Not so plump but definitely asking for it

“My love making is my legacy.” Lana Del Rey

Read that in a social media post by Courtney Love, who once sang “I am not a feminist”
and then screamed “FUCK YOU!”

Ten years of my life or more ring true to Ms Del Rey’s sentiment

Likely more

There are men still in my life probably because of it
Not because I was some
kindred spirit

Being a mother is an achievement, but how do you define success there?
You don’t know until they’re grown and thriving and you can’t take credit for all of it
so you don’t get to self venerate

Work is work for me, not a career path
No big gains there
No writing awards
No performing awards
No big paychecks

Nope

But the fucking

I’d say I was a thoroughbred
I had the hips for it
No legend
But I could contend

What do you do with that kind of experience and conditioning?

Write a weirdly spaced ode about it in a blog where no one but bots pays attention

Committed

There is always a honeymoon phase
I’m in it with him
And then I’m out of course

But then I’m innnnnn
And he’s there goading me on
Teasing me
Taunting me
in pursuit

And he’s just out of reach always

And it works
It works
It works
I want him
I want him
I want him

Does he know?

We don’t speak for weeks and I’m so hurt but he’s there and I find myself lost in a thought and there’s the little message that means nothing but that he is there

Almost like he knows
Almost like he can feel me and he doesn’t know
Almost
So much “Almost”

And I vibrate in anticipation

I know we will not touch again until death has shifted its gaze away
But I’ll wait
In pain and impatience
For the light he brings with his bright eyes and endearing smile

I want to touch him and please him
Because we are water signs
Because I can’t look away
Despite my perceived anguish
My suffering vows renewed by some strange moment of yes
And it’s honeymoon all over again

Aloft again

The waves hit me late tonight
the flashbacks of your face
and your smile
THAT smile

How easily I am
bewitched again
Stumbling into a spell
you aren’t even here to cast
you didn’t do a thing

am I insane?

Sudden fire in my body ignited
and I don’t know what sparked it or why
But that after days of stillness
I am missing you from the deepest places inside

Maybe music, starcrossed and mismanaged love stories coming off the screen at me
Maybe

and here I am conjuring up your eyes and your fire and the way you stare but don’t stare
and you flirt but I’m already yours
and I forget everything i want to say
and the cries you uttered when you came

there is nothing but to receive you
I would tell you I loved you if you’d only touch me and invite me to

I wish so deeply I could fully share these feelings I have
I wish I truly believed you wanted them
I do believe in something
because
you
keep
coming
back

to me

I’ve never felt so terrified and excited and filled with butterflies
and wild behind my own eyes for someone for all this time

this exercise might be hopeless
futile
but what if
you’ve just been hiding all
the love I’ve ever needed behind that smile

9 Years

When I came
I was ragged
Bottomed out
The proverbial husk
Here was a better prospect for a now
than any past promise of future could ever be

I was sure I was in the right place
Because it was my own
Small and compact
Nudged in among other small and compact spaces
Shared space
ultimately
But a thing more mine than anything in the decade preceding

And so I planted myself
Small root by small root
(Not one but two dressers!)
A picture here
A curtain there
Move a chair
Store some books
Buy a couch

Humans and cats
come and go
Furniture
stories
Fights
families

I have stayed
Having feelings about all of it
This kind of unintended
communal living
I have stayed
Looking inward
Working on this life
one meal
one cushion
one pen stroke
one loss
one win at a time

My residency is not due to a concrete decision beyond meaningful parental commitment
but I am secured for a finite period
And here is now
So I
correct
improve
reject
restart

smoothing the edges

The bloom feels a little distant
(but so much closer than nine years ago)

I spread out in this cozy little cage I made
And in this time of neo plague
It is a cage indeed
But I can still swing my arms
I can still grow

And when the siege has ended
And life…becomes something new
Because normal doesn’t stand a chance
I’ll take my chance
Make new space
To plant again
With shirts and pots
Toothbrushes and intentions
Leave the strange commune and the cage that saved me
Build a new now from the foundation of the time before

My troubled sharp angles replaced with soft curves
age lines
and maybe
peace

choices

Silence.
Does it say what I always think it says?

MALICE
Abandonment
Disinterest
Rejection
Ambivalence

or

if I pause and reflect is it

life
family
work
insecurity
time

the latter is way less sexy and dramatic

The former allows me to remain shielded in anger, fear and mistrust

To be human is to wish for convenience, isn’t it?
But what is easy isn’t aways right

I want to be wrong about this one
I’ll do the work if I am

But I don’t know how I’ll know

My instincts
are so broken
by so much
delusion
and
deceit

I can’t tell poison from preservation