The fear of others, becomes the dismissal

Long before now

there was a time I did not write

could not write, would not write

I danced, I moved, I climbed, I painted

with our heads together like arrows, friends and I

toy rabbits, ladybugs, a glow in the dark star

would entertain ourselves with crayons and pastels

plasticine and Lego, wooden blocks, old socks, foil and glue

I built fortresses in the woods near my grandmothers

house where she looked out occasionally, a glass in one hand

erected camps in trees fallen in the storms

or beneath protesting furniture that wasn’t meant to be moved

turning into a gypsy tent, bedding, blankets, string

anything the imagination could seize and shake out into magic

I did not write

even then I felt

words were just words

so glib and easy

words like; ‘have a good birthday’ from

people staying absent

words like; ‘you know I care’ from

people not caring

I couldn’t spell, so I didn’t reply

I didn’t enunciate, so I didn’t call them back

the phone would ring in the distance, mournfully

if it got too loud, I turned the music up

all this by the age of ten

I was free of words, they were not my language

a song and the movement it encouraged was

an elongation of expression and urges

and later, a dance club, even at 14, seemed safer

than three sheets of echoing, empty paper

rubbing shoulders with strangers who sought like me

to raise their arms through the strobe lights in search

of something missing

not seeking drugs or sex but the fury and beauty

of dancing away their sadness

I didn’t know it then

acting upon instinct

the instinct to run, when you cry

dance when you want to jump

push away those who clamor for attention

stop feeling the pain you do, every single day

whilst some of my friends who were depressed

listened to The Cure and other sorrowful LPs

I scorned anything sad and

stepped into the light of disco, rock, electronica

in time I found there were other things you could do

to turn off the hurt

and I did them ALL, every damn one

…

There is an honesty to admitting to yourself

I don’t know what’s been happening, but I’m in pain

everything I should rely upon has gone or never been

I am alone and I am scared, I haven’t yet grown up

nobody will help me so I have to help myself but

I don’t know how

…

I learned it felt good to lie in bed with someone

even if they were nothing more than warmth and key strokes

I learned it felt good to give rather than receive

because you protected those parts of you, rarely revealed or wanted

I learned drugs were not a menace but a street form

of antidepressant for kids who couldn’t tell their hurt

didn’t know where to begin or how to heal the

emptiness and anger growing in their bones

I learned if you are crushed badly enough, time and again

you grow a skin of fur and you become a feral creature

not human anymore

but living for the night, pulse of music playing

brief flicker of excitement, when you forget being yourself and all that comes with that

the disappointment, the heartache, the rejection

you’re just a shivering wretch, gaining admittance into forbidden light

you’re just a body that can move and shake and vibrate

beneath the waves as they engulf the roar and scream

…

every morning I swam 25 laps

every night I ran in heels for the bus

every stroke of midnight I transformed into anyone but myself

it felt good, it felt more real than trying to

inherit the mantle of despair and unwanted closing walls

I climbed out and didn’t go back

I never wrote down a word

not even when I received

another letter stating things that were never real

words were lies, words were lies

I’ve always been drawn to truth

…

Somewhere in those years, something changed

maybe you get lazy, maybe you forget your way

or the pain becomes something you think is who you are

or the hurt is a coat you wear without knowing you do

I stopped swimming in the mornings

I quit dancing in the evenings

in my blood lay a virus of dormancy and despair

it grew and grew like a wild flower teasing out of concrete

until I’d forgotten my way through the elaborate maze

I was just another lab rat, waiting to live their life, turn to ash and regret

…

Now the irony is, I’m writing all the time

I write how I feel, I write how you feel, I write out

the hollow cries kicking from inside out

but words are fickle, they are not your friend

words convey what you mean, and equally they contradict

words don’t get things done

words are on pages, often unread

…

If it would work I’d burn my thoughts

watch them light up the night on the 5th of November

put on my running shoes

go to you

take you by the shoulders and shake

all my words out of your head

run with you down the highway

find the place we can be in my mind

get on the dance floor, pull you with me

try another communication

another way of getting through

anything but the languages that leave us empty

mistrustful, doubtful, not waiting for more

we’ve both been there before

at the end of a letter

shaking our heads

for all that was done, versus said

is often quite the opposite

you tell me, if I knew you, I would not like

the person I came to know

but you are wrong, so very wrong

it is in the imperfect there is wonder

I’m used to people backing off, going cold, erecting walls

it’s what I experienced every day

the fear of others, becomes the dismissal

there is another way

let me show you

but not like this

let me show you

in between words

with every gesture of my soul

give me this

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Breaking rules

Yeah.

Maybe I am that cliche

you warned your friends about

wasn’t it you? Huddled together at the bar

watching me

I could easily say you wanted a piece

but I’m classier than that

instead, leave it up to you to assume

a girl who likes girls would like

YOU

I worked hard at being

the opposite of your cliche

you think I didn’t know how it was?

babysitting watching parents watching me

wondering without saying, what they were thinking

written in bubbles above their heads

do lesbians abuse children as well?

I have spent a life time

hands off

not looking too long

(incase they assume, and it is an assumption)

not touching

(incase they think, oh she’s giving me a sign)

not being myself

because I had to be careful of your

wrong thoughts

it wasn’t me who gave you cause

like any rumor you didn’t need much, to believe

all girls who liked girls, would like you and might

stalk you or leap on you unprovoked

and how many times did I want to write

YOU WISH

in large letters above your bed

because you couldn’t earn my desire

if you spent the rest of your life running

I’m not any different to you and I’m totally different to you

because I don’t rent my emotions by the hour

don’t fall for every girl just because I like girls

the opposite is true

there have been so very few

my heart is a squeezed lemon

shy and closed

that is until you broke the mould

and became the very thing I’d always been afraid of

a woman I wanted, on the other side

so yeah….

now finally you can tilt your glass and say

I am that cliche

all you who mocked and made me blush

at being myself

it’s finally true, I fell for a girl who couldn’t

return my gaze

that’s the downside of being a lesbian for sure

once in a long while you fall for a straight girl

who just ruins your rule book

Drought

Out loud you hear yourself say

I don’t need to be cared about

And the cave dweller behind your eyes says

Liar

The rain is mentioned on the news nightly

But it never arrives

And we are driven to distraction by

Our dry state

If you

Knew what I was thinking

You may blanch, squirm and feel embarrassed for me

For the feelings I have, not reciprocated

Or you may

Take me on the lawn before the rain came and green was turning brown

Turn me into water and let me loose

 

Or you may

Be holding three versions of repulsion

If we’re meant to read minds, my sense is blunted

I only see the gathering clouds swell ominously overhead

Stubbornly hold onto their rain despite our need

Standing below imploring

Though it is us, with our concrete lives

That usher the rain gone

Until when you least expect it

When you have given up

Taped and sealed yourself back up

Return to maker

Perhaps then

Rain

Will fall

And you will open

Your arms and let me

In

When

You used to cover your mouth and blush

At my ability to be frank and scathingly honest

It was not a quality and you were not an admirer

Yours was the shamefacedness I didn’t feel

Whilst you, were a well of loneliness

A secret not to be discovered.

When did I become

A crass innuendo girl?

The kind I’d be ashamed of

Was it the first time you turned away?

Or removed my seeking hand?

Or the fiftieth?

Advocating

She used to tell other girls

Sista! Stand up for yourself!

And when others needed her voice

She lent her ROAR

Don’t be quiet and let them walk over you, she cautioned

But when it came to her own

She sat demure, a photo in old box

Doe eyed and blinking

Knees together, ironed hair

Palms touching in supplicate

Head keenly nodding on hot wire

Stomach lurching like unmoored ship, drunk on the dream of voyage

All the while

A scream building inside

NO! NO! NO!

I am not a number to be parceled and coded

Spat out and told, we have no answers, for we have no understanding of the soul

I FEEL and in the night, if you listen closely at my door you’ll hear me pray

To every spirit and four leaf clover, even, the lopsided rabbit in my arms

As time flickered away with each new day of sickness

She needed an advocate

To be her unguarded voice

Which had become lost

In all the twists and turns.

And the tall doctor

He was no mind-reader

He had his well rehearsed routine and could if needed, click his ankles in mid-jump

She wasn’t easy to label and dismiss

Nor did she want to be, a compliant good girl

She wanted to question until they dragged her out into the street

Writhing to the sound of her own outrage

That we are abandoned by medicine in our most desperate hour

Leaving unhealed like scabs, without voices, our ill tended shadows

She wanted to understand

And find ways that didn’t involve dependency upon pills

He was a blonde marionette, testing his overbite

Talking in her head, Yak yak yak

The sound of chomping wood and splinters for lunch

She heard no future

Unless she spoke up

But where was her tongue?

Where had it gone?

Sound

Solitude does not take so very long

before undoing our need for sound

or the beating on tin roof

of rain and words and meaning too

as she lay beneath persistent thrum

seeing no language necessary or brave enough

to furnish her with sufficient description

how does the rain tell tin or some other fabric

the lingua of a heart?

or perhaps a thin line of wire

connecting and disconnecting thought

in fragile measure

how does it relate? That old scarred ache

persisting beyond the tongue?

into a realm where words cannot

fathom the depths of hurt enough

no

there are times when silence and that

open mouth pressed against knuckle

diving into foam, in brief deafening wail

of nature lashing herself with hues of red

as if it rained color instead of remorse

she tried to take your hand though wet

lost grip and slipped before gained

swallowed up against sliding words

we no more

have left

they are ushered to quiet places within

the fragility of our hang

Ariel do you mark this weathered vane?

before it slips willingly beyond us

severing source

in shadowed formation

sea birds break their sleep

with first glimpse of

dawn