I lie on the cold, steel doctor’s table
with my chest pried open 
And legs spread wide

I am at his will, his mercy
open to inspection and curiosity

The thick callous that once encased
my delicate skin
Falls to the floor, 
shaven

I weep, I grieve
I squirm, I plead
I am lost

Mangled and pink 
with arms folded tight
I attempt to hold the pulp that is
pouring out of my breasts
To keep it from dirtying the floor

He tells me I look beautiful,
that I glisten in the light

He pets me
he prods me
Tastes me,
smiles

I shiver,
I die.

A drenched lashing
kisses my rough fluidity
Petals chip and peel
Innards exposed, all dream-like

Cut the worms from my veins
I’ve let them crawl over decayed lust
a building and pallid envy

Eyes glazed,
lips bleeding
And no one to turn to 
but my own hollow shell

This mirror
This mirror has been here since the days
of summer swing jokes
and training wheels
Make-up Mirror
Day Office Home Evening

From here I see
a girl and a boy in their mother’s lipstick
Flawless sisters, cousins, brothers, lovers.

Now I turn on the switch
and all I see 
are scars.

Is an overweight woman
with a round, mascara-streaked face
Edging on transcendence

She is gorging herself
with something much too sweet
Through the window of her slightly angled mouth

Opened
like a baby bird
Waiting for it’s mother
to regurgitate breakfast.

Shoot my temples
bursting jagged
Outside
the other side
straight through

Give me Zoloft, Paxil, Prozac
anything
The smallest everything, rips me
from not so high ground

A breath
A poke
A slap in the face: I can no longer separate

Please separate
me from my skin

I carry
A thousand different kinds of
Microscopic impurities

In my cells
In my skin
In my spirit

Boiling beneath the surface
diseased
Slick with sweat

A plastic coating
wiped away
to reveal
Nothing.

I.

white skin tanned
small hands
under a tainted light

breathe in
the dust-colored
recycled air

I am returning
across a measured wait
a painfully arched back to show
where I have been
who I am returning to

 II.

To you,
my brown-beaded worshipper
kneader of lust

an Epic Man
whose life is an amalgamation of experience
unending
UNENDING

are your adventures
and tales of triumph
you are always triumphant,
my Epic Man.  

III.

The secret to our love 
is-
surprise-
silence.

Amidst the grandeur, 
and the explosions:
A patient education of
the cracks in each other’s heels.

I would never ask you to shave away centuries
of build up 
that does not carry so much of a mention of my name in it’s layers

Just to create a crevice 
that will fit precisely to my size

then I will make that a chamber in my house,
the most safe, the most sacred
dwelling in my heart.

You probably don’t know how precious you are to me
Or how when I look at you I still see your little peanut head
Or your dimpled smile as I swing you around on my hip.

Marie-
You were born during the hardest part of my childhood
When I became a small woman
Out of necessity

Your young mother brought you to meet us 
At our house that was cursed with near death
With tragedy, with drugs, with midnight wailings.

I was swimming in grief far too complex for someone my age to understand
Then you came.
And looked with a quiet intensity-
much like my own
And I held you, and changed you
And fed you, and loved you
Carefully, with all the nurturing that was missing from my own tiny life.

Your hands pulled at my hair 
And clasped my fingers so very hard
It hurt,
But I never pried your grasp away
For I loved you just as hard without knowing how.

You are careful and calculated,
Unlike your conception
Kind and mature beyond your years,
exactly like the person I knew you’d become.

Marissa-
Cuándo su madre dio a luz
I was beginning to understand the meaning of abuse
My heart quickened,
Would not let me enter peacefully into the arms of a man
That once crawled with me on the soft and sable floor.

Your face, girl
It shone
Like you had known the pleasure of a thousand good lives
And came back to tell the tale.

You had-
you still have-
The power that comes from not knowing the limitations of your own body,
The sideways grace of an entity that does not care for the influence of outside stares.

I’ve never told you these things,
And I’m not sure I ever will.
You are my blood, but 
so very far removed, especially in my lengthy absence.

There is no explanation for my love
Or the rabid protection I will always have for you two.

When I was your age
I hated when adults told me I was becoming a woman
And so fast!

Now I know, of course
That the most trite statements are sometimes the most meaningful

And that you are not any longer, 
But always will be,
my little girls.

His arms shake as they pound hot metal into earth
kissing the air
pointed towards my furrowed brow.

My face is all sweat and scowls
daring him
taunting him
to break into this fortress

one more time

Luckily
I am impervious to his flaccid gestures
and inflated stare
Because I can straddle the line between definition and air.

He looks at my eyes
Sees the blue and balsam breeze
that shifts from melancholic to ecstatic to languid
like the pull of the tide
or the fast pace of a lover that has waited too long, 
too long.

The cataclysm of my youth dissipates into grace
And the wild honeysuckle between my thighs overflows with the lessons of time
leaving him unresponsive, yes
unmoved.

This all happens in the passing of a second
from the original kiss
An invitation in air
smacked to the ground 
by one shot from my eyes.