in safeway sometimes the music kills the mood

when i leave my house i am someone else

arms wider, chest open, waiting

captivated by assholes on bikes

breathing the stench of men who don't have to fight to be

choking on words in safeway forgetting

forgetting always forgetting to turn down the music in my ears

people stare

can of coke in my pocket, lungs full of streetnoise

duck down when police roll by

i live here

forget that i live

forget where i am

in safeway sometimes the music kills the mood

i wind down in the fierce cold fucking place where i live

i wonder what is in my throat, talk to my insides

fuck it i say, come up if you have to

i dont know these people

the man in the corner stares at me

i put my hood up

open my eyes a little wider

exhale

A Beautiful Gift

He is staring at me. The nicotine stains on my fingers.. my hair, which he finds amusing. I look back at him and wonder how he can wear a wool sweater in this kind of heat. His eyes are gummy, and I ask him if he has been to see a doctor lately.

He coughs long and hard, painfully, clutches his chest and tells me that he hasn't, because he feels like faith healing is the only thing that can help him at this point. He asks me for a cigarette and I pass one to him.

"You've never been hurt," he says, still studying me, and I wait for him to continue but he doesn't. I ask him what he means, and he repeats himself. In my mind I see myself in my bedroom as a child, and even now, rocking back and forth. The eternal me, hurting. I see all of the ways, all of the times that I have been humiliated, abused.

And I smile. "I've been hurt," I say, and want to tell him how but when I see his shaking hands I can't. I lean against the fence.

"... But I'm happy to be alive." He smiles at me and I take a deep breath, because I mean what I said. I let that happiness swell in my chest and feel it for a minute or so while we smoke in silence.

What a beautiful gift.

My own Eyes

"How are you, son?"

The voice was that of an older relative, a man

and I sparkled like a star for a moment



My dad looked at me and shrugged

"This is one of my girls," he answered.

Inside I felt a meteor hit my heart

I was eight years old

My chest still flat, my body long and lanky

my hair licking at my ears in waves that wanted to be.



Later I lay on my back in the grass and looked down at my body

There was a bump there, I saw it for myself

I let the moonlight hit my eyes and carry me away



Still later...



"This is what it feels like to kiss a boy," I told her, and the others stared

when I kissed her on the lips, my eyes closed but twinkling

so soft

When I opened them again the girls looked away and I did too

scuffed my feet against the floor and bit my lip till it bled

I walked home as if in a trance



On the way

A voice came from under my shoe

"But you're not a boy."

My polka-dot blouse giggled nervously



But later on I took them off

threw them in a heap in the corner of my room

I kept my underpants on

grabbed a sock from my drawer and opened up the blinds



My own venetian eyes drank in the stars outside my window

Beautiful Child

Beautiful child,

I tied your umbilical cord with a piece of red yarn

a tiny scarlet bow that was soft,

so soft on your sweet velvet skin

You looked up at me with liquid eyes and I knew that you knew



that my own cord was severed long ago

before I taught myself to breathe.



Beautiful child,

I handed you to your mother as soon as her eyes were open

eyes like yours, only wiser

She played with your toes, watched them turn pink

a technicolour message of hope



I knelt at your feet,

dressed in my finest rags.



I opened my mouth to speak

but you reached out your tiny hand to silence me

I didn't have to tell you

about the moment the world turned dark.

in my dreams

in my dreams i am a mother

in my dreams i am alone

i have no mother

i search in vain for pathways

burnt lines on olive skin

take my first steps

white teeth in  my peripheral vision

in my dreams i am a mother

in my dreams i am alone

i search in vain for a familiar voice

a voice that knows my face by heart

speak my first words

someone laughs, casting light in my direction

in my dreams i am alone

i have no mother

my books are empty pages

chewed at the corners

my face is never clean

in my dreams i am alone

a shiny, opulent version of myself

mouth open, but i have learned no words

i am a mother

a ghost

always looking

watching no one watching me

almost love

You saw my higher self, bumbling through the darkness in a cowboy hat

I saw yours

Filling up water bottles in a bathroom stall while I waited beside the forest, hiding from the light that catches your eyes

Eyes catching me

That light loves the nighttime and I recognized your face

The face of someone who loves me, and has loved me since the beginning of time

And so now

I lie in that same darkness, heart beating alongside yours

to the pulse of artificial sunshine that beats it's way through the door

open a crack because we are both afraid

Only it's leaving slowly

and I have never known this same peace

You and I will make something beautiful together

Two broken spirits, resurrected

night

This house wraps around me like a moth-eaten scarf. Turning inside out, it has a pulse of it's own. From where I sit I see the chicken leg, the fence of skulls, the woods just beyond this window.

"My Bright Dawn, my Red Sun, and my Dark Midnight."

I see this

Cleverly disguised as the end of a path, the cessation of loneliness that only truly lonely people can see right through. That ancient promise, the one that has us envisioning a life with no pain until you wake up and realize that it's an illusion. Relief from loneliness can happen only where there is surrender.

Take me, I say, and the water I am being swept into is black as night. My eyes are closed and I pray for fearlessness until I sink down into this mattress, further down past the ground and the basement, into the center of the earth, and then into the void.

This seemingly empty space sparkles for me. One second of illumination and I gasp for breath. It is so beautiful, so beautiful, because in this space is held everything without a name, every child, every creature that has never seen light, and thus, never been fearful. Because it is in light that fear is born, not in the darkness; true darkness is beautiful as the Yaga's mysterious home is beautiful.
As we are all beautiful.

I see it right now, in my mind, and I ask that darkness to come to me like a ghost at my bedside. Blindfold me and leave me alone so that I can find my way in the night.