My body betrays me
The skin on my back mourns the absence of your lips
The memory of your scent haunts every inhale
But I am more than this body
This flesh
This heart
Love is not the conqueror you imagine Her to be
I have grown wise to the traps She would set
Because I am more than this body, I am vast
Sometimes what Love would have me surrender to
Is not sufficient to fill me
I refuse to ever go empty again for Her sake
you offer it to me grudgingly at times
like a shameful secret you hate to confess
other times you slip it in like a card trick
between mundane objects; a book,
a lampshade, a kiss
so quick i almost miss it
one time you snuck it into the palm of my hand
you wrapped my fingers around it
clasped my balled fist in your hands
as if you wanted to mold me to it
make it so i would never ask for it again
you guarded it so well
that sometimes i forgot it was there
i would think it some false memory
there were days when i would cry
begging you to share it with me for just a moment
but you would never show me where you hid it
sometimes you would deny it even existed at all
and i would curse myself for being such a fool
what a fool to believe you then
what a fool to believe you now
but time has either dimmed your talent for concealment
or i have learned to follow your sleight of hand
because these days i find it easily
i stumble upon it when i least expect it
when i’m in the office, or taking a walk
this morning when i woke
it was resting on my pillow
i have been carrying it with me the whole day
savoring it’s weight and texture
wondering why i never realized
it was always with me
We were not a traditional couple
Per se, but we both knew that a woman
Only shaves her head when her husband dies.
To do so while he is still alive can be…
Misconstrued.
You are not dead, were not dead that day
I came home, head shorn, those dirty blond
Bleached dreadlocks, gone, left behind
In some trashcan in some barber shop
In Roxbury.
One of those locks had been
Caressed by the man who asked
“Are you sure?”, before he made
That first cut. Yes,
I am sure.
And, yes, I completely understand
Your reaction, your anger, your disgust,
However I did not; do not wish you dead.
I had been carrying that hair for too long
It was suffocating.
I needed for my scalp to be bare,
Not just bald; exposed
To the sun, to the wind, to my
Lovers touch, to the cold hard
Concrete of the swimming pool
When I lean against the side,
Wet and breathless.
I need to have no barrier between me
And this world;
To be always
Naked.
I was told once by someone I loved that during biblical times
Women like me were stoned to death
And I am still trying to figure out if it’s because I want too much from life
Or because I don’t want the right things,
Or maybe it’s simply the fact that I want.
And by want, I don’t mean ‘I want’, like I want ice cream for desert,
I mean ‘I want’, like lava wants to bleed through earth crust
Pushing forth from the core with an urgency that cannot be ignored.
Sliding savagely over surfaces, swallowing everything in my path.
Perhaps when I was young I lay for too long naked in the sun
Her heat seducing me completely
As she bled her dreams into me
Until they burned like flames beneath my skin
So now it feels like I’m always on fire
With a need so deep I sometimes find it hard to breath
But there was a time I allowed myself to ignore this need
In the name of those who would claim to love me
It was in that darkness I learned that the devil has angels
I met them as they haunted my dreamscapes
Leaving trails of smoke in my cloudless sky.
When I woke I found myself standing on the edge of infinity
Staring into the abyss that once was my future
Those devil’s angels had wrapped me so tightly in their web of warped morality
I had forgotten who I wanted to be
To busy trying to be what others expected me to be
I choked on the smoke of my dying fire
Stumbled and fell over sacrificed dreams and desires
Desperately trying to please these angel-devil needs
When I would look to them for approval they would smile and say:
“Give us more”
So I turned myself inside out, laid my body down
Sacrificing soul and flesh
I looked over to them once more but again all they said was:
“Give us more”
So I proceeded to peel skin from flesh, flesh from bone
Until I was drowning in my own blood and tears
It was then that I realized I can no longer abort my dreams
To provide sustenance for the dreamless.
That all these years I had been lost in someone else’s fun house
Locked away in a room full of twisted mirrors
Running madly from my own deformed reflection
Because I could no longer see me
I had forgotten the time when I was a girl child
How I dreamed fresh and sweet
And I wanted to be wonder woman
Simply because it must be divine to spin like that
So now I claim control of what is mine
I own my dreams and my fears
My triumphs and my failures
I will not bend my will to some else’s morality
I buried my guilt and revived my desire
Redefined my sexuality
Recreated the face of divinity to suit me
And I will make no apologies to dead men or sainted women
I rediscovered the poetry that had always nurtured me
Slowly I reconstructed myself
Using words to map my way back to the forgotten.
Metaphor molded flesh back onto bone
The mirrors cracked and fell away
And I could see my cloudless sky once more
I stared up into that void of possibility
Where death and destiny lay entwined
I shouted up to them:
“I am free now! Can you see me?”