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.

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.

Fireside

per tart

recipe I

propose over lemon

squares with basil and clear, green, steaming tea

a blink, or two

pondered my proposal and ate my sweet lemon treat.

then, a wondering if you would take to your lips the cup and signal

an agreement had indeed been reached, you stood

and walked away any way

I would not see you for two weeks

and a battle would hibernate until then.

Allergic

it doesn’t all have to be

squealing regimes

as the plates grind and move,

away the land

My Numb(er)

In group today, I didn’t get there early so seating was awkward. I hate having my back to someone. Finally, I asked to move and could see everyone.

I admitted my number, my weight. The reaction was harsh. Or not expected. You’d think it would have a soothing effect. I’m the worst. You know? But I felt more resented for calling it out.

The session flew and that made me sad. I like how safe I feel there.

 

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 Remains

The shootings in Connecticut leave me raw. She with the Blackish Brown Eyes is exactly 6. I can’t face that the parents dropped their kids off on a Friday and will now never see them alive again. It’s so unbearable. I have no reason more than others to hold on to that sadness, but it lingers. I pray and weep during the vigils and ceremonies.

I come in to work very upset about gun laws. Thus enters the man from Southie. He was a cop at one time; he has no problem with guns. As far as I know, he might still have one.

I know better than to start the discussion. Gun believers are the worst in their temerity, in my opinion. And peace is such a simple concept to understand, not so simple to achieve.

And yet, I do. I do start the discussion because earlier another father of two I know says he has a gun. Locked up, of course, rendering it totally useless in the case of a break-in. But his willingness just to possess one angers me. He does not hear my argument as logic. I back off and let go of the fight. The man from Southie, like always, gets my wrath.

I start to get angry when he insists on the freedom to bear arms. He won’t tell me why…why does he believe it? Why does he want to carry and keep what are only devices of death and destruction as an option for people in a society without proper care for their mentally ill? He becomes angry.

“I don’t have to justify myself to you.” And he walks away without giving me my answer. I decide to hate him. He has no reason, and I am right and now he is an instrument of death in my spoiled, little girl mind. I hate him because I’m scared and he has made himself a target, the poster child for the pro-gun movement.

He always takes the brunt of a woman’s anger, swallows it, turns it into something hard and hurtful inside his stomach, worrying himself into stomach ailments and sleep disorders. He can’t seem to apply his lackadaisical attitude in life to the female population, you can see how he craves love, routine, understanding.

I would worship him if he asked me. But that’s another story. So this is our relationship; I’m a little girl, he is the father yearning for his daughter. How we sip each others empty and digest what we need from it.

We aren’t talking. He is in his cube and I in mine. Three cubes from him, someone starts banging on the shelf over their computer. She is choking. I laugh at the ruckus at first, thinking its just typical acting out. Then frantic tones mumble thru my ear phones. I do the Alex P. Keaton chair slide to look; our coworker is not breathing. And the man from Southie is performing the Heimlich on the choking woman. He is perfectly calm and willing to try to save her life, regardless of if he can’t, regardless of a what a huge failure it would be if he COULDN’T save her.

That’s what he does, he steps up. That’s how he is a man. that’s how he is a DOMINANT man. And that is how he is Boston…

School House Rules

There got to be a

rhythm to these things in life. don’t you think? Times when what you feel is lucid, but obscure.

you fall from height to hit soft pillow

you climb a mountain to pursue a valley

there is no fear, know this and packs on backs on the way to the next clear thing.

Nevermind, what was the last clear thing…

mothers milk with crocodile

orange rind mind smile

set the table, braid the bread

or maybe just go instead.

possibly henchmen

smell elephant

on a rotating spit of unlit hickory pit,

I said not it. no room for fools.

that dont know school house rules.

You Are So Expressive

Is the point really in all this talking?
This question in demon times
to scarlet sun baths.
 
She asks:

how long haven’t I talked about it?
I mumble,
what’s the relevance
of
this
question
when the words are gushing from all directions?
Palm cramming and finger diking fails
 
there is no end and I say it’s all been said before.
Is the point really in all this talking?
 
Yak your words and grab someone else’s.
You take mine and it babbled,
you, an ear to a shell
catching ocean words seductive and desert words dehydrating
 
my way of saying:
Cant there be any way,
the newest say of my ways?
Understand me?
 
But still leave. Or still grieve, or still kill.  And still tear asunder.
And reason!
What about logic and reason,
their neighborhood here
with block party assertions
within grammatical nations.
 
You objectify my tale
and straighten to my wail.
You can seek to set me free
to fix my sad and lonely
where I’m home and sorry.
 
Lets go down in shame flames,
causing explosions and rains.
Press this broken heart under
unrequited language cider.
Exercise my foolish word fish
 
You are so expressive,
she said and tho expensive,
the words mean nothing
to her
unanswered question.

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’…