If I have a story

If I have a story, I have to turn off my phone.
I have to ignore the fact that I am sitting imperfectly,
That my bladder is not completely empty,
That I could be blowing my nose.

I have to ignore the fact that the temperature isn’t quite right and I am forced to live in a moment
Where a sweater is too warm but my tank top doesn’t quite protect me from the chaos I am so desperately trying to
Quiet.

It isn’t always easy. At least not for me. An awkward 25 year old woman trying to offer a unique awareness and getting someone to listen.

My mother has always been so much better at this. She commands it and smiles at me whenever I don’t get it quite right.

When I was younger she would read me stories, in Spanish. The words flowed out of her vocal chords as through a river, never once minding that I had no raft. No paddle with which to guide me except for the vibrations of her voice. Like a blind girl attempting to find where things were, I had to trust. It is only now that I realize how powerful she thought I was, even then, when I so desperately smeared her red lipstick on my face and tried to make my voice deeper because I wanted to claim something and I always thought I was too small to claim it.

She always thought I was strong. And when she read to me, she offered no paddle or apologies. I have to live up to that. When I write, I have to have something to say.

Never mind that other poets have said it better. Never mind that every corner of the world has been documented, classified, and raped with description. With words.

Perhaps this body has something to offer. Perhaps a little girl in a small township like Guguletoo will step into her mud hut and pull out my poem from inside her oversized sweater and read. Perhaps she’ll read the one about my first love, or my awkward attempts to get my father to be my hero. Perhaps she will have read these stories before and I’ll collect dust on some bookshelf in a home in the upper east side.

But at least I’ll have traveled. At least my body will have entered consciousness and there will be permanent documentation that somewhere, at some point, I succeeded in quieting the wild life that does not quiet, my bouncy curls that are never quite tame and exemplify the fact that I am visceral and made of dirt.

But maybe, just maybe, I can be powerful and survive off of that, until the next time
I have a story.

Guess I like letters

Dear Flaco,

People say when you want to believe a lie, you will. You fed them to me with a spoon and I willingly eat it up, looking the other way when something was too obvious, drinking it away when it was unbearable, clinging to you when I couldn’t breathe. I knew better and I fought everyday to not know better. Now I am willing to open my eyes and the pain washes over me. When did it start? That New Year’s, when you were fighting? My missed doctor’s appointment, your phone off? Disappearing for two days, stating you were helping you’re uncle move. When you hear enough lies, even the truth sounds like a lie, so I don’t know anymore. Shall I go on? One night when I was at your place in Compton I saw the old valentines, behind your mattress, from her. Why save it, and why save it there? That night I knew. That night, I should have run with every muscle in my body away from you. Instead I stayed and I found myself looking for you at 5am in the streets of Compton. It dawned on me then. You’ve always had her haven’t you? When I was in New York and she checked you in to cirque de solei, that wasn’t a coincidence was it? The engagement on facebook. I believed all the lies. You ran into her, she was worried about you, so now you’re having dinner with her and her mom and yours. My head is spinning. Suddenly I don’t hear from you for a week. I find calm. Then you call again. Suddenly your at a bar, upset, calling me because she called and “stirred up old things.” Instead of running I consoled you. Another ditched doctor’s appointment. That MRI was fun on my own, by the way. Your brother came, you didn’t introduce me to him. That broke my heart, again. There I am, at my house, dressed up, waiting for you. Your bike broke. You told me that, so it must be true. I think there was a period in which you loved me. I think there was a moment I felt safe with you….

Then you let go. Days with no phone call. Need money to fix your motorcycle? Need to pay your rent? Can’t make the phone bill? Need a laptop charger?

I did it all and I clung, afraid of what might happen if I lost you.

So I clung more tightly. The day we got our phones I had a panic attack because I knew it was the wrong choice. Then I saw the truth. Placing me on the blocked call list whenever you felt like it, taking her call when you were on the line with me, stating you were taking a shit, you had to go eat, you don’t know who just called, you’ll call right back. The list goes on. Calling her everyday, texting her everyday, receiving texts as you were fucking me. I let it all happen, even when I saw the texts. I let you lie to my mother. I listened as you said you were just friends and you still loved me.

I have been nothing but giving and that has been my mistake. You continue to feed me the lies. Why? Were not together.

I think it’s because it feels good to feel loved. It’s convenient to have someone there no matter how much you screw them over. No matter how blatant the lies are.

Do you lie to her, too? If she’s reading this now, hello. Did you know all of this? Did you know he hasn’t stopped talking to me? Has he broken you in the same way? Are we eating out of the same spoon?

because i can't breathe

funeral

this is what you do when you're heartbroken and you're me

1) youtube on repeat (please don’t break, I know its 14374384584058 of playing this song)

2) stare off into space

3) pack up any reminders of him (this can get difficult)

4) cry

5) sleep, or lay in bed staring at ceiling at 3 am.

6) think of what to say

7) drink. This leads too…

8) text. Fuck me. and

9) call. Fuck me.

10) go out. Im over it! Cry again. Fuck me again

11) tell friend 1 about it, tell friend 2, friend 3, friend 4, friend 1 again. Did I tell you?

12) get angry. Fuck you this time

13) fuck plucking my eyebrows, fuck painting my nails

14) don’t eat. Then eat too much

15) ill work out, ill feel better. New hobby time! This is awkward. Fuck

16) you tube again…

If I don’t laugh at myself, who will?

remnants

I need to put away the things.

Let’s start wit the easy stuff.

Sweep my room- there, your hair and skin follicles are gone.
Wash bedsheets
Your slippers are under my bed, your underwear and socks in my drawer
Toothbrush in my bathroom.
Your pictures from your trips- you want those back?

Your messenger bag that was replaced by the backpack I gave you.
Remember your feigned surprise? You’re a bad liar.
You really like that backpack
I got the color you wanted and took great measure to wrap it even though you already knew what was inside.

That was our first Christmas together, before we broke.

Before I knew those apartment brouchers would break me everytime I look at them
Get rid of those.

Your motorcycle helmet is in my closet. It still smells of you. The old perfume, not the new ones I bought you. I don’t like them.

The pictures, lock them.
The image of your face as you held my mothers hand in the hospital…
That one is more difficult.
Your smile
The poetry? It keeps flowing from my fingertips and sent into the atmosphere, reaching no one.

You’re asleep, on the right side of the bed, your legs curled up behind me, hand placed over my stomach.
The memory of your voice and the sound as you whisper “you’re amazing”
The tear that rolls down your cheek because you finally didn’t have to be strong anymore

I have to get rid of all of that and accept the absence

But I don’t know how to get rid of the place you left in my heart or the possibility of
The possibility….

I became a rambler... 1/1/12

I’d ask you what it feels like to be so damn apathetic but that would require you to have feelings in order to answer me.

At what point did you become a stranger in my bed and at what point did our bodies refuse to know each other?

Mine seeks for your warmth every night and at this point in the mornings as well but you refuse it like an icicle.

Did you finally realize I’m not the budding rose bud and did you finally realize my codependency?

I wished to hide it from you and I did a good job, I think. But you see it kept creeping up. I kept putting concealer on it, I kept telling it to shut the fuck up but it kept creeping up like the creases of an old woman’s wrinkles at the worst point.

When she wishes to hide her vulnerability
In the end no one can hide their vulnerability.

And so I hid it.
I covered up the sadness and the knowing and I tried to breathe. But my anxiety disorder prevented me from taking deep breaths from my diaphragm and as my world became smaller and smaller I realized what I had become

A psychological experiment
Lies lies lies

When the lights are off I feel you calling me but I never give you the opportunity to miss me
Perhaps that’s my mistake
Does she allow you to miss her?
Does she wait for you to be the one to call and do you go running to her when you don’t hear her voice or feel her sweet soft vapor on the nape of your neck?

See I can’t give you that opportunity because I’m so afraid you’ll run away against my peering presence

Yours are the sweetest eyes I’ve ever seen and go ahead and tell everyone my world is dominated by you and hardly me anymore

You see you’ve made this world so simple and yet so complex. Now that I know what guides my air it sucks ass when I don’t get. No one said this would be eloquent. Love makes us stop being poets…

I feel fine, I feel like I could make it without you and then I see your sweetest sad eyes.
And then I see you hold my mother’s hand as she wakes up from the anesthesia of her cancer surgery.
Why would you lie about that baby?

You see, it would be much easier if I saw everything you did as full of lies.
It would be much easier if I could fit you into my anorexic psyche that counts its calories and its steps
It’s the ambiguity that always gets to me
It’s the feeling of not knowing
Is that that what love is?

See this is why I deeply do not believe in a god.
I’m not so secretly jealous of all those that are able to
All those that are able to place their blind faith into something they can’t see knowing to their core that things will be ok because they are operating according “to plan”

I never knew that shit.
When I let things happen according to plan dishes were broken, souls were robbed of childhood and children waited for the day….

Since then I made it my life’s mission to be my own God

And for the most part it’s worked.
Except for those searing nights when my maps and timelines don’t line up and the floor can’t be controlled by a small 125 composition of flesh and it is then that I am terrified

Because I don’t know what will work
I don’t know if your hand can reach me

And it is then that I wonder….
It’s been a while since I’ve wondered. It really has. Well maybe not so long…

The memory is still too fresh and despite my best efforts to run away, it keeps creeping up
Buddhists say that sometimes things keep repapering in you’re life because you haven’t learned the lesson from it.

I’m 24 and I’m already exhausted from the reappearance of mine.
The thought is there again. Would it be that bad if I did it?