Why did I try for you?

I never once read you right, did I?

You have never thought of me that way. Why would I presume to know you. Why would I presume to not feel anything but complacent hope. Sometimes, when I think back on my memories of you, I realize that I cannot love someone who thinks of me as an afterthought. I think it means a great deal to be in the moment of your longing and realize you’re not the one for the one you want.

Why do I want the ones that do not want me back?

My innermost voice begins to bellow:

"Don’t you realize you deserve better than this? Why do you try to hold onto what you think the world wants from you, do you know what it means to love less loudly?"

___________________________________________________________________

I did it, it hurt but I did it--GO ANNA

I wandered into my liking of you in a way I did not expect. I began to look into the heart of every movement you made and would wonder if you wanted my lips as much as I wanted yours, or maybe not even your lips but your words.

I felt like taking the lead in a dance I had never learned before. You were going to follow, or at least I assumed you would.

But that night, when I finally worked up the nerve to see if maybe, just maybe you would like me too, I was a bundle of nerves- rapid firing. Wondering if I could receive a love that I knew I deserved.

It never happened, because practical and good you told me that you do not see that love with me. The kind that means we dance together with lips and love in locked teeth.

I guess that is fine. It has to be. I looked at my nervous questions and my “what ifs” and could finally breathe, because at least now I know there is nothing more to read there.

There are things about you I will take with me. I will take them and remember that these are traits that maybe a “someday partner” will have. And you will be as you are in my mind, a friend who ignited in me the desire to want someone again.

I suppose that makes you a gift, even if you are not a gift I can keep.

"No, THANK you."

I was struck by the emphasis on "thank" considering the stranger in front of me was obviously pissed the fuck off. All I did was ask the dude to move to the side to make room in line for an elderly woman trying to get out from the November cold.

I suppose he doesn't have much to be thankful for...

I sigh, remembering it is Thanksgiving after all- give him my most sarcastic smile and snarl,

"Thanks for the reminder of why I am so thankful for assholes like yourself to show us how NOT to act."

Remember when you first stole?

A hummingbird for a heart

You shook.

Hands slick with sweat.

You’ve never known a fear this real.

How it invigorated you.

The chance of deception,

the price of pain.

You’ve known both.

Doubly aching for a penance

you know you cannot pay.

Remember who you stole from?

Your eyes twitch in annoyance.

Guilt was never your strong suit.

There are some hurts too deep to carry.

You know this deep down.

Past your plastic smile,

you chafe from the facade

you’ve presented the world for so long.

You don’t even know what it means to smile for real.

But you remember me.

I know you do.

You remember.

And everyday

I pray to forget.

Tell the gardener we only need two shovels. One for you and one for me.

Today, you will dig my grave. I will help you.

The gardener brings the shovels. They are long with wide ends, as if they knew we need the sturdiest tools for the job ahead.

You don't know it yet- because how can you foresee death? But you smile at the way the sky seems to have cleared and you live with the bright possibility that today could be beautiful.

I am sad I will end this hope for you. I can't yet apologize for my part in your sadness you don't know is coming.

So today when we dig this hole you think is for a rosebush, I will be wearing my funeral dress, blood red, no white for purity. For I am no pure woman. I know Death as if it were my lover and I have seen my end. I am just sorry I have designated you my executioner.

Don't worry darling, it will be me in the end who pulls the trigger.

Death is coming, as I have seen since childhood. Visions in my periphery, visions in my dreams- the voices tell me it is time to go. Don't ask me why this is. Some things are not to be understood, only taken as truth. This is my truth.

The sky is now gray, you frown at the change of weather. I take a deep breath, It is time.

And I say to you, "Listen now lover, put down your shovel for a moment. Don’t worry, you will have to pick up the shovel again to bury me from the world once more.

But for now, it is time to say goodbye."

I woke up in water. I guess that makes sense since we were all created in the water of our mothers. However before him, I didn't feel like sinking was my only option. Yet I look to his lips, and all I see is the cruel reality that this choice of mine has bound me to a shadow of a man who has no hope of becoming someone I can need.

Oh sure, I want him. But to need him? He will be the one holding me down with a smile on his face and what does that say about me? That I love a man who will never love me back.

So I will sink myself before he can. I will swim in the middle of that hot, white, heat of my shame, put an anvil to my body... sink myself into oblivion, thinking the whole way down,

"Those famous words, 'Death be not proud', are true. There is no pride in death. For I was once so very here, and now...

I am not."

I am a live wire of heat. My thoughts may crackle under scrutiny.

In my imagination, I see myself throwing stones at already broken windows.

It never makes a sound.

and when the daydream ends, I am still full of stones, never finding that satisfying landing of an unsuspecting window.

The shatter, the mess of glass, and the stone inside someone else's home.

I don't want to pass my anger to someone else, but just being a woman gives you no choice in the matter.

For what woman would choose to inhabit a state of being where your life consists of living and throwing stones, so as to release the anger thrust into you by men who find your womanhood an opportunity?

So they can forget their heartache, by forcing you to open for them. Damn the NO that you scream. Men will stuff you hot with coals and feed the flames of your rage.

Because remember, rebellion only begins after the death of something

b e a u t i f u l.

And what is more beautiful than a woman with stones in her pocket with no

need to throw them at windows begging to be

s h a t t e r e d ?

At my very lowest I was musing the following poem to life in a crowd of friends meeting for a birthday party a few years back. This is only part of the poem but it immediately came to mind when I read this challenge.

Here goes:

When you lose your dignity,

the world does not know

and does not care.

Because you are alone in this part of hell.

Where others also dwell.

But it wouldn’t be true hell

if you knew

you weren’t alone,

now would it?

Sometimes I think the bottom of me has fallen out.

I mean, I think I am never satisfied.

I have gotten to a point where I think I can love someone but then I choose to look at desserts on other plates that are pretty but will never, not really, satisfy the yearning within me.

What does it mean to be perpetually unsatisfied? 

I never thought I would be this way.

I did not think that I would let my heart/mind be put into something far less safe and sound, something that could sink me.

I still do not know if I am steering my ship in the right direction. I can tell you most certainly that the clouds look like they will bring rain and thunder but when they arrive… well that’s when the sun breaks through and shows me all the ways in which I don’t know a goddamn thing,

not one thing.

And in this… I am certain.

In August, I remember when the sky fell in on itself

hot as a molasses running between breast and hip,

there are some moments when I dreamed on fire,

when I burned for something greater than myself,

swept up on the coattails of youthful passion.

When I think I knew more than the world,

when I was young and dumb and possibilities "endless"...

But in September the sky opened up,

cool breeze dried up sticky heat between breast and hip,

and my dreams of fire are put out by the reality

that I never burned. Not even once in my tiny life,

and those coattails belonged to a viper who wished me harm,

and the world had always known what was next.

I am now old and not much wiser,

but at least I know that possibilities do not go on forever

they can also just... end.

eyes shuttered, blue hue

always beginning somewhere

possibilities

Stories in these eyes

the art of becoming me

under different moons

Falling short often

hold me when I cannot bear

the "me" spilling forth

I found daisies there

between life and death: which one?

It is not always...

Reflections of selves

come forth in my last moment

breathe my last goodbye