I have kept my temper too long, short-circuited my own paths for anger by forcing a single outcome over and over and over and over.

No, I’m not mad, you’re fine, of course you meant or didn’t mean that.

I regret times I didn’t take offense, times I didn’t raise my voice. I regret allowing other people in my circumference to feel comfortable in their poor choices and poorer ideas. I regret the inherent inequity of who I did take issue with and who I avoided. I regret failing to tell many, many powerful men to their faces how deeply wrong they are. 

I regret not telling you how much you hurt me. I regret excusing you from the outcomes, the bruises, the scars, the way I keep my back to the wall, the holes in my drywall. I regret healing.

I have kept my temper too long and what sits in my chest, threatening to douse me whole, is not my own anger—which people have told me is toxic (not life saving) and poisonous (not evidence)—but is in fact the detritus of years of terrible treatment at the hands of people who ought to have loved me. 

I have kept my temper in check, stayed nice, kept sweet, played along, greased the wheels, pushed forward, glossed over, reassured, flattered, flirted, and accepted my way through life. I regret it. 

a lot of people fall in love with me. a lot of people want to try it out, think that we could make it work. a lot of people can envision themselves with me for life. 

what i am: raw, angry, explosive, tired, rotting and rotten

what you see: soft, sweet, curved, smiling, wet, wet, wet

you've got to stay in your lane, because i am bigger than the journey itself. unless your lane causes the end of mine, i am not interested in anyone else's demarcations. and an ending would be welcome. 

it's no longer clear to me that there's anything "worth it" to be won, that there's anything redemptive or even enjoyable at any point along the road. i thought that someone would love me eventually, i thought maybe i'd know what it was to not be alone. i no longer think those things will happen for me. 

lived experiences they call them, as though unlived experiences could be any more or less damaging than what reality inflicts individually.

poems i will not write for you:

clean lines of even length that stripmine my trauma out of my blood

half-beaten verses throbbing for your gaze: look at my gaping wound, my festering sore, the apartment where i was raped, the doctor who gave me an abortion, the shower were i stayed with all my clothes on for hours on a day when no one could see me 

i will not write a polemic that yanks your heart into the street where my friend was shot, in the gutter, and his blood followed the same concrete rivulets that the rain does there to this day

i will not write you a single word for every dear heart gone for a salt grain of addiction, one chemical too far over the line of appeasing aching bodies and brains, for being one breath too close to peace we have lost you each forever

i will not write you a holy verse for the part of my heart who committed suicide on the steps of the ohio statehouse when his weight was too much to carry, god does give us more than we can bear, there is no god, he deserved so much better.

i will not chart and rhyme the million times i have been catcalled, followed, harassed, bullied, drugged, shoved, slapped, spat on. 

i will not even document all you cannot see: the harms you have inflicted by not witnessing all of what is physically evident in my life: the slights, pauses, turning aways, all the slow afternoons cracking the earth and my body open by ignoring 

not me but others, not others but all of us, but none of us. complacency strips you of dignity entirely. 

I do not beg.

And for weeks
I cried in their offices, at their kitchen tables, on the phone
desperate with love.

I do not grovel but I went
and asked
everyone
for you.

I live. At any cost.

I screamed 
once
in October

because I knew
exactly
what was coming.

Tell Ray I love Michele.
Tell Ray there are entire minutes when I do not remember his name.

i have missed my own voice
the only authentic crop i've ever grown

even the words cannot be mine
are only borrowed
mined from someone else's cairn

at best i am a colonizer

a parasite, a vaccuum
for all the worlds and words and dust
that are not mine

i recycle your anger and call it coal
i compost your dreams and call them hope

please
see me

i am entirely without future 

i thought to try peace once
and returned to you, chastened, a helpmeet

charmed, 

you laughed at me and said

i can never be i am not.

windburned, seaborne, more vessel

than captain, more belly than prow

in that long grey trek i thought to follow you

back home, or past home, back up

to dry land or the beacon of your face

i could never have succeeded

i thought if i held a course i might steady but

creatures of the swell do not stay still.

i idle now in the trough and return

the slow, swelling stare of the water

in this rising wave. 

drenched whole in the swallows of my mind
i am only capable of overwhelming you. 
i drip down your legs, slide into the pores of your skin.
kill me, or else turn my water into wine.
rolling back the stone, it's clear this is an eternal staircase
i struggle up, slowly, without end:
the way i love you is spiritual,
a pillar of fire writ orange in the sky, or else
the legacy of salt, land attachment, nostalgia of the body.
slide your tongue between my lips:
i am whole, and wholly wet, for you. 

no one will ever tell you to save yourself

and when you are, finally, collapsed in a place you have earned and name safe, there will still be a knock at the door of your ego, a cry for you to minimize your heart

you will survive armageddon only to have people tell you that the earth cannot kill you

you will survive the density of someone else's active, prolonged suicide, the continual proximity of death, you will survive months of deep trauma 

you will survive your soulmate hating you, you will survive your family hating you, you will survive your community hating you, and a second community, and a third, you will survive your soulmate turning a fourth to which you thought you belonged

you will survive all this and more, episodes we did not even bother to record, memories we did not even bother to categorize, only to have people tell you that the earth is a good place

summer child, erstwhile tourist, could i but have invited you to any previous iteration of my existence, you might have known the depth of wrong that occurs here every day

there is no such thing as evil, only human hearts making tectonic shifts against others when their own agency and identity is dislodged, and a cycle that continues

just as the air turns and the oceans visit your home and the body turns over its complete set of cells every seven years, there will come a day

when you have never touched me, and the earth births its own ends

the wild part is how i manage to want anything from anyone when everyone has fucked me over

also, i'm the smartest person i know. and capable. and ferocious. so what exactly. is anyone else bringing to this table right now. what would i even allow anyone to bring.

do i rage? very well then, i rage.

i dare to eat a peach. 

nobody told me where to go, nobody told me where to run. there was not a path here and now look: lights, directions, guides. you're welcome. 

leave it better than you found it is a rule they have had to teach colonizers in hindsight. fuck me, i am so fucking tired. 

Come over here

I like the way you taste 

I want to make you feel good

I like the way you moan for me 

Can I make you feel good baby 

Let me get that off for you 

Do you remember how much you like my mouth 

Do you remember my body at all

I remember all the right spots, I have learned you so many times 

Do you need it this way baby 

Do you think I’m good, or bad, baby, do you think I’m good

Do you want to fuck me 

Do you like the way I make you feel 

When I fuck you I can’t hear me hate me 

When I fuck you I claim the peace of sexual penance 

When I fuck you and make you cum I claim social value 

When I fuck you I make a claim on your goodwill

When I fuck you I take a little energy, a little life, a little love

(they have called me succubus) Do you like the way I make you feel 

When I fuck you I tell the truth 

You are my family, my religion, and all the brute parts of my soul

Do you want to hurt me a little baby

Do you like it when I hurt you 

Do you like the way your body feels 

Do you like the way your body feels inside mine 

Do you need it slower, harder, do you need more pain 

Do you like that baby tell me 

Do you like how I make you feel 

Baby can you feel me baby can 

you hear me

Can you hear

me Can you hear me Can

you hear me 

 What makes you feel good?

Put your body in my hands—there is nothing 

for you to hide here—

I will moderate it all for you.

I will make the world soft under your skin, the air

sweet in your lungs. My sweat, my cum

laces up your hands, find me in the corners of your eyes

and your mouth. 

They have called me succubus. They have called me witch.

I would burn the world down for

the pleasure of your body. KNOW this.

Feel knowledge of me warming your back in ten

tracks, there is nothing 

to keep here. Beloved visitor, tourist with a hungry soul.

I will open it all for you.

I bleed comfort for you, birth the old glory

of your joy in my bed. 

Cunt, they have called me, and meant it.

Tell me again—lips close to my ear, feel me

hot against the veins in your neck—

what makes you feel good?

 Things I know about how to go crazy 

1) love someone / something / somewhere, lose someone / thing / where

2) ask for help from professionals, let them fail 

3) let those that will take everything — it’s easier

4) let the abuser tell their stories — it’s easier

5) always hold all of the legal and financial risk — it’s easier 

6) always take the path of least resistance and most loss

7) because none of it matters 

8) every cycle of life is trauma

9) you can’t even take your coping skills with you when you’re gone 

10) so do the drugs & fuck anyone you want