Tag: ipod

scrimshaw

by far the cruelest thing
you ever said to me –
and there were
so many candidates
to choose from –
was “I believe in you”.
it seemed to be
so kind at first that
I could not believe it –
too good to be true, not real
my stunned gut said –
and it turned out I was right.
you did believe whole-heartedly
in the version of me
that you wanted to see.

you spent so much
of our time together
trying to destroy my belief
in a whole self, specifically mine,
by trying to carve me
into what you wanted,
painstakingly cutting away
all the extraneous pieces of my
life, my heart, my body and my soul
that didn’t fit the image
you held so dear.

but.
I fought back
with all my might,
having been taught
by my mother’s example
that I’d rather be a
lumpen, misshapen
piece of raw ivory
that is uniquely mine
than a carved masterpiece
of someone else’s creation.

the gamble

in our little game
of mutually assured destruction,
I betrayed my hand too soon;
I gambled big and lost it all.
now you hold all the cards
and I hate it.

in the past I admitted
certain things to a certain
heartless psychopathic fuckboy;
I lost my cool and revealed
just how very much I cared
and my feelings were turned into a weapon
that was used against me
countless times, while he
said many things he later claimed
he never meant, but never
the important one,
never the L-word
without a “we” in front of it.

see. given my ancient
and not so ancient history,
it’s no wonder I’m angry.
show me that you can be trusted
not to abuse the upper hand,
and I’ll stop feeling so outraged.
if there’s a world
where the house doesn’t always win,
I’d like to know about it.

over.

if you haven’t noticed
how my feelings have changed
towards you lately,
let me spell it out, make it crystal,
so there can be no mistake.
I no longer love you.

stop talking to me
stop following me
stop projecting your crazy fantasies
of a future that never even
came close to existing
except in your imagination
onto me.
I never wanted that in the first place.
I wanted the one thing
you couldn’t give me:
yourself, in the present.

after all this, I think
you never really cared about me
the way I cared about you.
I at least tried to see you
for who you were.
I wanted to know the real you
as much as you would let me,
which wasn’t very much.

you saw only
what you wanted to believe;
you put your fucked-up shit on me
tried to make me think
that the sky wasn’t blue
up was down
black was white
love was hate
and hate was love.
you are a Minister of Disinformation
and I’m turning off
your propaganda channel,
ripping up the leaflets,
tuning my radio to another, better station.

please feel free to move on
to the next girl
who doesn’t know yet
how unbelievably awful you are.

posture

my whole life I was told
stand up straight.
my mother made me take ballet –
never once imagining me a ballerina –
and horseback riding,
purely for the posture.
and you said it once or twice, but
it wasn’t until you physically put me right
that I felt it. I can still feel
that ghostly print
of your warm hands on my upper chest
when I close my eyes.
you said, “It’s harder for you because of these”
meaning my breasts
“but here” and you simply
straightened my spine
and for once I felt it,
each vertebra coming
into alignment, and
it felt like leaning back,
too far, tipsy and tipping,
precariously high above the ground,
open and vulnerable.
but it also felt like coming home
to my own body.

I asked,
“Did you ever do the Alexander technique?” I had
actually done it in college,
but like everything else in the
40 years of my life before I met you,
somehow it didn’t really stick,
it didn’t quantify, or signify.
“No,” you said, “but my mother did.”
somehow that spoke volumes.

whoever it was that said
that we never really love another person
as much as we love who we are
when we’re with them was right.

even though I’ve made an ass
out of myself countless times
in front of you, over you, and around you,
the ways in which you have improved me
are tangible, I can feel them,
I know their validity like I know
my own heartbeat.
damn you to hell and back
for how you broke my heart
but bless you to heaven and beyond
or in the next life
for the ways you’ve helped me.

catcalling is not a compliment

it is not intended to be.
it’s meant to humiliate and degrade women
for committing the sin of being female,
for having bodies with breasts,
for walking through your line of sight –
in short, for existing in public
as a member of the sex class.

“If they didn’t want the attention,
they shouldn’t dress so sexy.”
bullshit. every woman will tell you
she’s been catcalled in sweats,
in oversized hoodies,
with no makeup, with unwashed hair.
women have been raped
despite wearing fucking burkas.
clearly clothing and the degree of her conformity
to the Fuckability Mandate
(e.g., feminine presentation as “sexy”
for the purposes of pandering
to the pornified male gaze)
– or lack thereof – is irrelevant.

“Walking down the street
as a woman in sexy clothes
is like wearing a meat suit
into a lion’s den.”
so you’re saying men are animals
and too sex-crazed to control themselves?
it’s not feminists who hate men.
men hate each other and/or themselves,
far more than women ever can,
and live down to their own low expectations
of their ability to be human.

well guess what? I will continue to wear
whatever the hell I want,
with whatever degree of “sexiness”
makes me feel good about myself
on any given day.
I’m not going to apologize
for having breasts,
being female in public,
or for passing through your particular orbit.
if you think that’s problematic
why don’t you try taking some responsibility
for your own fucking boner,
instead of pretending it’s my fault,
and trying to put me down constantly
in a vain attempt to raise yourself up.

catcalling has never been a compliment,
and you, dude, don’t have to act like an animal.

left vs. right

I want you to my right, but I need you on my left.
There’s science behind it and it’s legit.
When you sit on my far right side, I cannot see you,
not really.  You are a flickering ghost
half-visible out of the corners of my eyes,
one of which doesn’t work (right) and never has.
It’s not so much a massive blind spot
as a colorless, invisible mist; things happen there,
but they’re not real, they don’t register,
I can’t respond properly, as if I’m half-dreaming.

My hearing has a similar deficit,
so I’ll never be able to understand what you said
that time you spoke only into my right ear,
your words falling meaningless as rain.
That ear’s an empty shell, a whorl
of ornate spirals leading nowhere, no loving heart
or understanding mind lies at the other end,
it holds nothing but oceanic whispers
and salt-wracked loneliness.
Whatever nothing lies behind it has
as much understanding of secrets –
and cares as little for the mysterious
motives of humans – as a hermit crab.
So if you really don’t want anyone
to hear or remember, tell it into my dead right ear.
Your secret’s permanently safe with me.
Maybe it’s buried in my subconscious
and will surface in my dreams,
a long lost wreck lifted into the light at last.

I’ll probably misinterpret it anyway, don’t worry.

When you sit on my left, you are present,
almost too present to bear – unexpected,
like the best and worst gifts –
I see your true colors and can’t help but apprehend you,
you are corporeal, solid to the touch.
This is frightening;
after all, my left side is so weak and damaged.
I broke my left arm twice and my left leg once, growing up,
within the same year and a half.
So I like to keep you on the right,
safely in the dream world,
until I get to know your pressure points,
in case we start to go too fast, and I have to put the brakes on.

The left dares to presume too much; it can’t behave.
It wants to grab your arm excitedly,
touch your hand inquisitively,
a dumb ape wondering what this other ape feels like,
a mindless body hoping your body might like mine and vice versa –
the braille’d texture of my skin, the round coldness of my arm,
meeting the electric/al resistance of your muscles –
a collection of pheromones wondering if we are compatible,
bacteria trying to decide if we like the taste of this new colony.
My daring left side would stare right into your eyes
as if to find the answer for everyone who’s ever hurt me
with leers from eyes that color,
mocked me using a voice with that timbre,
laughing a laugh like that at my expense;
and everyone who will hurt me in the future
by reminding me much too much of you.

If you’re to my right I can contain you,
a neat and tidy little ghost in your dream world,
keep you safe in a box full of other half-seen expressions,
with all the eye contact I never quite made –
the times I looked at your ear instead of your eyes
to stop myself from drowning in them –
all the things I cannot bear to watch
for fear they’ll disappoint me,
all the secrets I may never be ready to hear.
They are packed too thick with sorrows, and
my heart can’t make room for any more.