Recognize

I recognized the very breath of you today.

Your base essence~soul perfume.

And I pressed my cheek to yours and

recognized your beard on my face, and how it

bows down to my skin, and somehow

embraces me into the warmth of your shoulder that

I now recognize as mine.

God, I love you.

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.

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.

The Forever People

Gentle
legerity
I am taken with yours
your square peg fits my odd-shaped soul
blessed.

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.

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.

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.

You Wont Be Rescued From Your Own Denial

You are scowling.
I say you are not happy.
You get angry and argue the point.
You say most people are just getting by.
I get angry and argue the point.
I say “okay, are you happy?”
You say you are happy.
You are scowling.