page 1: ""Let's not rush into this" I said"
page 2: "I don't have a right to be anywhere"
page 3: "The timeline of my romantic history"
page 4: "How do I become a writer"
page 5: "I've been everywhere"
page 6: "I was weird before I was here"
"Let's not rush into this" I said
"Right", I said, eyes on the finish line.
I don't have a right to be anywhere
with me
No accusing stares,
just curious glances
No righteous anger
just necessary self reliance
I meet me on the corner and I'm so very brave and bright
That though it isn't my right,
I take my hand
I'll never speak of it again.
The timeline of my romantic history
I was passionate– and bored
Embarrassed of the way they overlap
each other
Under the impression of my linear, normal charts
Loved, and lost; loved, and gave up; loved, and tried
For each failure some drawn out time
Why have I been?
To love and love and give
a seemingly endless, edgeless sea of feeling
For nothing
for particulars, for details
for my scarf at my chin and my dry, ageless hands and my eyes in photographs
sending out one hundred letters
each month of the years
and reaping the returns as the come, as they always do
And I, standing tall it seems
and curious,
with the order now
the mail stops –
Though maybe I can't
Maybe this is where the page leaves off.
How do I become a writer
I asked,
My arms around my shoulders
As I peered over the screen
My mouth at my ear,
I thought, how sweet
I don't know I am a writer
already
And I thought of how I'd always wanted this
with someone else
And how many times I'd imagined just such a question
and just my response
From my timid eyes
From my quivering jaw
As I carefully placed those thick hands on me
Beginning to trust
And I would call myself what I am
and I would cry, my warm body
touching mine
"I think I send my things away and read a lot"
I said, lightly
Later I took the choke from my voice and applied it
to my fantasies
Real hands and real voices
I don't want them
I won't either.
I've been everywhere
And I'm still afraid
And tiptoe down these halls I've made
On the way to my heart
I stop
for tea
a friend
a photograph
to mail a letter
new clothes
On the way to my heart I spend all of my money
and build something
else, an encasing
I ring the bell at the shop up the street and I
ask a friendly face
if the time is right for me
I say:
You break it, you–
screen, jingle
I shut the door and run
until I stop me in my arms and say it's done.
I was weird before I was here
And I'll be weird after
I've been sitting on the back seats of buses
Writing poems since before
I was
born
I have a little gift, for me
It's staying in my pocket
Forever, I hope
Forever, I hope– or until
Some wonderful accident
Breaks me up
Intact.