Graduation - Day Three Hundred forty-five

Graduation

The day is dangerous, all heat and intoxication.

It is as if we were never together, here

in the sun with our friend standing next to us,

all newness and arrival. We hug with the detail

of stars, arms gesturing towards each other

like clams. The night watchman tells me

I am disappearing, a piece of paper or lint.

This after a day of careful starvation, spending

much of it on the lawn. I am paper thin, a reed

out there in the distance, or a comet.

I am not quite lovely, filled with expectation.

Convenience - Day Three hundred forty-four

Convenience

My hands are tied to plastic bags. Yesterday, I placed my faith

under a glass and burned it into a photograph of itself. We are always being

tried, addresses checked, breasts lifted and undone. Please, ask me how

to love you, teach me to caress your back into a point. Roses glare and calm

over me, like a grave. They open like animals, small and contorted.
I will kiss their chins, leaning into them until my opening no longer

resembles itself. There is the awful afternoon ahead. I will know it

backwards and forwards, the reckoning of hours.

Where I'm headed - Day Three Hundred forty-three

Where I’m headed

I have a ticket to a consecration, an eleven hour mass that’s longer than any plastic

surgery. You are the second person to love me, the only one who’s seen down

the throat of my loneliness. I’d throw shame in there, plush as it is and ripe

for discussion, but I’ve undergone a hollowing out and am not too sure

what’s left. You can find me on the sofa tonight, watching TV. I prefer

to get things done than to feel anything, so after that I’ll be washing

the floor. Once that’s complete, I’ll be free to face you for an evening

of mutual distraction. Where I’m headed, there aren’t even stars.

Retreat - Day Three Hundred forty-two

Retreat

I told you my family had a special history

of drowning. My mother walked into the ocean

once. I am jealous of her past, the efficient

way she had of nearly getting what she wanted.

The dark will wait for us, a coffin and a tin.

Reconstruction isn’t beautiful, but it is necessary.

I have fallen in love with snow, a form of water.
All desire goes through hidden channels, like veins

to hold you up. Boundaries make my heart

pound and slow at intervals. At the kindness

retreat, I learned to set an intention.

Everyone I love I love already. In this motherless

year, barren and filled with instances of cold,

I will learn to unlove those who burden me,

will take what I know and apply it to how I might

free up some space in my left ventricle.

Cluster - Day Three Hundred forty-one

Cluster

My body is a plum, an advocate for spring.

I have been hurt, but not beyond repair.

A conversation with my doctor reveals

my health has not failed me. I glow in the office

chair, wrapped in light blue paper. Not that I feel

as happy as this might indicate, this scene

out of a snow globe or a magazine. This visit

is an exercise in tolerance, a way for me

to differentiate need from love. I sit

in the carols carved out for email use,

write someone I am pretty sure I adore.

How do we know when our fantasies

become futile, when pleasure mistakes

us. I am a boxed lunch, a little piece of cake

on its way to someone’s mouth. Never

will I die this way, in decadent truth.

The possibility of being broken lines

up to make me whole. All the cracks

I’ve undergone, my head and my heart.

There was an effort at mediation, an attempt

to restore. My family has become a tiny

cluster of champions, like blisters

or something more useful.

I was a memory victim - Day Three Hundred forty

I was a memory victim

Usually, I am in love with the magnolia, a devotee

of beauty. I was celibate once, had forgotten

the purpose of feeling up girls. Depression

is breathtakingly unerotic.  We are predisposed

to forget feeling. Pain runs from us like a train.

I am saddled to the past, and free from it.

Everything I need is in the vending

machine. It is difficult to have your dreams

wrapped in front of you, fantasy fodder for all

you might make of yourself. I am always in other

people’s hands, being passed around like a sweater

or a pair of gloves. There are rooms set aside

for this purpose, where girls go between

men. My imagination keeps me from the present.

I will pierce a hole in my longing, will tie myself

to the nearest tree. What you will make of me

in passing, how you will reach inside of me

like a puppet or a small child. 

A history of abuse - Day Three Hundred thirty-nine

A history of abuse

“It’s precious what we do for each other,” the memory

leader said. He was there to eke the truth out of us by opening

the heart chakras. Mine was plugged with devotion, he said,

the way I had of going about love. He told me I was needy

to the point of arrival, like being born again, that needy.

I asked him if the point of being felt up was to make you feel

better about yourself, and he nodded. I got a lot of fantasy

fodder that day, little porno movies I was making in my head

out of emotion. He told me to set an intention, to imagine

myself a piece of spaghetti in a bowl of spaghetti.

“What’s your purpose?” he asked, and I wasn’t sure

who I was supposed to be then. I’ve never failed to love,

only to be loved, I thought, sitting on the colored mats

that made it look like a child’s room. I told him I was intent

on publishing my memoir, on helping other people.

“Helping them do what?” he asked. “Act like buckets of need?”

I would have left the workshop but I was indebted

to a history of abuse. Debt is a strange word, like food

and mouth. Maybe I should have said beholden,

or maybe it doesn’t matter anymore.