All These Little & Beautiful Beginnings

here i am again
standing on the edge of april
i'll unzip my torso down the middle
to let eyes land on my heart
maybe i'll find a way to paint it
purple or blue or
some poetic color this time

and i toe the line between creativity
and utter madness
because what is insanity
if not doing the same thing over
and over
and over again
but expecting something new

but this year perhaps it could be
perhaps i will finally stum-
-ble upon the answer
that has driven me to the brink
time and
time and
time again.

maybe i can finally say if
i am a Good Poet.

tick
i can feel clock hands in my arteries like
the countdown clock on a bomb
and it feels like every breath is
tick
s h a t t e r e d
tick
or o
l
s t
tick
to the droning noise of the
tick
clock
i have always been afraid of clocks
of the passing the time
tick
of losing time
i would try to hold water in my hands
just to prove i could
just to prove i was special
tick
but i'm not special
tick
i'm just really
tick
really fucking scared
if i had all the time in the world
i could hear my breath
and hold water in my hands
and be special
and be brave
but the clock keeps ticking
and i keep trying to drown it out
with the sound of hyperventilating
and water splashing on tile floor
tick

i worry my words with the flat of my tongue
until they come out smooth
i only let them out when
they're polished enough to catch the light
and flat enough to skip on water

words are my most valuable currency,
my method of bribing people to
pay attention to the mine behind my eyes
or the gemstones in my vocal cords

and when the stones are too rough
and they're not ready to be shared
i swallow them down to be crushed

i'd rather let my words die than
let the world seem them jagged

but the sharp edges cut my throat and fill my mouth with blood

growing up
i always wanted to marry a man
i didn't have a name or a face
but i wanted to marry the presence
the idea of someone who protected me
and loved me like a man should

but real men
strong and protective or
shy and sweet
tall, short, strong, thin
something inside of me instinctively recoiled
like a bunny running from a gunshot so
i never disagreed when i was told i
was just scared of men

but fear doesn't explain the way
my eyes drift to a woman's
the way my hands crave to outline
her face, her hair, the swell of her heart
and suddenly i'm a bunny in a clover field
and i have forgotten the meaning of fear

growing up
i was never taught there was another option
women married men
women had children
women hated the man she married for
yelling at her until he was blue in the face and
for drinking until his liver turned his skin yellow
and she buried herself in work or pills
until the coast was clear

and maybe
i am scared of men
i'm scared of the way their grins twist with lust
and the way they see me as less than
or in the way they think kindness is a
commodity, a bribery meant to get me into
a bed i don't belong

because being a woman is so centered in men
because in old english "man" was the default
and "wif," or "wo," was a subsection of humanity
and i grew up trying so hard to be more
trying to like things girls didn't like to be special
because i refused to be under the thumb of man forever

and maybe it is fear that makes me like women
and maybe there will be a man out there
strong and protective or
shy and sweet
tall, short, strong, or thin
that doesn't sound like a gun going off
but until then
i think the most powerful wo-man i can be is
the woman who loves women i am