Fire part 2.

Fire Pt. 2 

I can’t remember the last time I struck a match,

Or caught fire in someone else’s eyes. 

The first time I tried to get close to an old flame

He said there wasn’t enough of a spark 

So I opened fire and then burnt us down 

Like that B-52 wreckage he walked me to

Just to light him up and ignite his memory

Like scorching the earth between us could 

Make him wish he burnt his tongue 

And loved me back instead

As if cauterizing my heart could mitigate 

The damage he spread from his broken one

And like the smell of napalm ever won our Vietnam War,

But still, strike after strike, I called in for another one-

I made sure I got him every time. 

Every last bit of him, 

And I’ve been setting arson to my lovers ever since.

But men still like me like they like playing with fire

Like putting a finger through a candle ever won a science fair

Like an affair could save them from themselves,

And the most piteous of them still hold that candle,

As if just the mere idea of us could gas them up

The more I re-fuse, the more they pile

Embers underneath my throne, 

And I always smile before I throw Molotov cocktails 

Then watch their pedestals burn to hell. 

Because I’m not the perfect woman

Not the anima or the goddamn

Manic pixie dream girl either

I’m just a pyromaniac

Who gets off on blazing up

Just a fucked up little girl,

Who had to learn how to throw 

Hands off from other hands 

By putting up a firewall

I do not want you to get close. 

I do not want you to exalt me

And spark plug me just to

Exhaust me and put me out. 

I will sear you to the crisp if you dare.

Tell Me

There is a part of me that wants to stay untethered. That relishes in anonymity and basks in the challenge of frequent change. There is freedom in comings and goings- in the constant pouring and rinsing of the self and indulging myself in all my caprices.

And then, there is the other part of me- the part that just wants to be seen. 

Because who sees me at 2 am in the morning, when I hover over at my desk writing away, finessing, and toiling at every detail?

Who sees me when I’m up ten pounds or down ten from set point? Who notices when I’m polished and sleek-when I work at the lipstick for twenty minutes just to scrub it off twenty minutes later?

And who sees me when I eat in bed and when I’m too tired to brush my teeth. Who sees me when I drink too much, and make a fool out of myself?

Who knows where the mask goes? Who sees me when I stutter, and my face flushes, when I can’t seem to ask a question or make a simple phone call? And who sees me when I hang my shoulders back, strut into a room, and make everyone fall in love with me by the end of the night?

Who sees me, all of me, in my imperfection and splendor, and with so much constancy?

And tell me, who would I follow or stay for? Whose burdens would I carry and wounds would I tend to? Who might I join in union and even consider bearing a child for?

Whose tears would I wipe? For who would I dull my sharp tongue? And who would I set a table for, make a meal, and try to surprise? Tell me, which man could I soften for?

And tell me, am I real? Am I real- if it’s only just to me?

Tell me, how do I quiet the me that yearns to be known?

_ the dog

Puff out your chest

And spread your legs

In the car seat

Exalt your voice

Over every melody.

I thought I’d be nervous.

But it’s your secret

That’s on the tip of my tongue

And it’s got you conversating 

And compensating.

–

Turn on your charm

And pretend like you’re innocent

I’m so glad your head grew

Three times the size

But your body didn’t

Because even as kids

You were always so

Fucking arrogant.

–

Smiles for miles

Mr. happy-go-lucky

You’re lucky I even

Let dogs like you

Say two words

In front of me,

In front of your mother.

I could have torn our

Whole family apart

But I kept my trap shut

And your sister in the dark.

–

Because who am I to turn kin on kin?

You’re lucky the only reason

A blunt bitch like me 

Isn’t akin to violence

And swallows her tongue

Before she can even bite it

Is because I know the

Amount of blood I’d spill

If I ever broke my silence.

–

Fifteen likes on my pictures

Occasionally in a row

Oh you feel so brave

To try to torment me

When I am not so close.

But whenever you see me,

Every eight years or so,

Just know-

I still remember what you did

That December night before

My mother turned on the light.

I tucked your skeleton

In the closet that day

But I keep a bone for a rainy one

And I swear to God-

I’d fucking bury you

With it, if I could.

Michael

Michael. 

Michael with the deep blue eyes

And the screenplay between his hands,

Michael who dreams of oceans

And sea monsters,

Who doesn’t have 

Monsters under his bed,

But in his head.

Michael who charms a room,

And smirks too long

With his every witty remark,

Michael who is quiet and reticent

But pauses the whole saloon

When he speaks or sings in the dark. 

Michael, who makes elaborate cards,

But never shows his hand.

Michael, who raises money

For charity 

But can’t take his medication

Or save himself.

Michael, Michael, Michael

Everyone’s favorite person,

Except well- Michael’s.

Michael, the weirdo

Who makes maps

And weird tunes 

To tune the whole world out,

Michael, that lush,

Whose eyes are red and blotchy,

When no is looking.

Michael, who alternates eternally

Between tiny violins

And feeling “a great deal of nothing.”

Yup, that same Michael

Who you’ve heard on the streets

Playing second fiddle

To ghosts of his ghosts

And many girlfriends past. 

Michael, who had a whole anthology,

But could not come up

With the right two words 

To say to me.

Michael, who thinks

His whole ego will be decimated

If he has to be sober,

And come up with an apology.

*

I loved Michael

In a tragic way,

The way a woman 

Always loves a man

So absent for what she

Is so ardently present for.

And the way only a despechado 

Man like Michael,

Can love back retrospectively. 

I still think of Michael,

And I lie about it.

All. the. time.

Sometimes when I’m standing,

Before a horizon or set foot in a new sea,

I wonder what seas he’s seen since me,

Wonder if he ever even noticed 

The oceans I saw in his eyes,

And wonder if it was ever even true

He saw the same four

And blues in mine.

Turning 30.

An unsent letter to my 22 year old self

Dear Michelle,

I know that right now you’re just 22 and a recent college grad who spends too much time locked in her room crying and applying to jobs endlessly- wondering what the point is in even personalizing cover letters. And I know that every moment you’re not scrolling through Indeed or Craigslist, you’re writing weird intros to poems and stories about suicidal ideation that you’ll never finish to try to transmute that shame of feeling deficient, but let me tell you a few things:

Over the next decade or so, you are going to have at least half a dozen different jobs. They’re all going to be in the field and demographic you respectively, never thought you’d go in nor work with.  Yet from the moment after you interact with your first student and leave energized all the walk home- you’re going to understand why it took you so long to find something that gives you meaning.

And it’s not going to be easy initially – especially not in those days you make your transition into teaching. You will spend countless hours into lesson planning and come into work earlier and leave later, trying to prove why you deserve to be in front of twenty kids in a foreign country without a teaching degree or a visa. But it’s in those days in front of a classroom, especially on those Saturdays with eight back to back classes, where you will learn most of your life lessons on flexibility, empathy, and presence. It will be these very skills that actually prepare you to get a higher education the second time around. 

But you are not going to meet the love you want. It will not happen by twenty nine, let alone by twenty seven. You will experience deep heartbreak and a few disappointments along the way as you begin to yourself up to finally letting someone in. And sometimes in the midst of some of these experiences, you will find yourself laughing between crying at the ironies of some of these failures. You will wonder if you got to rethink this whole vulnerability thing.

You don’t. Not every man will tell you this, in fact only one will, but it is that refreshing honesty and vulnerability that you bring that draws people to you, and leaves people respecting you, even if it is just in retrospect. So while you may not meet the kind of love you’re looking for- what you are going to have is experience- the valuable kind- that brings you closer to who you really are.

What you will know is deep, deep friendship and several other renditions of love and connection. You are going to fall in love platonically and laugh so much over the course of the next eight years. And it’s in these friendships, you will find most of your joys. Not all these friendships will last, in fact most of them won’t. You will write goodbye letters and make assurances only of life long friendships only to become likes on pictures and gratitude points on bullet journals. 

This will break your heart, but in time you will understand that presence in real time is truly what matters. Not all chapters are meant to be read and not all histories have to be honored. Some stories are better lived and told just as they’re being written. 

That being said, you will not always be a good friend, daughter, or sister. You are going to disappoint some people and be the villain in other people’s stories. You are going to forget to keep promises and answer messages. Sometimes willfully. You yourself won’t know why you’ve grown so distant and reticent. You will and are allowed to change.  

In this quest to get to know yourself better in your twenties, you are going to peel back some layers. As you learn to be more comfortable in yourself and in your body, your mouth is going to get sharper and faster. Your own nerve will repeatedly surprise you. Some people will love the updated you, especially those who always noticed and rooted for you to cultivate your spunky spirit. Others will dislike your new found self- confidence and misread it for arrogance. They’ve got their own projections, sure, and their own relationships with pride/humility, but it is not your job nor place to convince people of their own realities or opinions. You are going to have to eventually get comfortable occasionally being misread, disliked, or looked over.

And the last thing, that anxiety, that restlessness, and sleep you never seem to get is not going anywhere. You are going to continue to be tired, anxious, and increasingly resentful that no one can see it nor have an answer for the fatigue that never seems to go away.

But it is not going to stop you. That very anxiety gnawing at you right now, the one that you fear and resent has kept you small, it’s not going to be what stops you. It is going to be what helps propel you. 

It is going to be precisely that fear of staying small, that is going to lead you time and time again to push yourself beyond your self-limitations. It is going to be what leads you to move to a place with cities you can’t even pronounce and what is going to let you know when it’s time to stop indulging so much and come back home. It’s that anxiety that is going to motivate you to take leaps of faiths, make first moves, initiate difficult conversations, speak your mind, and fight for what you want. Even when it just leads to abrupt endings and falling on your face. 

But these are not things for you to know now. This is where the beauty in the ambivalence of mystery and uncertainty lies. I know you’re really depressed right now Michy, and you can’t see all the life that lies ahead, but these doubts you have, just like those stories, are better lived rather than deconstructed.

And while I may not know what lies ahead of us in the next decade, and whether the next decade will even be a decade at all. If we will meet the same fortunes we’ve had up to now, later. Nor if the zest we feel right now, will be the same zest we have later. For now, the rest of your twenties awaits you.

The last one I wrote

“Sweet as”.

That’s the way you like to remember me

Must be nice

To remember only the nice things.

You know I don’t pray

Or say that lord’s name

But I pray for you in vain

All the same

Sometimes, I think we were too alike

Cut too close

From the same fabric

That if things had been different

And you had had a lobotomy-

I’d always leave

And you’d always find something wrong with me. 

But we’ll always have New York

That bright July evening

At Washington Square Park

My heart racing underneath

The summer heat,

Cats heated in the dark.

Kissing between red lights,

Wondering if you might be my next green light.

Beat me to the punch

Cancel your plans with me,

Text me it’s just today,

Then say you’ve had enough.                

 Good thing last weekend

When I thought I was overthinking it-

It wasn’t my gut just acting up.

You’re now so stoic, gotten so tough,

Guess that veneer of sweetness

And desire to “slowly” build my trust

Was truly just a front.           

 Stop saying you’re sorry,

Sorry is as sorry does.

Spare me your “we shouldn’t”-

Just say “I can’t, I won’t face you”-

Give up the crutch, man,

Man- man the fuck up. 

If you’re only kind when you’re “feeling it”

Well, I guess then another one bites the dust. 

Therapy

I listen to him.

Validate and point out his positive assets

Notice discrepancies and inconsistencies,

Voice them,

I challenge his automatic thoughts,

Doubt his inner critic,

Guide him through deep breaths,

Question the origin of his stories,

And ask him for evidence of his assumptions,

But I cannot change him.

I cannot quieten that voice in his head,

Cannot keep him from pulling his hair or intellectualizing,

Cannot make him any more present

Or any less apprehensive of the future.

I am merely a sounding board,

a mirror, a witness.

I see him and I let him correct me , When I can’t see him precisely That is all I can do.

That fear he holds or has a hold

Over him-

It is neither mine to grasp

Nor to relinquish.

Only he can let go or break free,

So I myself have to relinquish

Any hopes or thoughts or things

I wish I could help or change

And I hope in this moment,

In this instance,

He knows it is okay to feel 

And to cede control here,

In this encounter,

I hope he can encounter

Himself just as he is.

And maybe, I too

Maybe, I myself

Need to cede control

Of any views or circumscriptions

Of how I thought life would be,

How I thought I might be.

Maybe, this encounter

Is just as much teaching

Me presence, as it is him.

Imprint

A lover once told me when his ex left she took a piece of him with her. He put his hand over his heart and did the motion of a tear. I thought it was ironic then when I left him a few moments later.

Heartbreak to me has never felt like losing a piece or a limb. On the contrary, it’s been the exact opposite. It’s the love that has stayed with me that I can’t seem to shake – it’s the tenderness, not the anger or absence that I can’t seem to reconcile.

I’d say I’ve missed you, but you’ve never left. How do I explain the crevices? The leaks? The ways in which you’ve permeated, enfolded and then integrated into my being. How can I say I’ve missed you when I’ve carried you? When your memories became my memories and your stories became my stories.

He thought he knew me

Put me on a pedestal so then he conveniently 

Didn’t have to live up to it

Mistaking my kindness for softness.

My humility for weakness.

He knew the Madonna,

The maiden,

The damsel,

Even the vixen 

But he didn’t know the 

whore, the dangerous woman, 

Or the freak.

He knew the girl next door,

The best friend,

The martyr,

But he didn’t know the vibora,

The woman scorned,

Or the ice queen.

He was too busy trying to divert me 

From all his personas,

He didn’t even see the persona right in 

Front of him.

He never bothered to look within,

To see all the women menacing, raging inside of me,

Inching to get out.

He never took the time

To know and relish me in my multidimensionality.

He knew how I could heal,

How I could turn something gold upon touch,

But he didn’t know how hotblooded I could

Scorch earth or run hell.

He didn’t know the depths of a woman’s fury,

The caverns of her pride-

Or how quickly I could demote him from number one

To persona non grata.

And yeah, maybe I got a sick kick out of it

introducing and then leaving him

With the kind of bitch I can be.