theblessedbrokenness

[theblessedbrokenness]

The girl says, "no." And the boy laughs. And the girl says, "what if they say something?" And the girl says, "what if they say nothing?" And the girl says, "what if they don't believe me?" And the girl says, "rape." And the world says, "too late." And the world says, "too bad." And the world says, "liar." And the world says, "lie down." And the girl says "I've already tried that, thanks.  It has never changed anything.  I think this time I'll stay standing."

[theblessedbrokenness]

I think I owe you an apology When I said, "I like you," What I meant was that you told me that story about your grandmother's calluses and the blackberry bushes and how you hate your graceful, feminine hands and how long summer was when every day was thick and sweet as jam, and I wanted to kiss you. When I said, "we should keep talking," What I meant was I will swallow every story you offer me, sitting at this unfinished pine table, and I might cry and I might laugh and they might become poems that are not mine to share, but I will anyway. I will know better, anyway. What I meant when I said, "I am a good listener," Is that I need somebody else to fill my silence.  I don't have the energy for out loud self this season. What I meant when I said, "I have room," Is I want to want to make room in this home, I want somebody who gives me no choice but to tear down the walls/but instead moves in without warning, lighting candles that smell like cedar and offering callused hands I don't hesitate to take. What I meant by the last two weeks when the pages stayed blank and the lights stayed off and trail went cold is you don't laugh at my jokes.  And your stories are just perfectly nice.  And you keep giving me a choice.  And I wish any of the other things had been true, just once.

[theblessedbrokenness]

There is something so soft here.

Like you knew I was raised in the pasture.

Like you meant me never to have need of ferocity.

When you kiss me, it is something slow and uncertain.

I can feel us both breathing,

we pour in and out.  Us both.  You and I.

My heart never stops.

It is so reliable.

We both continue beating.

Your hand is the only thing I remember of last week.

As if I were a child, you just knew to hold me gently.

When I imagine hands on my body, they have begun to brown and callus, they are stronger than before.

I am never worried they will hold too tightly or vanish with the morning.

I never expect to wake bleeding or bruised or drowning.

[theblessedbrokenness]

Pulse

In the 6 a.m. hush, she un-twines her body and replaces it with covers tucked snug.   Time hangs from the rafters.  Air strung graceful and bright with the thread of dawn.  Staystaystaystillhere.   I allow my weight to sink into the warm pool of last night’s comfort. Fingers slack with sleep as lovers leave for work, Lips in search of a shoulder, forearm, clavicle. These limbs. These bodies. In inky quiet, mouths have the urgency of dying.  A magic only present in the primal in-between, we pour our souls between us like sacrament.  Not all stories have words.  Nor all promises. In nightclubs, three thousand miles away, hips and fingertips trace new partners, ravenous, before last call.  No one yet ready. Earlier in the week, I say, “How terrible.  How desperate here, such seeking, this hurtling toward connection, toward envelopment, downing love like coffee in the morning, we pray it will keep us going, all so ready to burn ourselves down for the romance.” I say, “How messy.  How queer.” Tonight, we hold tighter, set a spell at the gay bar because we are now breathing for the dead, as well, we sing louder. Tonight, there is a bar in Portland and a collection jar, and 78-year-old Rod opens karaoke with Sinatra in a papery baritone.  Wax stains a fold-out card table in a thousand ellipses, dripping slowly from prayers we lit againagainagain unspoken.  Some prayers need be nothing but paraffin on laced fingertips. Take a photograph because sometimes you are living history and know how easily we forget our lessons.   Somewhere tonight there is a girl watching years bleed from her shoulder onto the concrete.  Somewhere a boy and his brother play cop or robber.  Somewhere the child misses their curfew without a word.  Somewhere and somewhere and somewhere tonight, a family discovers they are planning a funeral. The men in front of me block Rod’s performance leaning hard and gentle and vulnerable close.  Lips and hands rehearsing rituals of reassurance.   Walking home from the bus I am asked, “don’t you ever get tired of that?” by a sweet gay man with a kind smile and eyes not so tired as mine and the gumption to retort back to the man in the pick-up when I can’t.  I can only smile.  We always do.  

Meanwhile, with every footfall, gunshot, trauma counselor available in the aftermath - suspended in our every exhale, “God, aren’t we all so tired?”

  Meanwhile, the guns are always warm in someone’s hands. Triggers all so feather-light. All hatred born of the same trembling lineage.   In a room that smells like our sweat and persistence, there are forever “just two more minutes.”   Just wait.  In this space we can be so small.  So safe.  We can be the wafer and the wine.  We can be the ocean and the pine needles.  We can be a story we tell ourselves of how we are all alright. Do you think we are safe?  Do we think we are lucky?  I think I cannot love the violence out of any lover’s body.  I think all I am is a woman stretched naked in a bed, wishing a woman back into it with a moan, an ache, and the softest grin and all I have is a kind voice.  

And two soft hands, 

and a too-soft heart, and a pulse 

that just keeps beating.

[theblessedbrokenness]

I don’t know how to use words. 

As a child I used to sharpen them and tuck them under my tongue. 

As a child I was told not to tell the stories that were not my own.  

Most stories are not my own, but if I knew how to tell one,  

if my mother left the room…

I would tell you about how the trucks come with pairs and pairs of shoes

too thin to keep feet warm in Montana snow. 

How the shoes are given out and taken home and never worn. 

How the Nikes are new, but the bellies are rarely full. 

I would tell you that a nutritious meal as certified by the first lady will hold one over until lunchtime, but a tray of smiley fries will keep a child full just nearly long enough.

I would tell you that every person becomes a child when they tell you to please come home safely.  

I would tell you that every person becomes a parent when a child is buried.

I would tell you that in the sweat lodge of the Northern Cheyenne,

the women cover their entire bodies, laying towels over their feet. 

The men pour sweat freely from their chests. 

You do not need to trim the branches when you bend them to create a frame. 

The leaves will hang like medicine from the ceiling, if you just weave them in.  

There is exactly enough time to pray for 24 people over the course of one ceremony.

I would tell you that the first snowfall on the reservation was October 2nd.

I do not know the words to the Hail Mary, but some children pray to whatever this God is in Crow daily.

I would tell you that I have not told a story in ages.

I would tell you that I still do not know whether to use the word Indian or Native or Indigenous Peoples and that I think we might be doing mission work - I think I might be doing mission work - accidentally - and that the word “mission” is heavier than it looks, is sharp, tastes metallic.

I would tell you,

that I can’t stop praying,

and the sweetgrass on my dashboard smells like protection when I turn up the heat,

but even now it is only for me.

[theblessedbrokenness]

I wish there were a way of saying “don’t lie to me” without saying “I think you’ve been lying to me for a long time now.”  I think you’ve been sneaking in and out of this relationship in the night.  I think you have been pretending you are somebody else and I am not sure I ever caught your name in the first place.

When we hold hands, yours is always warmer than mine.  I think I have been mistaking this for a promise.  I think, maybe, I’ve been mistaking this for truth.  I think maybe this is the truest thing about you.  I wish I could tell you I think you’ve been lying, only I’m not sure to whom.

I wish I could just ask you your name, but how embarrassing.  And how could I be certain, really?  It seems I am forever misunderstanding.

[theblessedbrokenness]

You don’t love me anymore.

Or maybe you have just never been very good at it.

This is my least favorite part.

I always forget, you see,

even when I knew at the beginning.

And you’re looking at me so curiously,

the tea in our hands still too hot to drink,

and I am the one talking, of course, so I don’t have to worry about this.

My tongue is busy with the explaining -

one of the perks, I guess.

But you,

oh, love – and by “love” I don’t mean love any longer,

because here we are,

and you must have burnt your tongue at least twice so far.

Trying to have a purpose in this conversation -

something to do with that beautiful mouth of yours -

when I say,

You don’t love me.

You’ve been telling me for ages,

you wrote it in my birthday card,

I’m not sure when I became your diary, but it seems I’m the only one who knows what you mean to say lately.

I’m not sure how many empty hands you can take, love,

but here we are.

I promise, it’s at least as hard to have to tell you this.

I know we are both sorry.

Thank you for the tea.

I think I should be going.

[theblessedbrokenness]

Take an orange from the basket.

Close your eyes.

Cradle the globe in your hands; 

Let it be cool.

Let it be waxy, bumpy, smooth,

let the ground beneath you be firm and capable.

Let your nails, bitten though they are after yesterday,

curl through the peel and into the pith – it will live under your nails for weeks, you’re sure – all that earth, all that childhood.

Like sand in the summer fell from your scalp for seasons.

You can feel the juice rising like rivers sweet and fragrant over the rounds of your nail beds, a dull sting at your left index finger.

What color is behind your eyelids?

What is the pulse beneath your fingertips?

What is the color of god?

Where do you go when the world is split open?

Tell me of reverence.

The way it bursts when you finally pull apart the fruit, and runs down your forearms; it tickles when it drips

and is sticky in your elbow creases. 

The way you never seem to mind any of this.

[theblessedbrokenness]

the poem about how I am always leaving

A missive to my heart, c/o my feet: You do not have to keep running. It has not once yet saved us from loving. Even the road is a home you will grieve.

[theblessedbrokenness]

The apple falls three feet from my head, I feel it. A thud in my sacrum, my shoulder blades, the base of my neck.  The ground is sweet with the flesh, the transformation of late summer and soft fruit, before it is reclaimed by soil again.

I inhale deeply, forced boldness, the smell verging on overwhelming. It nearly makes my head spin.  I am staring at the apples swaying above me - two, three, five to a limb - trying to remember what I learned about gravity back when it was still science instead of poetry.  I am daring them to fall.  I am daring them to be so predictable I can see the bruise blossom before impact.  I am daring myself not to flinch.

I imagine the sheepish reveal of a black eye to concerned clerks, coworkers, friends, and a dismissive grin.  How in the story it would become something I didn’t see coming, a comedic twist of fate - just like she did; eyes shut, mind on the heat seeping deep into my skin, the baked-brittle grass scratching at bare legs, and then all of a sudden. No one has to know how I watched it happen.

With the next gust, my fingertips tighten, awaiting a lucky escape, or a sting I know how to explain.

[theblessedbrokenness]

my future home

[theblessedbrokenness]

to bless the space

I need you to understand.  So, I place my hands on your shoulders, say,

“Let’s dance like there is something holy between us,

or something magical, or just something worth dancing about. 

Let’s hold something worth an eternity of grappling,” and we spin

and we shake

so the dust is unbound/ dislodged from our deepest, oldest knots. 

Dig it out of the fibers. 

Back to new.  Bright. 

Back before we knew what it was to be put away, or trod on, or frayed threadbare in the least and most expected places;

to find ourselves strong in the ones we never thought much of at all.

 Before we knew we could not possibly be beautiful. 

Before we saw objects in the mirror on the days we did not see monsters or walls. 

Some days

my reflection is red plastic and crumbling grout between tiny blue tiles. 

  Back

before simply being wanted or useful or clean was all we could ever hope or ask for. 

There is a universe to ask for.  It lives here. 

In the air between us. 

Spin, baby girl.  Dance.  Twirl with me. 

Do you feel it?

[theblessedbrokenness]

losing you

There is a wardrobe inside every anxious silence containing all the possibilities we can’t quite place our faith in. Waiting to be opened, as all wardrobes must.

[theblessedbrokenness]

I want to drive with you to neither here, nor there.

Maybe a place of myth, or of spirits.

Cathedrals of stone and air.

I want to speed along highways through blur of back country,

slough off the you and I of this city.

Tell me where you go in the quiet.

Exorcise every “should” growing parasitic in your marrow.

We will live in Elysium.

Subsist on whatever there is.

Thrive on held hands moving together with the gear shift.

Allow screams to rend our chests,

fly relief untamed round the car then carried out with the breeze.

We can keep the confidence,

bow our heads to the old-man gods or the dancing wheat.

We can let the wind whip our bodies to bare bone,

shed our skins and leave them on the dashboard

or fleck them inch by inch

out rolled window, litter the sunbleached asphalt with how hard

we’ve all been trying here.

Naked,

raw,

engine barrelling down the interstate.

Pass me the can pressed between your knees and an orange from the paper bag at your feet. 

We suck the pith and juice clean from our fingers.  Voracious, or methodically.

Tell me your name;

tell me the story of how you came to be;

and the road and the road and the road.

[theblessedbrokenness]

again, again, again, the morning

She builds an alter at the foot of her bed.

Smooth black stones and wound braid of sweetgrass,

a shell scooped from shoreline at dusk.  A girl alone.

World on edge.

Bent soft before cardboard frame, she builds a fire for her self

in the belly of armor long abandoned.  Girl silent.

Breathe steady.

Here she erases midnight’s manic consumption.

The candle is tall, red, cost just 97 cents at the Mexican grocery.

The virgin staining the glass invokes ritual once familiar as collapse, familiar as family.

In the haze of waking it still passes for sustenance.

When the smoke has bathed her clean, she will dampen the light,

take a comb, or the biting rim of a coin, and press the teeth and desire of another stranger from her neck,

dispersing the blood, like the girl,

gone before dawn.  

The movement is harsh, hurried,

efficient.  

Day again skitters restless across maple floor, singing high in her throat.  

The bruise of her kneecaps left uncovered - a penance. A self-portrait.

[theblessedbrokenness]

this is not a confession.  I have nothing to repent.

If this is a sweet story, I tuck hair behind your ear and the world is a whisper. Your skin is a confection. You taste of sugar and cardamom and ever so lightly of lemon. Everything is pastel, linen, riffled by a warm breeze, teasing at unchaste possibilities. My peaks fill your valleys.

Tonight, I am in a dim bar with dark wooden booths, and books lining the walls, and mismatched paintings from yard sales hung askew. Two drinks poured by generous hands in my bloodstream once more.

This is the version where I say “follow me to the bathroom” or “…out the back door” or “Jesus, stay- right- there.” Where my attention is tuned to you on every frequency, through every conversation, and I am pressing my thighs tight to the rhythm of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs on the stereo and your voice along with them. Each noise from my throat a challenge to keep from arching upwards, or grinding into a rumble.

I do not want a confectionery kiss on cool skin. These bodies were made to rise, pulse, these bodies were made to sweat. You are made of sweat, and grit, and effort. A heart beating harder every second. My body was made for it.

Every lip is bitten flushed. There is a version where we are animals. There is a version where anyone could find us. There is a version where I swallow hard between thoughts, your hand hot on my cunt under the table, and beg for oblivion.

There is a version where I drink five cups of coffee at work but arrive early and smiling. I tell you of sore muscles and the purples your mouth painted my skin.  I don’t notice until noon.  I walk to your office to walk you home. There are no books. We are not children these days.  I do hold your hand. It is hot and humid, but so is mine. We are all peaks and valleys.

There is definitely a bridge.  Maybe there is a sunset.

[theblessedbrokenness]

on the breakdown

I am so fucking imperfect. I am a wreck. I am a family. I am a home. There are mice behind my baseboards, in my cupboards. There are holes in my floor. I always intend to fix them; Collapse must be inevitable.

I am not aiming for perfection. I have better uses for that hope. I stand as whole, as erect, as earnest…

Some days I think I am a ruin. Some days I think I am nothing more than ink and ink and pages and pages, spiral bound, bound to be left in a moment of distraction one day on a subway car, never seen again.  Story absorbed into story.

Some days I think my ribcage was engineered for grief. Some days I think my breathe is made of mourning. Some days I think there is nothing more perfect than a ruin. Crumbling into the earth, Becoming what it was born. A deconstruction of all its tenderest parts.

Some days I am becoming exactly what I was born. Everything I have constructed will be gone/given over/given out/giving way.

My heaving ribcage will rest, will be planted under the dogwood tree. My bones, or whatever else has been called beautiful, they will molder into earth. My mourning, call it carbon, it will become nourishment.