i want to unhinge
myself
unzip my skin
step out of the placid waters–the dark lake
harboring wakes
of emotion gone under
this looks like screaming out
in the kitchen over dinner and dishes
“I love this fucking song”
it’s been so long
since I split myself open and moaned
like the ocean heaving
in fact, it’s been never
i’ve learned to be
clever about revealing–always
concealing the wild space within me
today I gave way
to the prison of derision–climbed on top
of my lover of twenty years
waved my arms like a hungry beast
and made the bed squeak because
i could not yet find my own voice
i wrote this poem
on a notepad with him still inside me
“Coming undone
is the thing I’ve run from
my whole claustrophobic life
today, tonight, for the rest of this life
I want to be
OUT OF MY MIND
talk to myself in epitaphs
measure success with hysteric laughs
eat pie and dance in the afternoon rain
of my failure to complete
never become neat, or anything
close to perfect.
My children will not recognize me
I’ll become
a song finally sung, a poem always written
the woman who weeps
through the soles of her feet
puts fake checks on her altar
just for fun because she is
the woman who does not falter
on making the choice to live
or to give what she can withhold no longer.
I’ll be the one
that teaches my girls how
to set the world on fire.”