The Angry Queen

Snow is falling but it melts on my skin. I sizzle. I steam.

I am hot, I am boiling, I am volcanic.

I can feel myself glowing within - not that earthchild warm moon glow; violent sun surface glow, angry vengeful goddess glow, cracking beneath my skin, magma roiling and twisting in thick clumps of liquid stone and heat.

How do I sit here in my pale-wall cubicle with my feet on the chair and coffee in my mug and hide this explosive woman under my surface. How do they not see me burning and flowing?

Phones ring. Keyboards are attacked, the tic-tacking flicking and clicking nails running up my spine.

I want to flee, I want to be a creature. I am not fully human right now. I am churning with memories and sensation and feelings and so, so much heat. Broken hearts and anger and longing and bitterness melting through my veins and I absorb it all and it builds my walls up higher and thicker.

Once I cool there will be nothing but hard hard black stone around me.

I am a goddess of heat and then coldness. I flare and I burn and then I am hard, hard, and dark again. I still myself and try to control the turmoil within. I want to cool and solidify. I want to be cold. I want to be Diana in the woods. The wolf in the forest. Slashing and snapping with my nails and my teeth and my bow, hot and cold, ivory.

I am not comfortable in this real world. I am not made for things like heartache and 401(k)s and old women named Elaine.

I am unspoken words and fast actions. I am predator smelling, hunting, killing, seeking, being, moving, moving, moving against hard dry cold earth and surrounded by hard dry cold walls of black stone.

I'm burning with heat and kinetic frenzy but I sit shivering, fevered.

Are there others like me, moon people, earth people, who feel this? Who shake and vibrate in a world they don't belong to?

I miss my moon person. I was hot sun to his coldness. I fucking hate him. He burned that bridge and I would have let him chill me until I froze and died and disappeared in an igneous sarcophagus. I hate that I know that. Knowing how weak I am sets me on fire and I want to burn into him, reignite the bridge that's nothing but ash. I miss being miserable with him, that undeserving beast. What kind of disaster is that? The queen wolf and the cunning fox, we are not a match, but I sit here with coils of flame and ice within me missing him and his empty words and empty lies and empty face and I want to reach out and be burned just to feel it again.

Snow is falling outside and as I calm, it will fall within, and I will be impenetrable again.

I welcome the coldness.

10-31 Self-fulfilling prophesy

Is it
a self-fulfilling prophesy
that I knew
or thought I knew
or just told myself
or believed, at least
that I am a one-love girl
and I went into the world
looking for that one love
and when my body sang
and my soul connected
and my heart jumped
I knew I was right
in my heart
in my believing
in this one love.

And now
I go back into the world
looking again for one love
when I know
when i believe
in my heart
I found it
but it
did not one-love me.

so how do I go on
looking for this love
that I've been promised
by the movies and the books
and the aunts at holiday dinner
and the friends
who say, you deserve this
(and don't I deserve it?)
(don't I work hard?)
(don't I try to be kind?)
(at least try)?

when I already know
or at least think I know
it's an empty search.
and my tables and chairs
will be cold wood
and I will sit on the porch
with a cat on my lap
and a mug of tea
and sweaters that are gradually eaten by moths
and I will be content.

and i think?
that is okay to me now.

10-30 Dream State

I dreamed about you last night, Dorian.

I dreamed you did all the things you said you would. You traveled the world. You had a strong group of friends. You wrote and explored and bettered yourself as a person.

And I was proud of you.

I watched you grow from a distance, and I was proud that you had finally found your way. I wanted to be a part of it, but I wasn't, and that was okay.

When I woke, I missed you, briefly. I missed that dream person. The one you pretended to be, and had finally become.

I lay in the haze and fuzz of early morning and the memory of the dream faded away to reality.

I remembered how you spoke sharply to me. How no matter what I did, you seemed on-edge. How I became afraid to say anything, or to not say anything, because no matter what I did, to you it was wrong that I was speaking or not speaking, telling or not telling. I couldn't even touch you without some complaint on your part. I touched your face wrong, I stroked your back incorrectly.

How you carried this anger and jealousy inside you and I felt it vibrating like the tines of tuning fork, and how it made my body vibrate and my blood shake and my nerves a tightly wound ball of energy worry and fear.

How you told her how angry and cruel and mad I was, and then came home and crawled into my arms and told me it was the only place you belonged.

What do I miss? There's so little left for me. I was reluctant to give it up for so long, but now I shut my brain down when it starts to chew on your memories. The good ones are gone. The ones in the very beginning, when you were chasing me, when it was fun for you. That was long ago, and they're fading. They've been replaced.

I like that I can say the words on my mind. I like this breathing kind of love. Not love yet, no, far too soon, but the hint of it is there. A suggestion of possibility.

I want a love where I can relax. Where words can flow freely and my blood can move comfortably. I like this level of space. I can orbit, touch base, return to my own movement, and he seems to do the same. I like two lives and two people interacting gently.

I like that he apologizes when he's upset me.

I like that he cares when he's upset me.

10-26

There's a swaying inside me, beneath my flesh and under the ribs where the blood flows hottest. An internal compass tugs me in different directions; I sense my needle spinning and my head waves a bit with vertigo.

To admit I was wrong has been an endeavor. I can admit I am wrong, sometimes. I am wrong about a lot of things. I am wrong about people on occasion. It happens. I want to look beneath and see the goodness, and I let myself be blinded to the rest.

I was wrong about Dorian. That's the truth. It's still so confusing. His face pops up now and again - in my phone, secret photos I saved so I could look at him I now scroll back and delete as the pit of my stomach turns. That smiling face hid so much. It seems so earnest and true, but, as I erase it forever, I must admit that I was misled. A flush of memory and he's next to me, and I'm happy and in love and anxious and foolish and angry, that vortex of emotions he always evoked.

I read texts I saved and everything goes cold again. He was cold to me. He was cruel and selfish. It's so frustrating to think of the potential. I want to shake him and remind him how it was, when he was good to me and I was happy. How could he not see that could have been our Always?

But it's past that. I've said my angry words, I've reacted to his coldness, I've been dealing with his betrayal and coming to terms with how much of what I thought I loved was falseness. He has carried those lies to another; it's no longer my concern that he lies, that he's fickle and faithless and constantly wandering in his fear and self-hatred. He made his choices and I choose not to be discarded and picked back up by someone who would toss me aside.

The new one, that blooming potential love, frightens me. I have to make myself stop, feel the compass spin, and admit it. I'm frightened to be betrayed again. I'm scared to love. I found my One Love, my Big Love, but I was wrong, somehow. My body and my heart betrayed me too, thinking to give themselves to Dorian. My entire existence is at war with what I thought I knew and what I felt and what could be.

Don't they say the best love of your life comes after the biggest mistake?

I stop and I'm scared I'm just being optimistic. Will I let myself be blinded again? He speaks in the slightest way defensively and my guard goes up, recognizing Dorian. What is he hiding, what lies, what manipulations?

He explains, he apologizes. He comforts and compliments. I want to warm to the words but I pull the Tower for him when I ask the world, and I'm frightened to let my walls crumble. What will be the end result? Will my cracked and broken foundations provide the bricks and mortar to rebuild strong, or will I be left devastated once more?

I tell him take it slow, and he does. I have to trust myself and let myself trust another.

Time

They say Time Heals All Wounds but I don't feel the wounds inside me healing. I don't feel new skin growing over the gaps you left, flesh knitting together, tendon rebuilding with thin elastic, bone hardening over with rocky uneven marks to indicate where I once was destroyed. 

Time Fades All Wounds, I think. If you live with a pain long enough, you grow accustomed to it. Your pain threshold changes. Your normal adjusts. 

I'm adjusting. I'm moving around the hole inside me full of distrust and betrayal as if it's not there. 

But I can feel it, grasping, wanting to swallow me. I am shoveling care and gentleness into a never-ending pit, frantic to fill it. I kick dirt over a cavern hoping no one will notice it's there. 

How do I let someone else fill it when you left it so empty?

I'm scared he'll see this emptiness. Not because it will frighten him, but because he could use it against me. I'm on the defensive. I'm angry you did that to me. 

He reacts in the slightest way defensively and my radar screams, run. 

You did that to me. 

I do not want to stand here and try to shield this wound. I want to show him and I want him to tell me it's okay, that he'll stand beside me while I fill it. He'll scoop with the shovel, he'll patch with gauze and ointments. He'll make it go away however it takes. 

But I'm scared, and you did that to me. 

10-24

Moving into the next stage with leaps and bounds.

I have faith in myself. My wings will carry me.

New life. New chances. Leaving the past behind me.

It feels great.

These Men Say

These men they say

    Just trust me

They touch their ears
   Their chins
   Frantic tics
Fingers that fly up
   Denying the words
Or lending them strength?

     Stroking coarse hair on their jaw
Or grooming their eyebrows with the pad of a thumb

   Legs kick
           Involuntarily
    Toes bounce
Within brown loafers with leather tassels
     I think are ugly

That flutter
That telltale rhythm

    I'm not like the others

These men say.
   As their brown eyes melt
   Into a hundred pairs
   A thousand
Blue and green and silver and earnest
    As they preach this gospel

This anthem.

    And we sit.
   Unbelievers.

But we sit in silence.

We are hoping to be proved
   That there is truth
That they are different
    That they are not like the others
       That we can give in

To these wild bright fantasies
    Car rides in the summer
And lasagna dinners on wooden tables
  Warm hands at night
This fantasy where words are what they mean
 
   Where truth is truth.
   And we gain wisdom from each broken love affair
Not bitterness.
   Not coldness or hardness.
      Not that edge to our eyes
         Not that subtle clenching of the jaw
We disguise with a smile
We're prettier when we smile
    So we smile tightly and we pluck
At split ends, at sweater fibers, at the napkin on the restaurant table.
   While his fingers are floating to his face
A face we want to love
   To trust
       To believe
To be different
    From every other face
That sat across from us and spilled lies
              Or truth?

But it is our odyssey to
    decipher
It is our journey
     to learn.

And we sit
    With fake smiles and tight stomachs

   While they are outraged
Or hurt
    Or sad
Or wounded or gentle or disgusted

That we don't drink these words we have heard a hundred, a thousand times,
 
      without worry that we are being slowly poisoned.

10-19 Freedom

I'm finding the freedom in my life. I'm making choices and standing by myself.

I'm playing the romantic, the optimist. I'm letting his words be truth. I'm shutting down the quiet voice in my head that wonders when, and how, he will betray me.

The words don't send quivers in my gut. His truths feel true. My internal compass doesn't twang and spin out of junction with what he says.

Time will tell.

I am ready to move to the next phase.

I am ready to wake up happy and excited. To go back to taking joy in everything. Little things that fill me with bubbles of happiness, like making coffee in the morning, putting gas in the car. A comfortable bed, animals on me. Books on the table. A small plant in the window. I never thought I would have these things and I will never not enjoy how much I have now.

It's time for the next step.

It's time to be strong and brave. To choose a life I want. To make my decisions with a voice that doesn't quake.

I'm ready to stretch forward. To take on more, to trust myself. To trust another. I play out fantasies in my head, in my new space, with a new man, with a new job, and they vibrate between beauty and terror until I halt myself and shake the shadows out.

I will try, and trying is good enough. I will grow, and growing slowly is good enough. I am scared, I am excited, I am elated.

I am ready.

10-17

The door is closed, capturing body heat and the pervasive odor of weed which strikes me as we step back inside and discretely - as discrete as we can be, walking through the center of a small room - make our way back to the table.

There's a strange tenseness in the room, a tight sense of connectivity that I rarely find. It's an interwoven intensity, people knitted together, healing like shattered tendons and bone, sending out hard calcified spurs to draw their pieces together.

I cannot see the speakers well from my angle, but I can see the room, and I am always more interested in watching the room anyway. Tables are full, the bar is full and everyone along the rail sits in the same half-turned position, elbows akimbo awkwardly behind them. From my location they appear almost interlocked. Vertebrae in a spine colored with plaid flannel, bowties, and flesh.

Some of them nod when the speaker unleashes their strongest words, some clap, some snap, and I feel a little silly, like I am sitting in on a scene that is not for me. I've stumbled into the 1960's and I am not socially responsible enough to join, not passionate enough, not loud enough, not creative enough, not unsure enough, or too sure, maybe.

But these strangers who sit at the same angle, their very bodies speak of connection, and I know I am not unwelcome with my cotton candy hair and quiet observations, because these are people who, in every piece of themselves from their skeleton to their tongue, want to connect to others. It's a vibrant room of grasping connection.

They give and take with words, with snaps and head nods, and their bodies encourage and support, fall quiet when words are strong, fall quiet when words are weak, and I feel their silent respect for the weak words because there's something to appreciate in anyone who stands before a room and drops words from their mouth that pull you into their mind. Neurons are flaring all around me, flashes of information transfer. He is sad. She is sad. She is angry. He is angry.

We sit and absorb the chemicals around us, taking in these strangers and becoming them. I become them and, strangely, I feel an urge to give them some of myself in return. I wonder if that's selfish, to hear their words and to want to return with my own. It's interruption, it's my overexcitement, it's a lesson I'm still learning - when to not speak.

But we are oozing into one another, and I feel that my voice might be welcomed. Appreciated for its own quiet strength. Me too, we say. We are all hurt, we have all been touched or hit or leered at or broken with words and now we take our own words and we rebuild ourselves. We are cells in a body that smells like marijuana and onion rings and unwashed hair. We are a teeming hive of organisms, a biome of sadness and suffering and rage that charges the air around us as our silent electric signals chase from one to another and we forget whose suffering is whose and whose anger is whose because we are all sad, we are all angry, we are all fighting the same fight.

The woman behind the bar has a beautiful face, thick thighs and dreadlocks, unassuming blondes with curled hair, there are men wandering who look homeless with their long beards but stand behind the microphone and capture the crowd, there are thin girls in lace dresses and dark-skinned men with newsboy caps and glasses, then there is me with my cotton-candy unicorn hair. We are all the same person. We are pulsing and surging as one and I forget to feel autonomous as I get swept up in the flow.

10-16

I woke up fresh and dehydrated from alcohol and chicken wings that burned my lips, already chapped from stress and chewing on them nervously, they're red and tender.

It's like a fever broke. I'm tired, my head hurts, but god, I feel good. I am almost Me again.

I cried again last night but it wasn't because I missed Dorian. It feels so good not to miss him. It's a feeling I thought I'd never reach, but here I am, and all I feel is a vague disgust and contempt. I'm still angry, I still lash, but it's not because I want to hear him come back. I no longer want to settle for hard words because they're words. I am not scrambling for his worthless meaningless scraps.

How does that feel, Dorian? Knowing I don't want you. You invite me over, you fickle faithless lover, and I have no compulsion to go to you. No hesitation, no memories of your hands on my body temping me. Only disgust.

But you're her problem now. She'll learn, as we all did. I wonder how she'll feel toward me, when she realizes I bled for her and wanted to warn her. She ignored it, you ignore her, and frankly, I could not care less anymore if you two spiral down and break. I hope you do.

I cried because listening to my friend speak my truth back to me both hurt and healed. It's strange to hear yourself from another perspective. To have someone you trust tell another, she has been wounded, she has been struggling, but it is good to see her growing strong again.

It's strange sometimes to know people See me and Know me and Understand me. I am so, so lucky that I have people around me who care to Understand me. That stood by me while I dragged myself and struggled for months, and who rejoice to see me standing again.

Their pride and their patience seeps into me and makes me warm and unworthy. I want to hurry forward and be myself again, so I can be strong and helpful and not have to lean, lean, on everyone. To regain control of my mouth so I do not push and snap at people who do not deserve it. I was patient and warm once too, I was calm and sensitive.

I've been broken since I met you but you took no pieces with you, and I am rebuilding. I will be more vibrant, stronger, and less inclined to fall for a fool child's bullshit.

I'm not there yet, but I'm close, and I'm so, so ready to be done with you and your mind games and the childish contempt and attitude you always seem to draw me into.

You made choices. You'll go on in life to blame others always, to excuse yourself, but you're rotten at the core, you're spoiled meat and a portrait in the attic and the Devil with a kind face.

You love, or loved me. That's the truth you'll have to accept one day. Go seek me in others, go break their shells open and sort through their yolk and leave them sticky and broken on the ground. You'll never find me and you'll never have me again. You chose that. You're the worst of all fools, trying to escape loving me. I have others who know that I am someone to love with pride and care, not fear, not distrust. You shut the door on us and I think one day you'll be hammering to come back in.

While I used wish I could watch you break down, I don't think I care anymore. You've captured yourself in your own web, and I won't be looking behind to watch you slowly desiccate.

And god, that feels so good.

10-15 Early Hot Mornings

I'm rolling in heat

Hot blankets and warm skin

Humid air through the crack

Between the window and the sill

Leaving beads of atmosphere

Over my naked skin

Mingling with salted wet pores

Saliva from your tongue

Melts into the moisture

In the curve of my neck

In the skin on my thighs

There are pools in the deep curve

Of my spine and hips

Sticky warmth under my breasts

Catches your moving fingers

Arresting them

A blessing/ a mercy/ a curse

To my burning liquid form.

To The Men Who Love Me

To The Men Who Love Me

Do not come to me
With half-formed ideas
Of love and romance
And trust and honesty.

Do not lay your hopes before me
Misshaped balls of clay
Pressed into what you assume
Is some semblance of what love is
Or could be
Or looks like.
Maybe.

Do not ride my wake
While crying out
That I move too fast
I am too hard to follow
My waters are too rough
As you dip under.

Do not come to me
Thinking I will calm my nature
To meet your needs
To help you grow
To show you things
To take your hand and walk you
Through this lovely world
And stop to point out
The names and leaves
And stars
And colors
And tell you
How to trust and love
How to take me honestly
How to follow me
Or lead
Or be peaceful where you stand.

I am not here to teach
I am not the one
Who holds your shaking hand
And makes it still
Who takes your childish
Uncertain thoughts
And gives them substance.

I am the fast waters
I am the bright sun
I am sharp grass
I am lessons learned
I am not your soft tutor
I am not here to give
My time
To you
To help you grow.

Men who would love me:
Love me strong
And fearlessly
And take some care
Because being strong
Does not mean being hard
Walk beside me
Walk behind
Walk afore
You are a man
And I do not care where you walk
I care where I stand
In relation.

Men who love me:
Challenge me
Give me words that are
Fierce
And kind
And full of depth
And meaning
And honesty
I will glow bright
With my own light
And that light
Will shine on you
I will grow and bloom
Beside you
And you will grow and bloom
Beside me
And neither one of us
Need feed
Off the other.

10-13

My limbs are limp. There's a loosening between my shoulders.

I'm not sure how to take it. It's a nice feeling. It's an awareness of my body I'm unused to sensing. Something has been unwound. Pieces within me, tight and sharp, that barbed wire in my spine, are relaxing.

I think it might be nice to be touched.

I don't recoil at the idea. I think maybe I would not shy away from hands right now.

Maybe this is me moving on.

I ask my cards if I'll ever recover and they say no. In no uncertain terms.

It's disappointing but not surprising. I loved once. I always knew I would be a woman who only loves once.

I would have preferred to be a woman who never loved.

I ask if I'll love again and it's not optimistic.

But there will be others. I'll let him touch me. There will be more. I'll let them put their hands between my scapula bones and stroke and release the tension there, let them touch my jaw and my hair but not my neck because the memory of hard hands on my neck will always linger.

It may not be the wild, strange, angry overwhelming love I felt before, but I think that will be better. I would like a love that does not burn me out, lighter fluid on coals, a flash, a flare, a violence that leaves me cold and empty.

I remember how loving him made my lungs tight and my body tense with panic and anxiety and so much angry love I didn't know what to do with it so it solidified within me, and I do not miss that. I am loose now. I can bend and adjust and move, and I can form my body around another. I was ice, I was bronze, I was cement, and now I am fluid like a slow-moving river, muddied but determined.

Time heals wounds but so does willingness, and I want to heal. I want to flow on and drown that poison love in my current.

10-12

I can't sleep again. I'm becoming that inhuman person who is always tired but can never rest, the ones people worry about. People are worrying about me lately. I don't know how to say I'm just soul-sick and a few good nights asleep would help, a few days of nothingness would cure me.

I take four pills and hope for the best, quietly wondering, in that distant it-won't-really-but-what-if that constantly lives in my brain, if they'll kill me. I wonder what they'd say on finding my body.

A youngish insomniac with a foul mouth was found dead this morning, lying in a pool of her own dark roots and multi-colored hair. A preliminary search of her computer found an excessive amount of half-finished novels, photos of her pets, and an uncompleted brewery tour itinerary. Her employer called her "quiet," in fact too quiet, perhaps even anti-social, as he stressed the importance of networking. Her close friends and acquaintances say she was frequently in an exhaustion haze and canceled plans often. One lone sex toy and an unused condom were found close to the scene. No foul play is suspected.

The pills do the trick and I sleep (I do not die - or perhaps this is my purgatory, continuing on to go into work in the mornings, continuing to write with uninspired determination, continuing to find a mixture of neutrality and annoyance and contentment with my existence). I can't wake myself up however, and I find Dorian in my mind.

I think he's been lurking again because it's her turn to hurt. You left your mess for us to clean up, Dorian. She has picked me up and sorted through my trash, and though I still cringe and my stomach clenches because she makes it real, it's her chance to come to me. I have to fight my instinct to plug my ears and wish it all away, because I am a creature of fairness. It's her turn to heal and I have to try harder to help even if it makes me feel sick and dizzy. How selfish you are, walking away from the melted fractured messes you make of good women. How lucky that good women want to reach out and help others. You choose only the highest quality of hearts to break.

You're there in my dream and your friends are speaking for you. Forgive him. He's sorry.

They don't know what all you've done, and I scream it at them, in high notes, but it's a dream so my voice is strong and does not break and I do not cry, but I tell them what you did, and they're horrified (they deserved to know the truth). But they say, look at him, look how sorry he is.

I know it's a dream because you are sorry. I've never seen you sorry before. It's always been my fault to you. My madness, my anger, my unjustified discontentment, you've pushed them away from you and handed the burden back to me. But in my dream your face is red and anguished and there are tears on your cheeks. I thought I was forgetting your face, but my memory has the details down, and I'm disgusted that I've missed that face.

You're sorry and so I let you follow me, I let you kiss me like you mean it, and because it's a dream, I forgive you and we can start over.

But because it's my mind, and the truth is buried in there, it becomes real again. You hide things from me, you pull away. You kiss me to make me forget that something is wrong. You blame me. I dream of cutting hot peppers that burn my hands while you sit at my grandmother's kitchen table, twitchy and angry, and tell me I just need to trust you, while your lies are strewn all over my grandmother's linoleum floor and spill out of your phone and your mouth and your eyes and my fingers are on fire.

In my dream I leave and come back again, leave and come back again, and I'm reliving the living nightmare of how you broke me slowly but surely.

I wake lonely and cold and drugged.

There are white teeth and warm smiles waiting for me. There are patient hands and gentle words. Arms that want to wrap around me, but give me my space, because you destroyed me, and I need to be fair. To myself, to love.

I swim in and out of the medicated state, desperate to wake up, determined to leave your face behind me in the unconscious where it will lie forgotten until the next night I'm unlucky enough to be haunted and wounded all over again.

10-11

It's strange to feel myself coming back and realize how far gone I've been.

A veil has lifted. The fog is clearing. I look around and realize the damage I've done to my life while I was walking through the haze, and it's time to set about cleaning the mess.

I am sharp and smart again. I am present. I am passionate. I feel guilt for the relationships I've let falter, for the chaos I've let build up, but I will take care of it.

I do the things that make me happy. That make me feel present. I mix scented oils in a cup until they make me close my eyes and smile. I walk the night with my little shadow girl, who has noticed my return, I think, and can't get enough of me, can't let me out of her sight, can't sleep close enough at night. It's nice to know I've been missed.

I do yoga because I'm tired of drinking away my stress, and my body is lax as I lay on clean sheets, and I make myself present and notice I am relaxed. I am not sad, I just am. It's a brick in the wall, a step forward. Growth.

Around me I have relationships to repair, but I've built them strong, and they'll survive this. I have new ones to build, ones that frighten me, but I am a wild creature and I trust myself to stand and fight for them. Are they worth fighting for?

The doubt is what angers me. The doubt he put in me I now use to punish others.

I won't live a life where I can't grow and trust because of one heart error. I won't punish others for his sins, where is the fairness in that? I am a creature of fairness. I am a strong ever-moving creature. I will tidy this, I will rebuild, I will regain.

I sleep and dream of sharks in the water, but I will not let them take me under.

10-3 Soothing Rituals

I can settle my mind by thinking of all the things I have learned.

I calm my breathing. I relax the muscles in my chest and abdomen, clenched tight and smothering me.

I think back to who I was when I was a skinny, nervous child. My grandmother showing me how to press dough into the flour on the table while I pretended, half-heartedly, to watch.

I was not a girl who would Do Things. I scoffed at doing things.

When my grandmother died, I lost those things. So much fell away with her. Things she had tried to pass onto me, and I had scoffed. I lost that connection to her. I had lost my chance.

They made fun of me for the way I cut apples, but I persisted. I made crumble and crisps. I leaned painstakingly over the counters and I sliced through the resistant skins. The finished products looked ridiculous, but people ate them. In the back of my throat and nose I could sense her there with me when I did these things. When I tried to cross the bridge I had neglected. When I cook now, aptly and always swallowed with happiness, I still feel her.

I think of when I was smaller and the basement smelled like wood and laundry, and my father would work with tools I didn't know the names of, but, as an adult, I still recognized. He would let me hammer scrap wood together with nails sometimes.

When the wood burns or the dust floats in the air, I remember the few times my father was patient with me, and when he gave me freedom to experiment. The haphazard items I would make with splintered pieces of wood, mere hints of tables and sorry mimics of shelves. The duck decoys in the basement that scared and fascinated me. The forbidden enjoyment of being allowed in his shop (accompanied). The delicious way the wood smells.

When my fingers move over the fabric, I think of how my mother used to make things, and the whirring of her machine.

I took pride in being the girl who Does Not Do Stuff for so long, but it bubbled up in me. I make things now and I connect to my past. I am capable. I am brave. I feel them behind me, ghosts and memories, and I feel supported.

When I am scared, I close my eyes and think of all the things I have learned this year - things I taught myself. If I have done so much so quickly, what can't I do?

10-2

Sometimes I feel I am playing a game with myself.

Children look at flash cards. Children watch television and recite words and lean too close over their mothers to stare at pages and follow her slim finger on the lines.

I am playing a game, too, to learn. To learn who I am.

I knew once, but he made me forget. I have been fuzzy and hazy in my mind. I am coming back into focus, but I am not the same, I don't think. Similar, but changed. I have not yet discovered if I have been made softer or harsher by this experience. I do not know what is different, only that something is new.

She builds walls, my friend is explaining to another. I like the way she talks back and forth of personal things between us. She is explaining us to one another, building a connection so we don't have to, and it's strange and exciting to hear about myself (though I am not so certain I want to be known as the woman who builds walls). She's explaining my struggles. She's telling her friend how I let my walls fall for him, and got swept away in the flood. I feel bad for myself, hearing that. I feel sad for the guarded girl who let her walls drop and got burned.

But she is not me anymore.

I paddle through the water, going farther than I have before. Why not? Who is waiting for me? Who can stop me? My shoulder blades shake with the effort, but I want to be strong again. There are birds everywhere - gulls and ducks of a variety of colors, passing through as they move to warmer climes. An eerie heron and swans I avoid warily (but they avoid me too), and even a eagle that makes multiple failed attempts to snatch fish from the water and retreats to sulk in the branches of a pine.

I am a girl who wants to know the names of the ducks.

I make a note in my mind. This is who I am. I cross-check, reference. Not new. That is who I was.

I pull up the kayak in the still areas where weeds have retarded the flow of water and grown into their own swamp. Duckweed layered on top hosts fast-moving bugs, and feathers in a multitude of colors and sizes and shapes from the migrating birds have caught up in between the delicate round pieces. I pull them from the water and save them. I will use them for something, or they will dry up and float away. I scan through my head. Not new.

A part of me feels strangely observed in this ritual. Somewhere along the lines I started to weigh my actions against what he would think. I pull the feathers from the water because I want to, but I wonder what he would think of it. I can't keep track of what is mine, anymore. I have to rediscover.

There's no one here, there's no one watching me watch the reeling birds and stir the stagnant ecosystem with the edge of my nails, so I assume that must be who I am. I feel a little contrived. Am I trying too hard to be this girl?

I remember it does not matter. I examine my motives, and they're for me alone. I do not care if someone sees me, I do not care what he would think, or another. No one is here; I am doing this for me. I can be a stereotype so long as that's who I truly am.

Squinting at words on the page, learning them. I have to become reacquainted with myself, and apparently that means I must question everything.

I make choices and I feel brave, even when they are small, because they're mine again.