Category: poetry

It’s in the way the
Sunlight
Catches in her eyes

In the quiet patience
Of her hips
The curl of her lip

It’s in the grace and economy of her
Movements

Fluid and lyrical

In catching the
Falling

Bolstering the
Trembling

Embracing the
Without

It’s the delicate flesh
Revered
Worshiped

That can be made to
Stand
Fragile
But in furious
Defense

And the violation of it
Becomes
Twice-fold
Because

The body of a woman

The pleasure-seeker
Give and receiver

Bends and stretches in
Ecstasy as it does in
Constancy as it does in
Protection as it does in
Cooperation as it does in
Leadership

Her softness flows as a stream
Yet dashes rocks below

Nourishing
And
Ravaging

In every step and
Breath

We are yesterday
Today and
Tomorrow

• If I had been a happy child
• If I had known unconditional love
• Would I have grown into a woman with
• A surging thirst of ambition?
• If I had believed my mother
• Anytime she nurtured me
• Instead of ever suspecting her motives
• Would I have come to love a simple life?
• If I had had brothers to look after me
• If I had had friends or my father to seek solace in
• Would I have grown so strong and
• Independent?
• If I hadn’t faced and walked away from
• The option of suicide at eight years old
• Would I have chosen it instead
• After some flapping melodrama years later?

• If I had played dolls with little friends
• If I had had play-dates and summer camps
• Instead of wandering the forests and creeks like a wolf-child
• Would I still have a transcendent imagination?
• If parent figures hadn’t wafted in and out of my homes
• If I hadn’t been drug to one sham wedding after another
• Would I have had my starter marriage and divorce
• Instead of insisting on one true love or nothing?
• Who would I be
• If I hadn’t faced what I’ve faced?
• Would I like me as much?
• Would I be as proud?
• Would I want as badly
• To touch the hearts around me?

 

• Ex-boyfriends in old haunts
• Old hedgerows emerge and the
• Grandest point remains
• It comes fast and hard
• The most pristine point of contention
• Ah, yes, that was why
• We wouldn’t remain together
• Why
• We we remain forever
• Opposed
• The sticking point
• I am simultaneously relieved and defeated
• Perhaps not to smack my head against this particular wall again
• But to see the suffering and frustration in the eyes of a man
• Once so treasured
• Having known a Love’s deepest stores
• And the years blur and melt away
• Yes, it’s the same defeated slouch of shoulder
• Yes, they’re the same eyes
• Yes, they swell and redden in the very same way
• But now it’s not in conflict
• It’s in commiseration
• And that’s worse
• Because the parity of Love without consequential remorse
• Love for merely affection’s sake
• Asking for no answer or culpability
• Love because of Love
• And sorrow and commiseration for only the
• Fact of a history of understanding.

 

• I’ve lied to you
• I’ve taken the road of strength and power
• And left you swinging and vulnerable
• I could have met you there
• Exposed my own fears and tribulations
• But I chickened out and left myself
• Together
• It was cowardly
• I could have pressed myself against you as an equal but
• That would have left me
• Equal
• And that would have been
• Unusual
• For both of us
• Upset the paradigm
• And been yet another
• Glaring reminder of why we were
• And remain
• Wrong

I’m crying because you can’t
I’m crying because he can’t

Your pain and fear and frustration wash over me
His pain and fear and frustration wash over me

And you’re being strong for him
And he’s being brave for you

And I’m the only one here who gets to cry
And if this is the only help I can offer
I give it gladly