May The Circle Be Unbroken

 Hey, buddy.

You remember how you don’t have a grandpa on my side of the family? That’s cuz whatever his name would have been to you, he hurt me the most that a father can hurt another person without killing them. Sometimes I wonder if maybe it was even more than that. That means he’s not a safe person to have in my life, or in yours. 

You remember how you don’t really have a grandma on my side of the family? That’s because she knew, or, at the very least, chose not to. That means she’s not a safe person to have in my life, or yours.

My dude, there’s a lot of other reasons in all of this that are why you don’t know those people, and won’t until you’re old enough to make that decision yourself - but those are the big ones.

Buddy, I need you to take this part in for real. This is not just a thing that I say, that I don’t believe with my full chest. There are people that could have made surviving a lot easier if I just decided to ignore that they weren’t safe. There are people that could have made me feel less alone if I had just decided to ignore that they weren’t safe. I decided a long time ago it’s more important to me that you and your siblings are safe than that I am comfortable. 

I will never stop deciding that people who harm those they should have protected are allowed to be in our circle. I don’t care who they are to me. When someone chooses to inflict that kind of harm - the kind that can’t be fixed with an apology and a change in direction - that person has to leave the circle. Anything less is a continuation of the harm they started.

Buddy, someday you may find yourself in a circle and maybe you learn everyone in it is fine with the harm. I’m gonna need you to leave it. I’m gonna need you to take anyone else who isn’t safe there with you. I’m gonna need you to remember how loud I taught you that you’re allowed to be. 

Buddy, I need you to know that I am not a rug-sweeper-under. Loving you does not look like letting you inflict harm. You came from me, and you do not get to harm without consequence. You are on the second rung of a ladder of learners. You are not a link on a chain of harmers.

I do hope that I am the loudest voice in your head here. I hope mine is the one that drowns out our ancestors, those of yours I don’t share, and most of all this terrible system that keeps caring so much more about the bright futures of men who harm than the blighted ones of those harmed.

Buddy, hear me when I say, I do not care who the harmer is to me. 

I will always side with the harmed.

Please keep being in our circle.

Heifer

I am thinking about her a lot these days. I wonder if she's still living with my sister or if either of them ever really grew up. I wonder if my dog is still alive and, if he's not, what happened. I wonder if she has someone sending her pictures of my kids, if she'd even recognize them in public. 

I wonder if she ever thinks about when I tried to tell her what I knew had happened, and if there is even a fragmented part of her who knows and is even a little bit upset that she didn't stop it way back when.

I wonder if, in all my wondering, I am hurting myself more, and I do wish that I could walk into an office somewhere and have them buzzed out of my brain.

Every time a new kid thing shows up I wonder how the hell she was so comfortable missing so much of my life. Yes, of course the now of it all -- but the then...

I wasn't a kid who looked in the crowd for her face at choir concerts and awards days. She's never been to a gig. She's never heard my original music. She never read my essays or my poetry.

It just hits like a brick wall everytime I remember all the little things. I keep expecting it to not be such a gut punch, but it always is.

It always is.

I'm better at certain times about pushing the thought out to pasture behind a gate, but it wandered in lately and that's one stubborn heifer.

Moms and Gates

 I wrote a stupid song about borrowing a mom from the pictures off the wall at a bar

Maybe it’s not so stupid but it feels stupid. I wanted to call one of the walk moms and ask what the fuck I’m supposed to do about several hundred things. I miss that.

I don’t know how I miss a thing I never had. I don’t know what it feels like. Sometimes I wish I could crawl inside my daughter’s head and feel what it’s like.

I tried to let mine be a mom once. It blew up so catastrophically that I knew never to do that again. That’s not a woman who is going to give sage advice. She’s going to make it about her and tell you in some backhanded way that you deserve whatever pain you’re feeling. Comfort doesn’t live there. 

I got real used to bottling up everything. And then there would always be some guy friend who would pull something that was wrong out of me and the gates just opened.

And some of them helped. And some of them hurt. But at least it was out.  I lean into the ones that help and my gates stay open. I lean into the ones that hurt and my gates stay open.

Until they get slammed shut from the other side and I panic. 

I see that I do that.

I forget I am not the only one with gates until all I am thinking about is gates because they just keep swinging this way and that way. And then I don’t care about gates. Fuck the gates. Fuck fences. I hate em both. And I run around like a fool and find myself drunk in somebody else’s field.

And then I wake up the next day and feel like a fucking idiot because I was one. I’ll tip toe out of the field, manage a quiet apology and gently close their gate.

I am going to attempt to be a normal human being who knows about gates and fences and lawn care and is so very normal and not weird at all.

And if the gates open again, we can all be normal people talking about the grass and how green it all is. I’d they don’t… well

I hope flowers grow in mine again soon. I’m not actually that fond of the grass, but the little white and purple flowers are nice. The grass has to be pretty green for those to grow. Guess it’s time to care about watering it again.

Stupid Questions

Can you land on the sun

if you do it at night

Will you drown in the ocean
if you try to drink instead of breathe

If you bury a secret
by the willow
do the roots tell the leaves

Can I outrun my shadow
if I run toward the dark

If the moon fell into the water
would the ocean become the sky

If you break a promise
to yourself

but never say it out loud

did it ever count

If I am afraid of losing you
does that mean I have you

or has it already happened

If your hand still fits in mine
is that evidence of anything

If I can imagine a life without you
does that mean I don't want one with you

Is the restlessness in my bones 

a sign that perhaps maybe

I am not actually the cool girl

Did I develop standards 

and am I even allowed to

Is it selfish to raise a bar 

that you already lifted up from hell

Is it settling if this 

is leaps and bounds better

than anything I’ve ever known

Baby can you water the grass

I wanna stay in our yard

Is it ours

Did we let it die 

When did the fence start falling apart

and is it because you’re sitting on it

or am I

A Fish May Love A Bird

I have spent my whole life
beneath the water

I know the weight of it
The way it holds me
when I am too tired to swim
The way it moves around me
without ever asking
where I am going

Sometimes I break the surface just to breathe

But lately I have been staying there long enough
to feel the wind before I fall back down

It moves across my back
like it knows me

And I wonder
what it would be like 

to have wings

To let the wind decide
instead of the current

To rise
and not have to come back down

I watch the birds

drift in their synchronized shapes

Do they feel a current too

They don't seem to fight it

They just… are

And maybe that's what I want
not to be a bird
not really

but to know
what it feels like
to stop swimming
against something
and still be carried

There are places here
I know by heart

Deep places
Dark places
Places where the light
doesn't reach
but I know my way through

So why do I keep looking up

Why does the wind
feel like something
I have forgotten
when I have never had it

Maybe I only want to know
that I could make it in the sky

Maybe I have just tired of feeling like drowning is all around me

Would I develop a fear of falling

Maybe there is a difference
between changing your course
and wondering
what the other one feels like

I don't know

The tide is pulling

The wind is calling

And I am caught
somewhere between them

Trying to decide
if I am lost

or if I am exactly
where I meant to be

One I Can’t Write

I tried writing sad songs about about you
Angry ones that call you ugly names
But every time I put the words to music
They all end up coming out the same

No matter what you did or didn’t do

I can’t seem to not be loving you

If you’re listening for a song to curse your name

That’s one I can’t write, and I can’t play

I tried yelling all this love at the heavens

Hoping that the wind might blow it away

Banish all this nonsense to the horizon

Let the setting sun swallow all this pain

No matter what you did or didn’t do

I can’t seem to not be loving you

If you’re listening for a song to curse your name

That’s one I can’t write, and I can’t play

Just keep doing what you’re doing

And I’ll try to pretend 

I know you’re not stupid

And you pick up every hint

If it didn’t feel so goddamn perfect being in your arms

Maybe I’d be over it maybe I would have moved on

No matter what you did or didn’t do

I can’t seem to not be loving you

If you’re listening for a song to curse your name

That’s one I can’t write, and I can’t play

Sea Shanty

For most of my life I have been telling myself quieting stories.

I really don't need all that much. It's fine. Everything is fine.

I can just be grateful for whatever is there. Something more would be nice, I suppose, but don't trouble yourself over it - I know I'm not.

When your dad doesn't introduce you while he's bragging about all the good things your siblings have accomplished and how beautiful they all are, you tell yourself that you're just a background character in this story. Your book must be on someone else's shelf. This particular storyteller is kind of a jackass anyway, so why would you care that he doesn't want you in the foreground?

When you grow up hungry you learn not to admit you want something.

There is nothing in the fridge, so you drink some cold water and you fill your belly with a story instead. 

When your middle name is a story that something better is coming, you cling to that for dear life. You become numb to the idea that right now could have ever felt safe. 

You write songs about someday and tomorrow and you live off celebrating everyone else's today. 

You cook meals for your children so they never expect a growling stomach.

You skip them when there isn't enough to go around and tell everyone you're just not feeling particularly hungry that day. 

Or the next

Or the one after that

There's a hormone called Ghrelin that tells the brain when the stomach is empty. At the height of the pro-ana tumblr phase of life I learned to reframe the noise it made as a signifier of success. It meant I was shrinking, learning to take up less space. When a glass of water or a single bite of this or that made it easier to control... that meant I was choosing this. That meant I was not just a forgotten passenger on the ship anymore. I became the captain.

But then other ships passed in the night and they knew. The Ghrelin made itself so loud that people outside of me could hear it and they could board my ship and turn the wheel whichever way they chose. They fed the Ghrelin just enough to keep it docile. The moment always came when I would wake from a nap and see that my ship was pointed towards the old docks again. I'd be led right off the gangway into a little boathouse and watch as every piece of my ship was sold for parts to enrich the new captain. He'd rearrange it all to his liking and I would tell myself the story that I am just a background character again. 

This is still not my book, maybe that was never my ship. I don't need a book. I don't need a ship. I was not born to be a story. I am a plot device, I am someone else's galley. 

Until one day, the thought of my daughter not fully believing that she is in fact the best story that has ever been able to write itself woke the Ghrelin. That hunger drove me out of the boathouse and I built a raft. I fed the beast, I believed the promise of a middle name. I started writing a story and a whole host of characters showed themselves. 

I met a wizard. You had your own beast. You didn't even want a ship (wizards don't need ships), but you'd be happy to help me build mine. When the raft crashed you cut down trees and we made a little dinghy. We turned it into a skiff. We gave it a sail. We named it Hope and we were getting somewhere. One day you even asked if it could be our ship. Make it official. You wanted a ship now, but only with me. You wanted to write a book with us as the main characters.

I still told this little story that surviving was plenty and I never needed to be full. Your wizard's keep kept calling you back and I would sit on the deck waiting for your return. You would, but you were tired from the journey. You got mean, you got suspicious, you wanted to go back to your keep. I got sad, I got anxious, I wondered if I had believed the ending of a rough draft too soon. 

The stories are bullshit, babe. I am hungry.

I want a ship. 

I want flowers in the galley. 

I want birthdays. 

I want plans that carry through. 

I want careful tending and celebration. 

I want to be fought for. 

I want to be pursued. 

I want to be someone's nonnegotiable.
I want to be more than convenience or charity.

I shouldn't keep settling for being an afterthought in the background.

I am not a plot device.

I have to stop shrinking.

And I have to stop doing it just so someday my daughter will not think that's an expectation.

I have to write a new story. I am terrified of it. I might never have a co-captain, and I have to learn to be ok with that. But I'm gonna have a ship, damn it, and if I sink with it... maybe my daughter sings my sea shanty on her ship.