Shame Is an Ocean I Swim Across Read online

  I forgot what lungs do, could you tell?

  At the restaurant, the electric nausea

  of new love ping-pongs in my organs.

  Beats of wings stretching the length

  of my torso rattle against the table.

  Pay no attention to the bird.

  What were you saying

  about dancing?

  I imagine you taking your smash

  to me with a steel wrecking bar.

  I imagine all the blood and sinew and truth,

  veins dangling like phone wires,

  spilling over the café table.

  I imagine exhaling, finally.

  Neither of us flinching.

  I bet it is peaceful to watch a bird

  break restaurant glass. I smile demurely.

  Our dinner resumes. How is your sister?

  I readjust my dress.

  You look so beautiful tonight.

  Kaitlin, the Choreographer

  i’ve always wanted my limbs to swing that way

  so musical and concise, salsa

  hipswivel bent, fast and sweat, sexy.

  i can see you scanning me with your eyes,

  when we talk it’s dumb how reckless i feel,

  so small, so nervous, i know you know

  what it means to love something magically unhuman

  like music or dance or the fluidity of sound and body

  when you look at the mirror

  and see bones as bridges

  muscle as a language

  as a catalyst do you ever ask yourself

  if you could love anyone the way you love

  watching bodies in motion,

  moving the way you want them to.

  i don’t know if you could.

  my bet’s on the mirror.

  8

  There was a gay couple I met last year that was

  celebrating their eighth wedding to each other,

  this time in Washington.

  With each state that

  passed a gay marriage vote, they would travel and

  get a document of marriage in that particular state.

  Part of me thinks that is ridiculous and excessive

  most of me thinks that it is wildly romantic

  but I’m telling you:

  once I held your face in my hands,

  pressed to my mouth, aching of forever

  I understood

  I would marry you eight times, too.

  The Airport Is Switzerland

  I have been gone for six weeks this time.

  We have a day and a half to be together

  before I leave again for the road;

  I don’t know if I can bear it

  Our time is always a pendulum

  Is always sporadic and sparse

  I cannot seem to collect myself

  at the loading zone of the Bradley airport

  This place is Switzerland

  Is both friend and ache

  She hangs us, suspended in midair

  Until the next time I see you

  under the covered concrete for the

  Welcome Home

  How extraordinary it is to feel your own heart gasp

  Welcome home to my arms,

  to my hungry eyes, to my full anatomy

  And in the inverse; the leaving

  My cells bend involuntarily when it is

  the kiss of departing

  I pull for you physiologically like a tide

  Our never-goodbyes (only see-you-soons)

  Circle like full moons

  but I still tremble with the friction

  that comes before the silence

  I do my best to remember the idea

  of great joy and great sorrow

  And that you cannot have one without the other

  The airport is a lesson in two worlds

  The flight is a test of each

  When I go,

  I can’t help but feel the continental United States

  is a tidal wave ripping us far apart

  I blame this on geography and the ocean and the moons

  All of me wants to rebel in this instant

  Say “fuck it. I’m gonna chop wood and

  make banana bread and kiss you for the rest of my life”

  I choose you

  You said to me, crying last night

  I choose you back

  I hope you know every day

  I choose you I choose you I choose you

  I choose the ache and the waves of hot tears,

  and the fast plane and the windows of time,

  the brilliant hours of magic

  in a field by your house, the two worlds,

  the anatomy of your cells, the holy welcome

  of your arms, the tears of our curbside goodbyes

  oh my truest love—

  It is a privilege to miss you.

  My Friends and I Were in a Ninety-Mile-an-Hour Collision

  and we should have died. it’s real what they say,

  everything flies around you in slow motion, lights blinding, sound as an aftermath, and is that my voice screaming or hers. all i felt was the shooting pain up and down my leg, she stayed with me sitting in the passenger’s side and doesn’t remember. I cried like I was reborn with blood on my hair, i thought i lost her then, i never lost her and now i cant forget her, she sat on the curb as i tried to make bad jokes we found out she had a concussion but truly i don’t know how to explain that when the car hit us i thought i was the crumpled metal too that i was the weight of the engine on our bodies, was the torture of high school all compiled into one really loud scream, i didn’t even know my voice made sounds like that

  Written at Our Dining Room Table

  I stared at the back of Henry Seedorf’s head

  for all of sixth grade.

  One time he was singing a “Weird Al” Yankovic song about Star Wars during free time and I knew the harmony so I sang along.

  I knew the back of his head way better than the front.

  He had a mole on the left side of his neck

  I studied it every day to make sure it wasn’t cancerous

  That was my favorite part of sixth grade.

  Tonight over dinner, I think about the back of your head

  and make a note that I ought to study it

  It is important to know one’s partner’s

  back of the head for many reasons.

  Maybe one day we’ll be on a famous lesbian couples game show, and I’ll need to point out your glorious cranium out of ten less attractive heads

  I mean, I know the front of your head really well

  You have my favorite head

  But I want to adore all parts of you equally

  I feel a twinge of guilt that perhaps I have not given the proper attention to the back of your head

  I think about the day we met and how you made dinner

  I remember watching you move like a symphony

  conductor, swiveling around the linoleum,

  talking passionately with your hands

  as I stood idle with a jar of water, smitten by your skill and the conversation.

  I pretended I was your girlfriend and we lived like this with you gliding around the kitchen and how maybe you’d kiss me in between chopping vegetables.

  I imagined staring across from you at our dining room table thinking about how I could best love you.

  Your New Girlfriend Is Pretty and I Hate Her

  when you say good morning from your flannel sheets

  and the night is still thick from your fucking in this room

  i imagine a halo around your skin

  seeing it like i used to.

  the undertaker, with soft doe eyes,

  says “good morning” back to you

  at least that’s how i imagine it in my head when

  you say good morning to another woman

  she must be my killer

  she must be my evil end


  when she opens her mouth,

  does she know how we spent the year?

  drunkenly, buckling

  under the truth of being stupid and nineteen

  how i didn’t know you bought me a ring

  how you placed it on the dresser when you left

  does my heartbreak echo in the hall

  of your mouth after you kiss?

  unless?

  unless the undertaker has really pretty hair

  and you love her

  then it’s not really that bad.

  maybe she’s not an undertaker after all.

  maybe she’s just like a perfect face but maybe

  when she holds your hand does it feel

  like the strings of the piano might snap

  the weight of the attic might collapse

  are there boxes of my letters underneath your old clothes

  are they chorusing an album that i don’t dare play

  (endless numbered days) i know you know you are

  always in parentheses for me

  oh my lost love

  there is no undertaker

  there is no evil laugh

  i’m just writing a poem about you

  and your beautiful new girl

  and trying to not get coiled into a dream

  that is hard to forget

  a memory tough to shake, little scars

  i should have known that something so honest

  couldn’t last the greed of my mouth

  You Are with the Wrong Person

  It was a joke, mary

  You are so young and drunk and sensitive

  Your eyes dart back and forth like fish in a pet store

  waiting for approval

  I’m going to teach you to toughen up, kid

  And I know a lot about being cool,

  And then she would glide across the floor

  and make smart jokes

  and I would clap my uncool hands

  So proud

  Most of my life I’ve felt like

  a shopping cart with a shitty wheel

  Been too weirdo

  too chubby girl

  too excited

  All I wanted was to convince her

  that I was useful and smart

  and not even magazine-cool, just regular-cool

  I’m not saying that she didn’t love me good enough

  I’m not saying she didn’t hold me with tenderness

  in the hours of falling asleep;

  That after torrential rain bent our frames into making—

  we did grow to love each other

  But there is something that happens

  when you are told you are Too Much

  You begin to ask everyone,

  how small would you like me?

  What I Thought About While We Fell Asleep Watching Chopped

  for MB

  I want to fold myself into a word written on paper

  safe safe safe, tuck it inside of every lapel

  i carry your love like a candleless flame

  through the rooms of my house in the palm of my

  hand. ok, yes: this could be a lightning miracle dive

  that burns too fast. a darling sparkling in the hall.

  a kamikaze of light & hurt & impulse. but here’s my

  confidence: I’ve got flint, faith, a penchant for good

  endings. two strong hands. let’s both of us sit in the

  glow for a little while. discover the untethering, the

  miracle of open windows, my heart wide as a bell for

  you, chiming all through brooklyn. and if perhaps

  you like the open windows and would rather leave,

  I will still smile my joy at every burning coastline

  knowing that while we drove to dinner or walked the

  dog, or slow danced in the kitchen at the farm, I felt

  like a million bucks just thumbing the hem of your

  collar, a thief, a spark

  Language Barrier

  I read that in Japanese there is a word

  for the light that passes through the trees

  I wish I had a word for the way you look at me

  I could say your eyes are the sound

  of wooden chimes in winter

  or the dust of the thicket awakening from sunbeams

  when the snow clears

  I want to say something, some accurate alchemy,

  Some kind of splendor

  to mirror in syntax

  the kind of ceremony in your eye patterns

  when you study my face in bed,

  like I am being understood from the ground up

  What kind of magic are you

  The Last Time It Was Good

  Your friends got married on a campground

  in southern Washington.

  Everyone was invited to stay overnight in bunk bed cabins;

  it felt like a cool kids’ summer camp

  I was too poor to ever go to.

  The wedding was beautiful.

  The tables had perfectly homemade centerpieces,

  the flowers—fresh from the market and placed playfully

  in mason jars, bluegrass music

  floating in and out of the barn.

  The bride and groom took a rowboat on the lake that said

  “Just Married” on the back. It was so

  tender and wholesome. I felt privileged to go.

  So naturally, I got shit-faced and wore

  a nurse hat all night

  I laughed obnoxiously and asked multiple times

  if there was a surgeon in the room

  so I could have a “heart-to-heart” with someone.

  I think my boob came out at some point

  while I was jump dancing.

  Within the hour, I was crying rivers

  about my childhood

  You know,

  A typical saturday

  I woke up, cotton-mouthed and hollow

  my head pounding from the first light of morning,

  piercing through the cabin windows at 5 a.m.

  I squinted my eyes as I opened the cabin door

  Ready to make the trek to the main house for some water.

  You stirred by the noise of the door, likely exhausted

  by assuaging the blow of my alcohol-induced trauma parade

  We had been fighting a lot around that time, always

  coming to the conclusion that maybe we were too different

  I was too soft, and you were too cool and the glow of two years had long become pale, but We will fight this! and Love will prevail!

  We loved each other like an ongoing apology.

  I was the only one awake when I stepped

  onto the grass in my socks

  My breath involuntarily pulled itself back into my body.

  I had walked into a photo of a lake, quiet and dreamlike

  The fog of the morning wrapped

  around the edges of the water

  Like a Bob Ross painting or a movie with Rachel McAdams

  My mouth fell onto my kneecaps and I swiveled

  around like a child in my socks and hopped

  onto the mattress. Hangover be damned,

  this was too beautiful to be selfishly observed.

  You mirrored my enthusiasm for the glow

  and the fog and the dream, suggested we

  take one of the green camp rowboats out onto the lake.

  I remember that morning vividly

  my eyes crusted from crying

  Staring across from you

  your cheeks smudged with campfire ash.

  We smiled weakly at each other,

  and I told myself we were good.

  I promised I would stop drinking so much.

  You believed me.

  I looked over the boat at my reflection in the water.

  I looked kind of happy

  for someone who was drowning.

  THREE


  Congratulations, you are bipolar

  Explanation of How Things Work

  My heart, a mansion

  Too many rooms

  Not enough warm

  shuttered big and blue

  My heart a mansion

  Too many rooms

  Crawled into myself

  Burned the roof

  My father, kite string

  Tied taut across yard

  Encircled around my neck

  Now I never forget

  I never forget

  Grief Is a Sundress and I Am Starving

  You stood in the kitchen doorway just before bed. I rested my body in a gentle lean against your back, after a year of crying. The sand of last Summer. Like a ghost without a bedroom, finding a wall. I wanted to tell you that I tried my best to get up from the indent in the couch where I spent October. And the parties. And Christmas, my love, but I just couldn’t. I couldn’t, and I wanted to and I want you to know that. My body is a crater in the living room, and you are a perfect moon, and I am going to ruin you. Imagine your heart as a Hitchcock movie, ok? Imagine a shower curtain. My brain is a lurking shadow. Crooked, sometimes not there. When I was six and they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, my eyes got big and I said: SPACE. There is no more room in my head. I wanted to write something redemptive tonight, but the shame is so loud, it has become thick in my eardrum, I could paint the room with it. Gigantic. I buried a hatchet / it’s coming up lavender / the future is unwritten / the past is a corridor I’m at the exit, she sings. Will my brain hum itself into not eating again? Will I monster myself in the dark? I can spin for days, it’s actually quite amazing. Seventy-two hours, I’m talking. No sleep, no appetite. Forced spinach & threw it up. Did you want to know these things? Is this helpful?

  +

  Ok, fine, I’ll try something different. If it doesn’t work, I’ll go back to being a black hole. The safety of throwing yourself into a window. Ok, here we go. Like jumping off a cliff into the river: I have nice fingernails? I’m trying to take care of myself? I drink less now? this feels terrible. Like eating celery. Lucille Clifton says: Say it clear and it will be beautiful. OK, Lucille. I had a manic episode that lasted for months. I was not on a boat in Spain eating tapas at the end of it, I was exhausted. An ocean of concrete and sitting in my own shit. I don’t know if that is beautiful. I don’t know what it is like to love me. Probably like having knives for hands and wanting to itch your back. Or caring for a lion that doesn’t know it is dying and is also going to kill you on accident. I have never been soft & slow like a moonrise. But I guess this is the part where I say “it’s a process.” That is a smart thing to say. Pragmatic. I am doing my best and you are a patient song. The one that sings about Walden and burning trash on the beach. My brain might trick me into my speed brain again, maybe next summer or some unsuspecting weekend in LA, but I am a person that exists, and I took a shower today. And maybe tomorrow I will eat a full meal. There is always a thing or a dad that says “you are a piece of shit,” boring their own hell into my head, and yes, the brain is a disappointing masterpiece, but hopefully I get better each time and learn how to stuff socks in the mouths of monsters. Hopefully there is enough chocolate and TV marathoning and crying and unlearning to get through life, and every time it gets just a little bit easier.