Failings

furious pile
of laundry
mocking my
meager efforts
so what
I rocked as a mom today.
I say fuck you laundry.
I can do dishes tomorrow…

***

Read this.

Marriage Song

Uncertain.

I can’t make you.
I can’t save you.
I can’t see the boy you were.
I’ll never know the man you will become?

Because it’s not certain,

not in-sight.

Tired of being the bitch-wife, bitterly

you look at as mom.

Tired of “being” right and being told I’m “wrong”
Such a tired Wedding Song.

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.

Some Understanding

Why didn’t I trust her more? That’s what my mom asked me today. Shocked when I reveal I have PTSD. Angry that I won’t look at her, you can’t be perfect! Have I ever expressed any disappointment in you?

Even then I was tap dancing, doesn’t she get that? I so wanted to be the wonderful thing in her life. I wanted to make up for my dad and all his faults and abuses. I would be great. not only great, I’d be the best and it wouldn’t be for nothing. Do you understand that? It wouldn’t be for nothing if I was something.

Perfect people don’t get raped. Once raped, forever ruined, broken, busted, disgusting, damaged, broken, violated, pussy pussy pussy, did I mention broken? Why didn’t he insist I tell him? Why didn’t my dad DEMAND I tell him? Why didn’t he go out and defend me like he did my brother? Why didn’t he fucking realize my need? How that left me all alone?

Fuck you. I didn’t tell you fucking people because you’d never understand. No one can, so whats the point in talkin’…

See Me As You Were

You can pick one in this life.

You can pick one and have that one.

If something comes, if someone comes along, someone who is supposed to be yours, not your wife or husband, but YOURS, that’s different.
 
It’s hard for the one and for the one who receives the one.
 
How can you deny yourself me?
 
Shouldn’t you be SO proud I am yours, so proud someone so talented, smart, clever, loving is yours?
 
Shouldn’t that surrender feel like the biggest gift you could get?
 
You’ve tied my hands since.

We can’t talk about it, like what I need that you have given me and hold back from me now.

This is a death, over and over. I don’t know if I should walk away. I don’t want to. The list of things I want…
 
If I beg here, right here in public, Big Daddy, would you make it all better? Take me back? Tell me you love me and I’m your Baby Girl again?
 
Because I will. I will beg.
 
Please Daddy. Please. A million times please.
 
Know I do not want to replace your true love, know I don’t want to destroy all you have worked so hard for, know the two can exist.

We could have a healthy relationship of no consequence to your marriage.

You think you can just ignore this, that we can suffer thru with the chaste digital existence. That is not living. Denial.

Yes family is so important to you and I…mine…

Maybe you do see what I see or see me as never moving on and always demanding more.

This is not prayer, but a desperate plea that you see me as you were. 

You did love me.

Of Course

of course, he says
and I don’t ask if he means
of course I agree or
of course you’d believe that
and I think he expects me to ask
(and I suppose now I have)
but I don’t then
I don’t because I don’t need to
I know.

of course, I know.

Thrown Valve Moments

Oh the glorious moments after the children are bedded down. I settle myself in my evening safe space, laptop, blackberry, weed, bowl. Lighter. The pressure valve that’s thrown, the release of a big puff of air when you realize you survived another day. Another whole day of kids and husband and life. Disasters, holidays, happy days, homework time, random moments of a practically spiritual nature. And laughing. What else can you do but laugh a lot. That’s how you get them there, give kids roots and give them wings, as my friend Libby would say. I’m sorry I can’t give them more and I’m proud for what I give them. I agonize over every misstep, every fall back and broken expectation. Like fractured glass. Then, there are spelling tests. 96! And the LittleOne says “Mommy, can you scratch my back?” And you do and she throws her head back and says “Ahhhhhhh.” And you can’t believe it!

It’s worth it. For these thrown valve moments.

Bad Wings

When I was young and we lived on Marathon Ave, there was a devastating hurricane. I think it was Gloria. We taped the windows with brown packing tape. We had water in the bathtub. It was exciting and scary, especially when the winds started.

We had this porch off my brother’s room. It always seemed deadly to me, my mother having told us it was “falling over” to keep us from going out on it. I would remain in the dead center when we went out, thinking it would keep the porch balanced.

During the height of the storm, my dad went out on the porch in his tan trench coat. The shock of it, when he was standing in the door way, the coat resting and invisible, like the wind outside, then he steps into the air and the coat is the ripped-open star-of-the-show, sucked back and my dad’s hands rush to close the coat, stop them from being wings to fly him off the porch and the force of the wind throws him so easily, this bigger-than-life man and I am sure he is going to die.

The worry, the jolt of disaster, the surity, the I-told-you-so radiating from my mother’s petrified body, the naked death wish macho mess on the second floor porch of this wretched little family.

We lost power forever it seems, but I think it was a week. I remember the day the power came back on. I skipped down the path to my back yard because I would get to see Punky Brewster that night.

Cork and All

forsooth
flat tire hero
you roll me to zero
with pity, you find me
drunk
on crisis wine
denying its a sign

in the light
in the dark
a glowing mark
a franchise un-love-matched

crush me
like calcium
shell-lacked
cup
into fabulous plastic waste

squeeze out my taste

leave me withered and whence
you came, quiet and lame

surrendered the soul jar
cork and all—

***

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Back To Being Dead Behind the Eyes

I can barely muster the energy to continue this climb. How dramatic of me, right? I feel exceedingly tired, like I am carrying the largest of burdens and the saddest of futures is waiting on a bloody horizon of my own design.

Big Daddy always said I demanded rescue of him.

Is that a bad thing? I’ve been strong an awful long
time.