h o m e : a collection

growing up, I knew how to do one thing well, and that was take care of my mother. after she kicked me out, I didn’t know how to do so many things. I didn’t know how to take care of myself, I didn’t know when to walk away, I didn’t know how to heal from heartbreak. I made so many mistakes for so many years, in those days of pain and longing. I used booze and drugs and bodies to salve my loneliness, I was hurt by so many violent men, I tried to die. I fell in love and love emptied me out—before I realized that wasn’t actually love at all, too many years too late. I still have nightmares of past lovers in my childhood home, tinged with wine and ash. I never thought I would graduate college, I never thought I would have a Home to rest my head. I never thought I’d live to see the day I made it. tomorrow, my sister is getting married to a man who loves her in a way she can feel. I spent so long hoping the men I loved would love me that way too, and when they didn’t, I broke. I crumpled under the pressure of Not Enough and Too Late. I ravenously gouged at love like it was overripe fruit, and then, I drank the elixir of suffering until it was all I was, all that was left. last summer, I shaved my waist length hair off and I saw a psychiatrist, sitting in that uncomfortable navy blue couch a bald baby in ripped jeans sobbing uncontrollably into my hands. I tattooed “NO” on my middle finger and the rune for creativity on my ring finger with a needle and ink—made a silent promise to myself to Try, because trying should have been more important than just being better. as if my Better wasn’t their Better. (it never was.) it is summer again and my hair is growing out and my sister is getting married. we are closer to thirty than we are to twenty and I am so proud of her. she made it. I made it. I still don’t know so many things but I do know this: I am capable and I am worthy of being loved, wholly.

how many times have I been here before? how many times has my body been a no man’s land while you stand there, at the foot of my bed looking to plant your flag? you told me you wanted to protect me from other men, that you loved me for the person I was inside of this body—but you just had to plunge your hands in the meat of me, the fever dream of me, and get a taste. I was on another planet, the bed reeling. how many times have you done this before? how many bodies have you wracked with your unbridled Want all because you didn’t like the No, the boundary that stretched the bed like a border. a conquest, years in the making. and, oh, I said I quit smoking, but here I am again in the waning evening light. how many times has it been? how many times does it take?

I would trespass the endless terrain of your pain and I would gather up all of your scars and the fraying tissue that holds your brittle bones together and knit for you a body I could place my body beneath, a feast or a gallon of water into blood red wine. see, my god is an empty home we stopped visiting years ago, in favor of this place. see, you are a tower in the nighttime, with all of that life resting so heavy in your weathered hands: my stoic atlas, my rebellious sysiphus—who gave up just so he could start again. see, I would kiss those weathered hands and absolve them of their weight, and, see, I would trespass the vast terrain of your pain and, there, I will place my body beneath yours, gently, and full of worship, a feast to keep you full.

my psychiatrist says a sex

drive is not the most important thing

in the world, but he is an old man who

does not know what it’s like to

live inside of this body, fleshy knit of

scars and abrasions, blows to

the side of me. keel over, so

intimately. intimacy is a vowel I

wrap my tongue around when it

gets just late enough. I can tie

myself into knots—look, ma! no

hands! did you know

there is a folder on my phone with

your name on it? I have written you

227 unfinished soliloquys, I feel like

Shakespeare when I am alone—only

way less creepy. ok, there is no black

plague here, but it is the middle of

January and we’re all getting sick anyways. I

write to you, and I write to the body that

came before you, and one more, all

of the shame that was tacked

to my chest, a scarlet letter proclaiming

something about me that

has nothing to do with

anything, really. my psychiatrist

wants to dope me up on

serotonin–norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors, he

says that feeling is for

infants and the elderly and I am

only somewhere in between. I tell him

I want to know what it feels

like to cry, again. see, intimacy is a vowel I

wrap my tongue around, tastebuds

bruised and screaming, sometimes your

name, sometimes not.