly brave request to talk about the abuse. To try to actively get to that part of the gigantic sore in the innards of her mind.

Do they always say innards? Never outards?

The week she asks for this discussion she leaves group shakily optimistic and somewhat regretful. While driving someone honks at someone and she is now in an aggressive driving situation. And that settles it. She has asked for trouble. She is now under attack. You see, he even controls the cogs of the universe, weaving the very loom of the fabric of fate itself.

Don’t tell, he knows, he knows. He keeps his promises.

He even finds a way to affect her lover’s behavior. She cleans up other messes too. She is the master of cleaning up messes, of walking on eggshells, even tap dancing on them. But the bad things keep multiplying and threatening to topple all her safe towers.

She is aware she shouldn’t need towers. But now, all her stuff is here.

A reprieve is granted and she gets another week to avoid the talk, avoid her own bringing on of pain, she has scraped herself till her ions are charged and magnetic, bringing the bad with her every attempt to be safe in a world she feels can only be UNSAFE, dragging around floating space garbage-like woe.

***.

The talk goes worse than she ever thinks it could go. The expected number when thinking about HIM, but an unexpected number for her lover.

This cannot be so and she is angry. She is not still a victim she is wrong and she is angry and the woman is wrong and group is wrong.

She thinks she can tell her lover, to prove them wrong. That his reaction would not be the angry unsure reaction of an abuser. She doesn’t think this man is an abuser. He is the abuser. She means was, she thinks to herself.

Unlucky seventeen.

The Death of Me

there is

no poetry

like real

life

This Is Why We Say Good-Bye

Im not teasing. Im frustrated. Its hard for me tolerate so much negativity and self pity. Im sorry but thats just the person I am. Im sorry youre having a rough life. I cant help much.

Desensitizing

I will not miss you
of winsome wine and velvet
roses will be planted
ivy intertwined

I wrap myself in books
’cause others
may look like me
wilting epiphanies

I cultivated her
purple pointed, lingering green
she was seen dancing
at the tree line in the sun

there comes a time
for concentration or distillation
in my cups, my ground
a drop on my tongue

home-brew
I’ll watch for you

Rule Fucker

I miss him and his body.
I only saw pictures. I only saw words. I only heard voice
of everyday prattle. Design
but so divine, so MINE.
The rules always fuck me.
One time, they will protect me.
Farcical fantasy,
man for me,
destiny.
The builder has been deconstructed.

No end to those who can live without me,
lonely little fuck rule
squeals me. Build me…

I want to say
what to the men who seem to know me…
Don’t desert me,
bereft please be
due to lack of me.

Something essential: fuck me or leave me.

Wish He Would Too

I guess because I can’t say no. Is that why? my mouth is always full and my eyes always dry…is that why I cry? Why I can’t see the top of a hill from the lowest dark little valley. Is that why I feel it’s so hard to be me? Why I can’t stop medicating my pain, why I can’t sit with it a while, get used to its sting? Because I’m a nicer mom, when I’m sober and a smarter wife and maybe even a better person so I wish I’d stop filling my mouth and my body. And I wish he would too.

Triadic Self

i find myself here again. and fault myself for that.
i know i gone and fucked up again. i fall and all. i crash.
i am aiming for the bottom when I go back to the top.
and start again.
old habits. old friends.
my flaws, like rabbits
darting behind solid objects. i lack progress.
its obvious and true. without starting again.
i disgust my next false start. again and again.
doom. till. death? get busy living and making decisions
accruing debt and getting wet. confront the month
on each bloody turn. get it right. get it now.
is this the same lonely rock in the same puddly spot light?
possibly under a romantic lampost prostrate on a lumpish dias?
my victim doll cutie lips
non-protecting bystander lint dervish silent pretty girl
abuser i am monument to pain verbally sensitive
controlling none

i’m willing to pay for relief

Inaccessible Diagnosis

She makes me a promise
she knows I need. She knows
I won’t hold her to it
if it’s not meant to be.
 
There, a dancing in the place
where we are dilapidated falling down
houses of a ghosted neighborhood.
In a deserted thicket of forest
 
we run and get out of breath
as we chase each other and play
with our skirts bunched up and scrunched
by childish fingers gripping convention.
 
She knows how I get there.
She knows how I came.
She knows how to get there
and how to remain.
 
In comfy grass, heat bug symphony
notes tickle her nose.
I will join her with clean
feet and leave her dirty.
 
Buried there, by our roots
a treasure of two.
A measure, a brew of all
that is true.

Regularity

Normal Joe, I love you so
precisely for the dirty reasons,
the uncomfortable reasons like
your sometimes sad and sometimes
simple existence, I want it with you
and is that because its simple, it may
have started like that but, please
Plain Joe, you have to know it’s because
I love you too, because there. See that?
It’s my soul and it sings to attract you
like a fluttery winged bird.

The Nothing

There is nothing.
I can even appeal to logic
experience
reality.
I can point out the obvious
and dress up the truth.
I can cajole, act aloof, bring
the bitch out.
 
He still loves me
and wont be baited.
He wont be rushed to come to
my foregone conclusions.
He wont jump from outcrop to outcrop with me
but shouts from the top of his tower,
 
the tower I describe,
embrace,
draw attention to with sticky, outstretched fingers.
It’s all there.
It’s all there except the true name.
 
You allude,
I imply.
You exude.
I reply,
like a good girl should.
So
why don’t you
be the man
(to me)
I know you are…?
 
There IS nothing.
This is true.
I just didn’t know nothing included you.