Token bruise

In the weeks after it happened, they came.

I remember the way they looked... how soft and unusual they were, and the way they quietly appeared, mysterious strangers who did not call ahead.

They were pretty, and I found myself staring at them as if trying to make their acquaintance -
small, coffee-colored, mirror-like.
Satellites to each other, symmetrically hovering just below waist, just above hip arches.

Tender to the touch.

It was days before I realized that they were from thumbs.

Fear.

Fear. 
It is Red Rover  
and the one whose doubt fills her as she watches herself
run across the field toward the wall of clasped fists and forearms.

Their faces blur. Shoulders go soft-focus, until only an impenetrable wall of limbs, 

bony and tensile, are in view

and what shifts hardest into focus is the understanding that they all serve the same purpose.

Stop her. 

And what is not in focus, as she heaves toward them, is that they are her. 

Unravel

Unraveling is  the spider's web in my family tree

I hear the undoing in my mother's voice as she tells me about her father

like a wrinkled love note thrown in the trash, that you pull out to read

once more

in the mess of lines some words stand out more than others, almost making it ring clearer for the first time.

"I am your daughter," she said.

"Do you know who I am?"

We do not.

In my family, we do not know.  We bind it up instead, hiding the years in layers of retreat
and discretion.

Where hurling fists get hung like flies trapped in the spiderwebs.

We coil them up, quietly, hastily, methodically until they no longer look the same, and voices are muffled.

But we forget to kill them.

And the flies find their way, ripping at the silks of repression

The love notes...we kept them, when we should've burned them.

And now they unfold in our laps, and the important things stand out, screaming at us from across the room:


I was scared.
I was hurt.
I am broken.

Yoga and the shark

I feel almost balanced.

There is a hum of energy, vibrancy, running through my body.  As if the channels are open.  There are no accidents on the highway right now.
Travel time is easy and fast.

I have flow.

Or the beginnings of it.

My breath is coming in and out, and while it's not fully inflating me, I can feel the parts of my body where it is not reaching.  As though they are stuck together like the edges of a stubborn float.
The giant plastic shark that has been folded and stored for 3 seasons.
The walls stick together in certain places. I am not sure if it is near the folds or away from them.
But I know that effort and finesse will open them again.
And breath.
patience.
And the will to inflate the giant plastic shark.

Plug

There was a time when I was so stopped.
I was wedged in a purgatory of disconnect.
I sat on my best friend's bed.
In her room. In her house.
(It smelled soft pink, like roses, and unfamiliar with ruin)
We were seventeen.

I remember their faces.
My friend held her pillow and cried and confessed
and I was so startled with anger.
Her mother always looked so young and kind,
but she was creased in the face with a sharp, fire-like stare.
Like she couldn't believe what she was hearing.
She was furious.
visibly, truly,
rightfully
furious.


She turns to me, throat cracked open, with a message,  that erupts from a deeper place within her.

She is angry.

her voice turns into shapes,
I watch the words like pictures, blurred and distant.


For me.

they move away like a slingshot, drawn back in slow motion, aimed at me, then

let go.


I am unstopped.

Why bother with big girl panties when you can go commando?

I wear my ambition

I wear my ambition like a shirt

Monday's wrinkles show signs of neglect

hidden in the dark of a closet for some days when I could not

spill the stains of motherhood upon it.

I understand what it means to pull it, fresh, from the
laundry, warmed over and new-smelling; clean for me

To slip it on ---

the ends of follicles yawning upward from unused arms
the scent permeating through a nostril and tapping on a

dormant thought

The first wear is reverent and grateful,

With movements slow and deliberate
I do not mind the stiffness of its cuff.
I dare not press into its fabric with my wait.
At the end of the day I may remove it delicately
and hang it in good view, protected, ready.
I may slip on the flick of light and look at it again---
hold it mentally hostage so as to dream of it.

The next wears are less electric.
Less ceremonious.
We know each other, now.
Space between us dissipates to may way for a softer cling.
We fit and glide together as a team,
unapologetic,
toward the first spoil.
Soon we are dirty
with the sweat of inspired action.
The droplets fuse us in places.
By now it knows the crooks of me
and I the bends of it.
We sleep together,

But Friday's morning brings threat of domesticity
and jealous duties, wanting the touch of this woman's hand.
And so I finger the button hovering at my heart's front
through its hole
down past an artist's gut and lower chakras
until it drops
to hug an ankle one last time.

Flicked
into the blackest corner of a closet
where it will wait patiently
for this body to return.