To be loved by a woman

It is a remarkable thing
To be loved by a woman.
Women carry the strongest love.
Their hearts are made of ocean currents and lava
Constantly giving forth, drawing out, pressing down.
To be loved by a woman is to define the word “home”.
When a woman loves you,
She is a mother.
A grandmother.
A girlfriend.
A friend.
A quiet voice at the back of the room with ferocity thumping on her breastbone.

Women don’t love with their hearts or their souls or something else poetic and obvious as such things.
Women love with the weight of their ancestors.
They love with the burning flame at the earth’s core.
Women love with the uncertainty of their future
and the fear of death
and the promise of despair.

To be loved by a woman is to know what it feels like to be suffocated in love.
You know what it means to misunderstand her and to furrow your brow as you watch her
Loving you, who you once thought so unlovable.

You are not unlovable.
To exist before a woman is to have an opportunity to be loved deeply
And to be loved deeply, if only for a moment,
Is enough to charge a lifetime.

To be loved by a woman is to know what it feels like to be an all powerful shrike,
for you will eventually pierce her in her chest.
You cannot prevent it, though you will try.
She will love you more for trying.

She will tell you she loves you in a hundred voices.

“Did you make it home safe or not?”
“Why didn’t you text me back?”
“Do you need money?”
“You’re mama’s baby, you know that.”

She means it.

To be loved by a woman is to be loved truly.
Women love you more than they love air or water or their own beating heart.
They will give you their breath and their breast.
Their ribs and their skin.
Their eyes, their wisdom, and their blood.

You will feed from her before you turn from her
And in your darkest attitudes you will reach through the shadows
Searching for her embrace.

Advertisement

Love of my Life lives on a ferry boat

I have fallen in love with a magical man.

He lives on a ferry boat, sailing it back and forth across the harbor.

When the gate rises at sunset, my heart follows

And I frolic to the dock, waiting to see his lantern light.

The ocean is a remarkable woman

She pushed and she pulled constantly since the beginning of time

During the night, the ocean sings to the moon but the moon does not sing back

Instead, she watches with a hollow eye, mesmerized by the crash of water.

I have fallen in love with a magical man.

He calls me his ferry princess and I call myself Lucky

To be a sprite in the palm of his hand

It’s the only thing I’ve ever imagined being

Constellations twinkle in my pupils

The stars were bottled in my chest from long ago but when the Love of my Life is around

These flaming hot clouds of gas bubble to the top of my head.

I have been on fire for a long time

I have fallen in love with a magical man

He sails across my body each dawn

This man may love me back this time

But he will always leave at dusk

And I shall wait the shivering hours until he returns

He is all I’ve ever dreamed of.

One of Many Poems

This poem is a crime of passion.
This poem is on fire.
This poem is a fresh baked potato with bacon and gouda and green chiles.
This poem is an icy blue margarita that’s more sugar than tequila
This poem is red hot.
This poem is metal fork to mouth, juicy and savory and dripping down your chin, staining your white shirt!
This poem is Indian food in your apartment on a Saturday night.
It’s tikka masala and gluten free naan and mango lassi with a straw.
This poem is edible.

This poem is a crime of passion.
This poem is on fire.
This poem is a well moisturized afro and a bright colored shirt and roller skates.
This poem is a summer night in the backseat of a pickup with the stars glittering down on us.
This poem is red hot.
This poem is corn rows and sweet potato pie and coconut oil skin.
This poem is sitting on your porch with you in a fold up chair as you sip on iced tea, smoking menthols with your cousin who’s not your cousin and is really just your mom’s cousin’s best friend.
This poem is tangible.

This poem is a crime of passion.
This poem is on fire.
This poem is the feeling in the pit of your stomach
The throbbing of your brain against your skull
The pinch of the muscle in your arm
The weight on your organs
The burning in your eyes
This poem is red hot.
This poem is electricity striking across the night sky, casting a white vein between the clouds.
This poem is the thunder and the snow and the crack in the road.
This poem is weather.

This poem is a crime of passion.
This poem is on fire.
This poem is nothing more than a poem.
This poem is words on a page.
This poem is whatever I say it is.
This poem is my mind and now it’s yours.
This poem is red hot.

Halved

I’ve never half loved you.
Everything with you is whole.
Whole self
Whole breath
Whole gaze.
To half love a person would be to give half the heart,
I suppose.
I never had that chance.
Each half of my heart held you together.
It created all of you from nothing.
But I only half loved myself during this time.
I half loved the summer in the same way.
When the red sun
Brightened your eyes
My heart fumbled
And gave itself over to you,
Leaving only a fraction left for me.

The piece of you stuck in me

On nights like this I think of him

By nights like this, I mean every other night

And by think of him I mean lament

I mean mourn

I mean smile while I’m doing something else

Smile to myself while I’m showering

and drinking chamomile tea

and playing Animal Crossing

and blinking slowly and cleaning my room

His name is a hum

It’s a song I can’t get out of my head

The rhythm thrums against my brain, tapping on every nerve at all times

I am the pollen of the echinacea

and he is the wind or the bumblebee or the rain or whatever other handsome and lovely thing that shakes me from my core.

You. In Many Parts. 2

My post this week is a continuation of “You. In Many Parts”. I had fun writing this one, though the subject matter seems bleak. This piece is unfinished (as every writer says), but I think it perfectly sums up my feelings towards this “you” and thus, must be published!

2. When you look at me, you don’t really look at me. You look through me.

You don’t look through me like I’m a mirror or a window or a ghost or something helplessly poetic like that, but you look through me like I’m eyeglasses. Like you’re happy that I’m there so you can use me to see things more clearly.

And when I take my clothes off for you there’s surprise in your eyes. It’s like you’re seeing me for the first time, but really you’re not. You’ve seen me a million times before this, in a million different iterations before this, only just now you’re seeing my body.

And is this how it is? Do you really have to see my body to know that I have one? Just like you think you’d have to see my brain to know that I have that too?

I have existed before you for many years. Centuries, it seems, and in many universes. I am a constant for you. Always here and ready to make myself an extension to you. I’m your extra limb in this life. In another life perhaps I’m the chains on your tires. In the next, the spare blanket beneath your bed. And in your favorite life, maybe I’m your mother, loving you without conditions or expectations.

Don’t I exist for you? Don’t I exist in real space? Don’t I prove to you everyday that I deserve you? That I deserve your gaze? Your soul? Don’t I give you my mind every night and my skin every morning? Don’t you beg for it? It feels that way, at least.

Dairy Allergy

His name was Jack Johnson and he was a summer shade.

Well,

More like a summer breeze,

Really,

Cool like that.

He was a nice cool down in the summer

But not necessarily a nice guy.

Not a nice guy at all. I mean,

He wasn’t mean or angry or would punch you for looking at him twice

Or nothing like that but he might just

Tell you to stop laughing so loud

Or ask why you dress the way you do.

And I was in love with him, of course

Because I always fall in love with shadow men

Who keep parts of themselves hidden from me until the sun

Hits them just right

Because I’m really

Dumb

Like that. And he, Jack Johnson, was perfect for me.

He held my hand, not because he wanted to,

But because I wanted to

And he bought me dessert at American restaurants and

Always let me have the last bite.

And when we cuddled, his body curved around mine like a question mark

Though I was certainly no answer.

Jack Johnson had a mustache and a beard and legs like 

Redwoods and eyes like lychee.

Clouded and bright and wet.

“If you were a food you’d be some fancy French dessert that I couldn’t pronounce”

He told me once.

And you’d be milk, I thought.

And how I love cream.

When we spoke on the phone he sighed a lot.

Breathing out everything he couldn’t say and inhaling everything I could.

I confided in Jack Johnson

And drank him up in any form that I could consume.

When the barista asked for his name he’d say

“Jake, Jack, Joe, whatever’s easiest for you to write.”

How strange.

I like to think it was his way of saying he was barely a man at all.

Only half man

And half the dark side of a concrete building.

When we were close,

Really close,

He could only ever look into my eyes.

The warmth between our bodies wasn’t a fire, it was a gas oven

Left on long after we’d left the house.

“Say my name,” he’d whisper.

Tell it to me, I’d think.

He slept without blankets, he hated movies, and he took prescription drugs.

Jack Johnson made fun of me when I bought knick knacks.

He would always ask me what I

Would do with them.

He didn’t get the point of things that weren’t useful.

I joked that I wished he loved cute little things the way that I do and he responded

“Well I love you.”

And I smiled and cried

And sipped on his half truth like hot tea with extra cream.

Green

A single cherry tree

A hummingbird colored chartreuse and gold

Flying so close to my head I think it will land on me

Bare feet

Bright green beneath me sprouting between my toes

The hem of my dress swinging around my knees

Grass stains covering the silk fabric

I know they’ll never come out.

Remnants of

Honey lemon iced tea made by

My boyfriend coat the back of my throat

The smell of his old cologne sticking to me in places

I cannot reach with my eyes and the ghost of his touch is present.

I smile.

French Baguette Waltz on 2

There’s no feeling like you et me

Perhaps la douceur of me in your paume

Twirling like a dancer, free

A piece of your music box charm

You spread me on your french baguette

I’m melted and sweet and predictable

I make you taste better; ma saveur est prête

Together, nous sommes formidable

Loneliness is very sour

You and I have known it well

Why don’t we, at the top of this hour

Drink all our shoelaces and eggshells?

I would like to know your soul

Je n’aimerais pas être seul.