So what if I want to call?

What would happen,
if the gazelle chased the lion?
wanting so badly to be devoured
prey running into predator
tumbling, falling, failing

Hyenas in the tall grass
snicker, cackle, whine
circle round
nip at edges
bite the legs, belly, breasts
make short work
of the heart and soul

lions love the hunt
the chase
obliterates insecurities
the rush
fills the stomach
the pride
before
the fall

Flying towards the death star

There is this moment in the conversation when you realize that everything has shifted. Its like that moment in Star Wars when Luke first says he has a bad feeling about flying towards the death star for the first time. I mean why wouldn't he have a bad feeling when on the run from TheEmpire and being sucked towards a mysterious space station that's right in the neighborhood the now missing planet he was running too. 

So I was in the middle of that moment, except that I was chatting with a man I'd met on Ok Cupid. You see I'd met this man the night after we'd had a roughly four to six hour conversation. That included at least two hours of phone sex. I bet you didn't know you could have phone sex for two hours. We met in Claremont over a flavorless Italian meal. I thought he was too short, too pedantic, and lacking in any of the charisma he'd had over the phone the previous evening. I think he found me high strung, needy, and high maintenance. But I didn't ask him. At the end of the date he declared that he felt that we had more of friend vibe and I agreed. No harm done, I went home and didn't give it much thought. A few days later, we were texting back and forth which quickly progressed to a phone call, which led to another round of extremely hot phone sex. Phone sex that left me so spent and yet so turned on and so lonely that I would have fucked nearly anyone. I hate that feeling. Its a lot like flying towards the death star. You know its a bad idea but you can't help it, you are sucked in a tractor beam and you can't escape.

 We didn't really chat again for few days, but when we did it was two lines of text before we were on the phone and he was whispering degrading things in my ear and we were off to the races. I didn't get to sleep till 2:00 am. And if that wasn't enough we continued by text throughout the next day. It nearly curled my therapists hair when I let her read them. Now my therapist is a tall beautiful black woman but I swear she blushed when she read that this man thought it was sexy when I was stupid, so sexy in fact that he wanted to put his cock in my empty head. Oh yeah, I let my therapist read my sex messages.

 You seem I am  in therapy because I have difficulty forming meaningful, safe, healthy relationships with men. She couldn't understand how this kind of objectification and degradation could possibly turn me on. Couldn't I see that this person didn't care about me? But the problem is when you get off on being objectified, on being used, abused, humiliated, and degraded; it can be difficult to see that you are being used. After all, what other people call abuse I call affection. You see its like that  moment in Star Wars, when you thought the Death Star was a small moon. 

So I was chatting with this man, when I mentioned that our phone sex was having some unintended emotional consequences and that it left me in need of a little comfort. He revealed that he was not in a place to comfort me. It should be noted that this place had nothing to do with his physical location. Nope, it was that he was unable to be emotionally comforting to the woman he was mentally fucking the night before. And it was in that moment that flying towards a small moon became flying towards the death star. 

pushing

I’ve laid down in a dozen beds

Felt arms around me

Rested my head

Lied down and been lied to

Tied up and skinned alive

Had my heart eaten by masters and dilettantes alike

I could bury my head

In the hair on your chest

Lie in your arms

Look for truth

but I’d never find it

not there

the physical is fickle

it rises and falls

ebbs and flows

pushes in and out

rises and swells

before it lets go

a torrent of lies.

Forgiveness

I just wanted to tell you that I know there were times when I was shitty to

you, and I'm really sorry.

No need to respond, I just wanted you to know that I know.  I hope you're

doing well.

Because I am a masochist

I read your flaccid apology

over and over again

hoping to imbue it with substance.

empty and hollow,

a facsimile of feigned regret.

Its three sentences

form a thin body

that lies,

sans the details of contrition

wan upon the page.

Nevertheless, I forgive you. 

Bread and Butter

He used to butter my bread.
But now I take my toast dry.

Excavating fear

What drove you?
Was it the fear
that you would never be enough
for your mother?
If I excavate the ruins,
will I find her
blonde face
in the dust of your despair?
The ruins of our failure.

My own fear
that I was never enough for my father
haunts me
stands like a shadow at the door
a monster under the bed
roots me to the floor
paralyzed
I should change the sheets,
but cannot turn the page.

our fears so deeply buried
lines of code
like DNA
they spell out
run
run
run

Medical Release

It was an artifact I never thought to find
amongst the unpaid medical bills, foreclosure notices, junk mail.
In the debris of my life,
I found your signature
small and tight at the bottom of the page
certifying that you would keep me safe.

Elizabeth  never warned me that the stages of grief could last so long

she never said that one little paper could inflict so many cuts

could the doctors and nurses have known,
the brevity of your promise.
how already you were plotting to rid yourself
of the troublesome woman, the mischievous girl
this walking hospital bed and her insecurity blankets
that covered you with love and smothered you in fear.


I can't be the first woman in history to pine over a broken love
and I certainly won't be the last, this is just grief looking for acceptance.