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.