and I would still
slip between his fingers.
The truth is I’ve been slipping
since the day a man
put his hands on me—
when I was too young
and hadn’t yet found the joy
in keeping still
and now love feels
like just a wriggle-away
like a game of hide and seek
like the cat and mouse pursuit
of a girl who likes to be chased
much more than she likes
to be caught.
COLD
It was like standing
in front of the moon
like you would the sun
and expecting it to
warm you.
SPRAY PAINT
It is not love
to graffiti yourself on men
who are like brick walls,
to throw yourself
like paint at their cold
hard chests trying
to make art,
to fingerprint
on the walls
of a house
that will never
feel like home.
That is not love.
That is vandalism.
TEARS
I think I’m crying
for all the men
who can’t—
it seems the only way I can explain it
how they can look at me
with eyes as hollow and dry
as empty cups
while I pour
neither glasses
half full
nor empty.
MIGRATE
Like a migrating bird leaves
when there is no fruit left
on the tree
I’ll go where it’s warm.
I won’t stay
to die with you.
CONDIMENTS
His rummaging through me
is not gentle.
No matter how carefully
he turns things over—
it is an invasion
I say
to force your way through doors
I keep closed behind me
wanting more
always more
looking for salt
when I’ve put
the sugar bowl
in front of you.
HALF-CAF
He would order me
at half-strength if he could.
Like a weaker coffee
a customer custom-orders
from the barista
who shares an eye-roll
with the man next in line
who I wish were next in line
for me.
STAINED
I can smell fear as well as
the next dog. I smelled it on
him like cheap cologne and
napalm. I told myself all
men smelled that way. I’d
smelled it on my father the
week before he left my
mother, leaving behind an
air of entitlement and
unpaid telephone bills.
It is the scent of the free
man. Wild grass, trickling
sweat and tobacco. It is the
scent of motor oil and gas
when he slams his foot on
the accelerator, leaving
puffs of smoke like empty
speech bubbles. It is the
scent of sex with girls who
look nothing like you,
lipstick-stained wine
glasses and fresh lingerie
off the line—a scent so
heavy you can’t blow it out
of your nose for weeks. It
permeates. It stains. It
reeks, and I smelled it,
stronger, whenever I’d lean
in closer asking him never
to leave me. And I smelled it
strongest, that day in June
when I asked him if one day
he thought he might ever
want to marry me. I followed
it, its trail, circling the
front of his door as he left
me on my knees, begging
him, I can give you more
time. I can wait a little
longer.
And here I am, still on them,
scrubbing out the smell of
broken dreams from his
carpet.
SHARE
A pretty cover
makes them hover
like a man reading
another man’s newspaper
And a man doesn’t like
to share his newspaper
any more than he likes
to share his woman
so he closes her,
narrows her
just wide enough
for his eyes only
until the men beside him
lose interest
and vow to find another.
FREE
It is the way
I pull away from him
when he kisses me
my hair wound gently in his fist
that tells me
I will always fight for freedom
in even the most
beautiful capture.
TRUST
Watch how the sky keeps the stars
in his sight without holding them.
CAPRICIOUS
I want you all to myself,
he says.
They all say it soon enough
but I’ve never
been a loyal girl—
I love in moon
and not in star
coming to them
a little less
a little more
each night.
GOOD GIRL
You can sieve the stars from the sky
and glue them together to make a moon
and it may fool you
for awhile—
Is a light not just a light?
But you will start to see the cracks
like the veins you traced inside his arms
from the right one you let go
because your mother
and your father
and your god told you so
and now your heart
is a dark place
it is a hopeless abyss
where your heart sinks
cleanly like a stone
making no ripples
like the good girl
you are.
STICKY SITUATIONS
Beautiful women are like bees
stuck in their very own honey.
STRANGE
Is it strange to have
men look at you all day?
he asked.
No. But it would be strange of me
to notice.
NAKED
I outgrew romantic love long
ago. Like a favorite sweater
I kept putting back on
because I remembered once
when it kept me warm. When
I once felt good in it.
Before it became riddled
with holes like a badly told
lie. Before it felt heavy on
my shoulders, like the world
was putting pressure on me
to get it right.
I had to say, enough, enough. I
can’t breathe. I can’t move.
I can’t pretend any longer
that this is what I want.
I want to be bare. Bold.
Truth-telling. Absolute,
without the filling in of
another. I want to be like
the wind, naked and free,
running through the gaps of
fingers, blowing up skirts,
ruffling the ends of hair,
without ever getting caught
.
THE PRINCESS AND THE PEA
I crave the fire
the one that blazes in a man’s eyes
when I take off my dress
and let him do the rest.
I crave deadly reds
and tangerine dreams
hungry hands down
the front of my jeans
and I don’t know what
transpires in my mind—
this desire of the weakest kind
to be needed from the outside in
my heart—a pea
beneath these distracting
layers of flesh
that men lie upon in the night
as I lie awake
hoping by morning
they’ll feel it.
Q&A
We curve
like a question mark
to fit the shape
of a lover’s body
that when alone,
lie simple
and straight
like an answer.
NOTICE
It is easy to call a woman
waving her hands around
hysterical
when a man loves with
his hands over his ears.
That is the language of a woman
gone unheard too long.
FLIPSIDE
I had two sides to me
but I could only
see one.
That is what happens
when you only hear
your mother’s side
of your story.
PARADOX
He is the only one I could give up my power to
because he is the only one who has never asked.
CIRCLES
Men broke me. And now I love
broken men. A sick, full
circle that makes me dizzy
and gets me nowhere. Men
who have moments of loving
me so purely they surprise
themselves like a hiccup.
It’s that surprise. I’m
addicted to that surprise.
As though they never knew
they had it in them, and
here I am pulling love out
of their mouths like ribbon.
I am a magician. Look at
what’s inside you. Look at
all this magic.
I want to call their mothers.
Their fathers. Tell them,
Look at what your boy is
capable of. Look what you
could’ve grown in him had
you watered him every day
with the same devotion with
which you poured liquor
down your throats. (No, you
never forgot to do that.)
And here he is. This man.
Rising each morning for me
like a sun. Tucking my hair
behind my ear. Writing me
poetry.
But when it falls apart, it
falls apart good. Like a
hurricane of misery
sweeping through me—my
life in ruins. This man
knows how to hurt, and when
I hurt him, I look like every
goddamned person who let
him down, unrecognizable
in his lineup, like a mural
of pain with faces all
blurred into one. And that
is when the darkness comes.
Deeper and darker—a
fiercer devil than I’d ever
encountered in those angel
boys I loved.
But it’s always worth it,
somehow. My hand on the
side of his face reminding
him, It’s me. It’s me. It’s not
them, it’s me. Come back to
me. And there it is. Those
two lights turn on in his
eyes like flashlights in a
derelict house. And it’s time
for me to plant flowers
again.
LIGHT
The less you require of love
the lighter love gets.
I once told a man
he didn’t need to build a life with me.
I didn’t need him to be husband material;
pay my mortgage
mow my lawn—
he just needed to be the love of my life
and you should’ve seen
his whole body sigh
rising like smoke
from dead wood in the fire.
LOST
I lose one
I lose them all
these domino men
falling all over again
flat on their backs
like bugs the wrong
side up
like a coin
that never brings
me luck—fuck
I lose one
I lose them all.
HOVER
I will not let a man
hover over me
like a coat he insists
I cover up with.
I’ve always thought
I was best dressed
with bedroom eyes
with a strut
that could outrun
freedom.
COMMIT
Some moths
fly to lanterns
while some fly
straight to the fire.
But is it really a life
if we are not killed
by the very thing
we desire?
SHARED
You are not meant
to be kept close
to a man’s chest
like a secret.
You are meant
to be shared
until the world
is whispering of you.
ADVICE
The wind
caresses my arms
like a familiar lover.
My skin aquiver
at her confessions
as she whispers in my ear
everything I need to know
about letting go.
SHARPENING THE CLAWS
TASTE
I am not bitter
nor am I sweet—
I am water
and how
I taste to you
depends on what
you mix me with.
NATURAL
I’m tired of getting pretty for you.
The ocean
doesn’t color
herself blue.
REFLECTIONS
Men are lousy mirrors.
Rather than reflecting
my innermost workings
my fears
my daddy issues
I stop instead
to fix my hair.
FED
Men think I’m not interested
because I’m not dying of hunger
for them
but they’ve got me wrong
I am hungry
I just keep myself
well-fed these days.
IMAGINATION
They never feel quite real
and that’s because they’re not.
I dream them
I create them.
They are out of this world!
My head—
an overgrown terrarium
where fantasy men
grow wild and fast
like bamboo.
FAIRYTALES
I was always suspicious
of those Happily Ever Afters.
The way they disappeared
off the page without a trace
with no other pages
as evidence.
LEAVE
I’ve been saying goodbye
to the men in my family
since I learned how to wave.
You will have to threaten me
with a little more than that
to shake me.
AFRAID
You think you are
fighting with me
but you are fighting
with yourself
because I am love
and you need to figure out
why you keep walking
out on it.
DOMINANCE
They don’t want us to take a stand
when they think we belong on our knees.
MARKED
I couldn’t hide
the bite marks
the scratches up my thighs
the kind of
territorial evidence
men want other men
to notice.
NO
From the moment
you balled your tiny fists
at their chests
they said you’d be a handful
and from the day
you learned to say, No,
they knew you’d be more
than a mouthful, too.
But you are a hurricane,
you are a flood
you are the reminder
that being too much
for the world
still has its place.
SUBSTITUTE
When you find yourself intimidated
by a woman’s strength,
ask her how many men
she had to become
to stand in for the ones
who left.
EGGSHELLS
I don’t want
to be your dream girl
walking on eggshells
trying not to slip
on the yolk of who I am
careful not to wake you.
BUSINESS
If he tells you
you tick all his boxes
as though women are checklists
designed to meet a man’s expectations
he will not love you like poetry—
that man means
strictly business.
Tell him he has no business
being with you.
HEARD
I made listening to myself
a priority
over needing
to be heard
when I learned
that no matter
how eloquently
my dreams spoke
sex always spoke
over the top of me.