1.
i’ve spent the majority of my life searching for home, a place smelling of fresh bread, apple cider or mother’s laundry, safe and comforting. i haven’t found it yet. most days i think i’ll be a nomad for ever. the place i’m looking for doesn’t exist – at least, not for long.
i’m not a fan of settling anyway - down or for. i always want more, expect more – mostly of my self. still there are days that i think settled might be nice or at least bring a longer peace.
i don’t much believe in fairy tales – though if i did, i’d prefer Grimm’s to Disney. i expect everything, but i don’t trust things that are too pretty (much less pale, blond, blue-eyed and spawned from the imagination of an egoistic man believing he was born to rule). Though one might ask, where’s the pretty in all that anyway? i always want to ask Cindy and Snow – what does happily ever after really mean? no pain in childbirth, an orgasm every time, no long period of loneliness while Charming is off conquering lands or beds? Do ya’ll never argue – i personally enjoy a good argument. And do you have a room of your own and are the cobblestones in your castle floor heated – cold feet could put a big crimp in my happily ever, though they say it was, and i wasn’t there, still i don’t much trust pretty.
there is something comforting though about places with no walls. i realized somewhere during my search that if indeed i do have a home it doesn’t have walls – they dry my skin, seize my breath and paint images of bars in my mind. So I sigh a breath of relief when i find out, that out, still exists - not because of trees or birds or squirrels, though i do prefer them to car exhaust and horns – but not so much as the little bakery downstairs. i sigh, though, because each day i still find concrete sidewalks and asphalt road so that i can go and though i tend to return, i have options with concrete and asphalt and choice may be the next best thing to a home, if i can’t have it cause it gives me options and possibilities and prevents the walls from locking me in and allows me to keep searching when i get the itch, which all in all ain’t bad.
2.
she and i who holds the pen are becoming increasingly estranged. we are so different. she with her non-voice and me with mine that so carefully strikes the perfect tone even when there is no sound.
3.
She shivers at the chill
my empty bed,
walking always alone,
while i stride with casual indifference
unaware of states other than solitude.
i want to protect her,
i am convinced my numbness
is toxic to her being.
She’s forgotten how to cry,
becoming daily resigned:
she’ll stay trapped
in the confines of my fears
i want to yield
to her freedom
but she’s already yielded
my fears are strangling
her.
somebody strum her a lullaby
or sing a battle cry
warm her in fire
remind her of the peace
after the tears
i need to be touched so i can wake her and whisper:
there’s promise in pain
words can caress
and we have not disappeared.
4.
I used to be another woman or maybe girl, but certainly another me that spoke and sometimes dreamed, but always, always believed that there was no reason to question the truth born from that unknown place, unseen yet trusted.
i’ve been trying to write for years now and the words keep pouring, only when i read them i can’t find her, i can’t find that voice that used to flow directly from brain to page, that me inside who refused to hide anymore and so walked around head bowed, eyes red because this is who i am, and what more could i possibly offer you than me. she is lost.
words and lines carefully sculpted so that they read like a script: now smile / now show a bit of vulnerability / and pout and protest / and smile, once more, for that is the only way to play the game and win. and wins she does.
still, i wonder, when did she start playing the game? when did she stop being raw, and unpolished and unshaped and wonderfully capable, unapologetically honest and breathtaking breathtaking in her delicacy to become that image of perfection everyone recognizes as a lie?
when did she start being me?
huddled in this skin i cry; i miss her. i want to believe in miracles to make her the girl i wished never to be
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