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.”

 

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