He said take photos for me baby show me
I want to see

So
I took them
A series of images that are
My body, the way I experience the world,
My physicality, the reality of me

He was confused by the veins
In the crook of my elbow (I like where
The red lines run hard against the blue)
He couldn't make sense of my knuckles, ragged
And bony and shoving up into
Such a thin layer of skin
He looked vaguely interested at the pink
Of my mouth but what I saw was
The stem of my tongue deep in my throat,
A deep rooted ability to speak

He said these are cool I didn't know
 You were one of those art type girls
But you know what I want baby why can't
You provide

Cathy

"I always moved with my people, even when they was headed down, or when things for us looked up, we was like a river of honey, flowing slow and steady around evil just tryin to stay."


Rich girl says she hates cooking, won't try,
But comes sweet and simple into my kitchen
And offers to help in this lonely kind of way.
I set her to chopping vegetables.
My two, they are in the other room, little sparrows
Hopping from couch cushion to couch cushion
And word to word, trading vocabulary like her kids trade candy,
Identifying the bright, the attractive, the scent of it,
Hoarding up today's additions: clippers! One shouts,
Kayak! Is the rejoinder.

I set her at the kitchen table with a plate and a knife
And a pile of carrots, peppers, onions.
Half an hour it took me to pick them all out,
Since the pantry gets mostly dry goods anyways and the produce usually comes musty,
Limp with days under the cosmetic mist of the rich people market.
She don't notice; she don't know. I don't mind it that way.

My two, their dreams are big, and I want them to tell her.
She listens with big blue eyes while little pink moths form complex vowel sounds:
Physicist, zoologist, rodeo, opera.
They have never been to a rodeo, or the opera, or a science center, or a zoo, but
They have that kid understanding of what they are missing-
And that they cannot ask why we have never been.
She brought custard to share, and when they ask her how eggs make such a thing,
She leans into them, mimes cracking an egg, her voice rising and falling.
I don't know why she's here but I don't mind, I don't mind.

What you are, what I am not, the litany
Of doubts and whispers and steep, slick slopes
Packed with what I tell myself I cannot earn.
What if you are real? What if I am not? What if
You were only meant to touch me, not love me,
Or love me but not hear me? And how would I know?
You in your sureness, in your right ways and right times,
You lack nothing, nothing I can give you.
I know intimately this pool of melting light,
sliding across a white bedroom wall,
The afternoons daylight slipped in to witness
Obedience from my mouth, obeisance from my hands.
Am I wilder than this? Or is the chaos just escape?
What will happen when you see me clearly? And worse,
What will happen if I see you, and cannot help
But love you for what you are?