Tag: spilled ink

From An Unloved Daughter, Best Forgotten.

From calloused hands

And blackened skin

The mother’s lands

The father’s sin.

Sun parched skies

And barren earth.

Her existence denies

A lesser worth.

Blood rich soil

Buries rotted roots.

Centuries of toil

Bears bitter fruits.

Deny my birth.

Your father’s shame.

Speak my worth.

Call my name.

Find Your Way

I joined a book club and have never once attended

A meeting. I read one of the books though.

Actually I read the first ten pages and

went back to fanfic.

There are dozens of tubes of paints

  • Acrylic
  • Oil
  • Watercolor

From my art stage. A very tasteful half finished

Nude features prominently in the living room.

A conversation piece that brokers

No conversation.

There are roller skates housing spiders

in the garage

And a bike rotting down to its rims on the porch.

There is a motorcycle who last breathed

In 2020 and enough yarn to clothe a small

Village from the knitting era.

A sewing machine with no foot

A garden for the skeletons of plants that

never bore fruit.

Wisps of ideas for books stuck to

Bags meant for up cycling.

There is the application for law school

And city council

And the fbi

And the dog eared outline of the planned

trip to Europe

All laying atop my passport, unstamped,

Crushed beneath the weight of the letter

I now must address

To the estate of the man who wronged me—

My commitment to unforgiveness is legendary

And does not acknowledge the fragile confines

Of the grave.

I pretend that I am multifaceted and deep

But the truth is much more straightforward

And a bit grotesque:

It is that I am simply

the return

i listened for the song of the mourning dove, but in its place discordant silence

I checked the map—perhaps i made a wrong turn.

The road was wider, the trees taller, but it was the road i knew.

Before i could travel that place in the dark, though i was never fast enough 

to outrun the shadows.

Odysseus i have returned to a place that did not remain idle. It is not the blurred snapshot, all figures in motion but frozen in my mind.

When i stopped staring the place shifted and the picture faded.

I see the old roads and they all lead to the old graveyards. Faces i once knew are hidden beneath stone, creeping vines dragging the flesh from the bones, the name etched until it is a mere smudge. Like the moss i wrap my memories around the dead.

They crumble into the moss and then they are nothing.

I return to the old house and they have removed the shutters and repainted. The

Pulled up the blood stained floor and they covered the echoes in the halls, nudged them 

Out with new voices that linger in the dark.

They cut down the tree that we loved, the one that we marked and claimed as our own, 

the one we named. The bush in the back remains, it’s thorny tendrils

Still lodged in my skin and it shudders with want of familiar blood. Things

Aren’t done that way anymore, but the blood has still enriched the roots.

The place we once knew has been buried and all the beautiful terrible things

Have gone to ground with it. I should leave this place, but i step on all until

Skeletons fall from the trees and litter the ground like snow and now 

They are not at peace and like me they do not rest.

LOCI, or Ode To the Law School Who Waitlisted Me

I turned my frown upside down

I danced a happy dance 

I laughed until the sun went down

I flew by the seat of my pants;

I ventured into the lightning and rain

To search for a pot of gold

I took my salt by the grain

I looked for warmth in the cold.

I visualized all the positive things

And traced the silver lining in the cloud

I strangled hope, the thing with feathers and wings?

Onward, through the gray I plowed.

I filled every inch of space

I fought and did not retreat

My mouth fills with sadness replaced

By the bitterness of defeat.

I pondered good thoughts instead!

I willed away the bad!

If you need me I’ll be in my bed

Letting myself feel fucking sad.

.

.

.

Just let me into your fucking school!

Say something—stop being a jerk!

So what, I’m the bottom of the candidate pool?

I’ll still do incredible work. 

Best regards and thank you for the opportunity.

gone.

I do not come to you in slumber nor sleep.

Birds from me do not rest on a bough.

Do not entomb secrets that I should keep—

It is not me, I am gone from there now.

I am not the wind blown upon your cheek;

I am not the faint knock at your door.

Through foreign lips no words that I should speak—

I am gone to return no more.

Sad notes and elegies spent upon the page

Should be writ for you, not me.

I strutted my hour upon the stage:

To be? No. Not to be.

I will not send a message beyond my grave—

Life lessons are for the living to learn.

I will not haunt or gift or spirit or save.

Where I have gone? I will not return.

Grieve to ease the ache for you alone.

Gnash your teeth. Scream. Gasp. Wail.

Pray for yourself, for your own sins atone—

The living may not pierce the veil.

Do not spill tears on granite and stone,

I am not in the wind nor bough.

Beneath you there is naught but ash and bone—

Freed, I am gone from there now.

Dear Disney,

I arrived home at 7, just missing the sun. I opened the mailbox,

It’s head cocked after one too many accidents, and like winter’s first

Snowflake, a lone postcard fell to the ground.

I stooped to grab it before the HOA chair issued a fine when what to my

Wondering eyes—literature for Disney. It read like this:

“Hello, friend! Wish you were here!” It was signed Mickey and he,

That well dressed bitch Minnie, and the whole fucking crew smiled up at me

Like animals who never had to work for a living.

The sun—the same one that I missed

Going to and coming from—work literally beamed down on them.

So now I’m here, an elder millennial, penning my reply.

To Whom It May Concern:

I hope this finds you well. But also fuck you. You sent me a postcard

That I didn’t ask for and you called me “friend.” Psh.

If you really knew me—and

Hush, I know you don’t really want to know me—

You would know I don’t

Have any friends. I haven’t got the energy or the time.

I’m working myself to death. 

Every morning I pick out boots that are far too small and I

Pull myself up by them.

I could have thrown these boots out a million times, but I’m too far in.

I have simply sunk too much into them to get out.

Besides, they aren’t exactly made for walking.

But back to my reason for writing—fuck you. 

When I was a child you made me feel strange flutterings for animals and

I will

Never

Forgive you for that.

You made a princess that looked like me only within the acceptable

BMI when I was 21 and I was so happy and now I’m older and

Fuck you for that crust of bread.

I am so embarrassed by how hungrily I gobbled it up.  

Everything you fed me was a lie. You said I didn’t have to be pretty that my 

Goodness would win in the end.

You said I should stand up for what is right

That I might be somewhere I don’t want to be but in the end

It would be worthwhile. 

You lied to me.

It isn’t just you, of course. In the free trial version of school

The adults said college by any means necessary.

Now I have this wrinkled paper that I have never once used

The albatross of debt preventing me from leaving the state,

Let alone country,

And the chorus of “I told you sos” from everyone who knew better.

My real reason for writing though is to ask you why. Why in all

Of your fairy tales, did you not tell me something true?

Red riding hood was eaten by the wolf. A cautionary tale.

A truth.

Cinderella’s sisters cut off their toes and their eyes were plucked out.

A cautionary tale.

A truth.

The Little Mermaid fell in love with a human who did not love her back. 

She died of a broken heart and spent hundreds of years in servitude

Just to earn her soul.

A cautionary tale.

A truth. 

You—all of you—said love would be enough. Truth would be enough.

It is not.

You said I would be someone. I am not. I am just another nameless

Friend in your postcard. 

The Three Pump Chump

I wanted Paris.

The Eiffel Tower in my hand like a steel marionette

Crusty baguettes melting on my tongue as we

Strolled Le Marais.

I wanted a whirlwind love affair

My skin painted red with wanton whisperings 

Eyes locked and knowing, the most beautiful sight

In the Louvre, us.

I got a beach

Sand castles and peeling skin

Hot dogs with sliced bread for buns

Boggy swamps with vampiric mosquitos.

Three minutes and an apology

Sandpaper dry

My eyes locked only with the housekeeping, knowingly

Patting my arm with pity.

I want to be angry with you. Why can’t you be 

What I imagined you might be?

The fault is in myself—

You did not purport to be a romantic

Or someone with gorgeous depth.

You said you liked beer and you like it.

You said you like the beach and you like it.

You said you don’t want to travel abroad and you don’t.

Every beautiful word that has ever fallen from your tongue

Was first placed there by me.

You were a three pump chump when I met you

And you will be a three pump chump when I leave.

We are many brittle years in and you are still going, predictably

And I, predictably, stare stupidly at you

Expecting you to be something other than 

Painfully apathetic.

Wanting you to be just a little less ordinary.

I will take myself to Paris,

And I will delight in the Eiffel Tower for myself.

I will stroll Le Marais by myself

And eat too many baguettes

And I will have a love affair with myself

My skin painted red with my own desire

Staring at myself and knowing I brought the most beautiful sight

With me, and will take her with me

Should I choose to return.