Little Losses

When it was time to
Love
My husband
Without condition or reserve
I did my best by
Leaving

He knew me then
My clues
All of the
Twitchy
Little things I do
Revealing

Now I desire
Insight
Mired in doubt
I turn to one
Who claims a mystic gift
Believing

He reads my palm
And clutches at
My hand my arm my hair
Trying to divine
The pale things of my
Concealing

He speaks into
The air
I stare
And mutter
Yes I see your truth
Dissembling

I long instead for
The chest
Of someone beautiful
My stranger man
Undressed and head thrown back
Unknowing

To take off clothes
And masks
To laugh and be undone
To share our marks
And be the witness of another’s
Trembling

Instead I’m left alone
I reach into the night
And taste the dark
My blood pounds in my palms
The lesson and the pain around me
Flowing

My daughter does not want to have two homes.
She stamps her feet
And hugs herself with rage
Her belly starts to boil
Nnnnnnnnngggghhh
Mmmmmmmffffffff
Eck-ck-ck-ck-ck-ck
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
She is not a girl anymore, but
STEAM
I am grumpy and I will not be NICE
She hisses
I will not say
THANK YOU
or
PLEASE
or even
I LOVE YOU
You and you and me and you
We are The Rottens

And zip your mouths up
Tight
She says
And we obey.
I catch his eye
And see the same combination of
Pain and mirth
That I am feeling
Because she is angry and hilarious
Our girl
I will NOT go there
It is my choice
And if I go there it is because you are
MAKING
me
You are MAKING me.

And we are.
We can no longer share
Here, the family home
Instead
They will have another bed
Elsewhere
We must
We’ve been apart
But still together
For far too long
The steam condenses
And turns to tears
I am not grumpy now
I just have fear
I have a nervous belly, Mummy
So have I
It is a scary thing
To change the way things are
We feel it too.

But still we know that
Life can be good
People can be kind
It is an act of faith
To leave our hurt behind
And look ahead
To a world that doesn’t look how we thought it would
With hope
And love
And family
Redefined.

We were made of words
And they were beautiful
Beautiful like nothing else
Beautiful like nothing
They were nothing.
The worlds in words
So famously explored by readers
Since way back before
Way back before
Even Gutenberg
They are all gone.
And only this remains
A solid world
Of fleshy concerns
Of kitchens and courtesy
Of polite endeavour
Of impolite unravelling
Of politic rebuilding
Of poetry unfulfilled
Love rebranded
People slandered
Stains upon us
Light far from us
This is the real thing
The painful truth and cold reality
Of how we’ve lived
Of how we’ve paid
Someone always pays in the end
Usually people like us, you say
Even when we can’t afford it.

I wrote a birthday poem for you once
And here’s another.
You are much older
Than you were before
Peter Pan no more
You have grown up
And life is full of sharp things now
Hooks and crocodiles
Sad eyes, painful smiles
Denials
Vile imaginings
Reconciling
Compromising
Protestant morality
Play-acting normality
An eye on your mortality
A notion of finality
Is all I have to offer
This is the
Last one
My birthday gift to you
Is nothing evermore
Forever nothing
Just like our words before

Today I met the
The Patriarchy
And we shook hands
And agreed I should get
A pedicure.

I chose
An orange lacquer because
I express my
Contempt for the
Rigid beauty standards
That my culture demands
By choosing a slightly
Wacky
Nail varnish.

I sat next to a woman who didn’t like her daughter.

The daughter had
By some misfortune
(By which read drug-fueled promiscuity)
Fallen pregnant
And was now an
Unwed
Mother.

Lucky her
I thought.

We talked and I made sympathetic noises
And then she left
And I sat
Alone

Attended
By a beautiful
Nineteen-year-old girl
Who rubbed
Things that smelled like my
Grandfather’s second wife
Into my feet.

And I thought
Has it some to this?
I pay a woman whose name doesn’t matter to me
Apparently
To rub my feet
In order to experience
Human touch

Her name was Becky

I asked so
I could still pretend to be a
Socialist

Instead of someone
Who lied to her mother
In order to spend time away from her children
In pursuit of
Orange toenails

Instead of someone
Who eschews a psychotherapist
For a beauty therapist
And seeks redemption
For her sins
By neatening
Nails and skin

The Patriarchy
Followed me home
And suggested I wear a
Slighty less comfortable bra
To a bar.

A man told me I was
A darling
A darling he said
And leaned in with wet lips
You lucky bitch
The Patriarchy hissed
But I’d already paid my
Tax that day
And so I pulled away

And took my sweet feet home.

Alone.

Lend me a line
Keep me writing
I have surrendered
Eat too much to feel another thing
Stomach distended
But soul mended temporarily
Learn a new way to talk and see
Keep myself for me
Offend new friends
Relish enemies
Define myself arbitrarily
As someone who wears orange, has tattoos
Binges on late night news
But is still good company

Lend me a line
See what’s biting
My head full of fishy ideas
Flashing then minnowing away
Until I suspect they were just water
After all
Not a lover or a daughter
Or some other thought I feel I ought
To explore
All those things that are no more
Or should I look ahead instead
To a new dawn, a new war
A new view, a new head
A new bed, a different me

Lend me a line
Something that might
Frighten me
A stranger revealed by lightening
Wielding a knife, or worse, insight
Perilous truths, wronged rights
Pens and swords, tongues and wounds
I don’t return them, nor hearts neither
Worried sores, flaws
Fucking on the floor
A door, a path, the sun
Eternity, small rooms no more
Vastness begun
An end to tiny love stories

Effecting a disappearance of sorts
I woolly up, and wash my hair with soap
Swaddled in plaid and bad posture
I sneak anonymously through my routine
Unviewed by people who would usually notice me

I order coffee from a man who’s startled by my voice
I guess it doesn’t match my knitted hat and pale face
He double takes, I duck his gaze, he looks away
And I exhale gratefully
Invisible again, I make a note to speak more quietly.

I spend hours in the bath
Then put on dirty clothes to leave the house
I’m clean enough, you see
Clean like I’ve never been
Unfettered by the desire to be seen.

These are my days
I have never owned them more completely
Without demand or deadline, I dissolve into
My books, my words, my tea
Alone, unsought, I am just mine, all mine, just me

Morning in the park was full of dogs and prayers
Einstein’s twin walked Chihuahuas down the mall
A woman turned the rocks sacred with her worn mat
A nanny with a baby with a ball
Rear Window weather
My sweaty fist made a wet sound
Against the leather of my notebook in the silent hall
Of the public library, and it was louder than the
The diamonds blaring on 5th Avenue
Leaning on their horns
Jostling for position like the cab drivers
In the swelter of the city in the Fall.

It was all made for looking at, and my eyes obliged
The skyline, the quiet of height
Art or is-it-art, shadow and light
Colour and the absence of colour
Still things suggesting movement
Things that moved that had no business to
I did not want to write about art
So I talked to it instead
Why are you telling me to look at this?
I said. This shape, this line, this hair, this thing-that-is-not-a-bed
It replied and its answer still confounded me
So still I stood and relished my dumbfounded bliss.

A free ride on the water
A boy spat off the side of the ferry
Tourists fussing, commuters rushing
Everyone muskily grateful of the air after the subway
The city glittered in the dusk
Husky with money and danger
And the cost of having everything.
But I, for a time, had nothing
Alone in this famous place
Everything familiar
Except the faces
Who were all strangers

The night tour. Our guide
Decried the boredom of his normal ride
Dissented to tell us the facts and stats he’d too often repeated
Invented names, dates, monarchs defeated
Feted the lesser known features of the city
Like where his mother went that morning
Vented his rejection from Metrotech University
That would not have him even with his three point five
I don’t recall returning to my room
So saturated as I was
With beauty viewed, food consumed, the orange moon
And the fleshy pinch of me, alive.

London felt empty in the dark
The buildings lit to lines and shadow
The quiet settled in me
Until my silent vicinity
Was interrupted by
The 5am sounds of the hotel
A moaning door
A high-pitched hinge
The groans of many occupied mattresses
Like an Orchestra tuning up
(The rumbling porter would play the double bass, of course
Accustomed as he is to heavy burdens)
The building was colossal with unseen moving parts
And I was earwig little
Scuttling through the bright spaces
I was the least of it
So small as to be nothing
And fine in my tininess
Relishing the miniature
I was 100 feet tall once!
I want to cry
Burnt alive for my vast desires
But the witch in me survives
She sighs spells to try
And restore the enormity
Of what was before
She mouths and sounds emerge
But not words
Her magic gone
She can only whisper
And perhaps it is not her at all
But the rustling of free newspapers
The rushing of distant showers
The breathing of sleeping strangers
The hissing of processed air
The murmur of a new dawn
And the hush of moving on

Undress, Jess
An act of access rather than of tenderness. Less than nakedness, unpeeling nonetheless

Caress, Jess
That was the good part, I guess. Sweetness, darkness, love and all the rest

Transgress, Jess
Photograph my breast, carelessness, press against properness

Obsess, Jess
Fester, mistress heart, the hurt that it begets

Profess, Jess
Love, love, passionate excess. You had my heart and all its recklessness

Possess, Jess
In greediness, I tried to eat your soul and scorched my belly on your cautered consciousness

Confess, Jess
Yes, yes. Bear witness It was me, I acquiesce

Distress, Jess
We wept. Weakness, sickness, pain, unworthiness

A Mess, Jess
Consequences manifest. Obliqueness reset. Destiny met.

Regress, Jess
Childlike, I requested fairness, begged without success

Assess, Jess
Shattered shards swept up, balances redressed

Suppress, Jess
Want repressed. The wilderness compressed. Wildness turned to virtuousness.

Finesse, Jess
Stress your blessings. Do not dare digress. It was a test, its lesson humbleness

Progress, Jess
Let out that breath, sever, exit, find an end to endlessness. Egress.

All the living people have their own hearts
Functional hearts that beat and slosh their blood through brain and vein
Angry hearts betrayed, broken, wreaking havoc, taking names
Troubled hearts pounding for the pain of strangers
Retentive hearts for memories of rain and safety
Faithful hearts given away with the promise of eternity
Treacherous hearts twisting burning too soon turning
Playful hearts that invert an empty eggshell in its cup and invite their mother to tap it with a spoon
Wistful hearts trembling for midnight and the moon.
My other children grow and speak in different voices
With words I didn’t teach them
And explore their complex hearts

But my daughter’s heart with all its potential for infinite variety
Stilled in my womb and never had expression
And that became my lesson
To live another’s heart and cells and memory
To write her death in all its vile potency
To understand that I’m her only legacy
And there could never be enough
Money to honour her
Voices to speak of her
Or babies to save for her
The world in its entirety could not satisfy her loss
It rests with me to somehow be worthy of her precious heart
And so I end and start