Wednesday, February 11, 2015

The Woman I Married

You are not the woman I fell in love with.
You are not the woman I married.
You are not.

The woman I fell in love with had perfect tits
and an ass most fly,
but she concealed these gifts in
plain sight so well
that even she no longer believed
that they were real.

The woman I fell in love with offered
apologies to everyone for everything
as though it were an essential phase
of a peculiar brand of cellular respiration
for organisms such as her
that have a biological need to constantly express regret
for taking up any space at all.

You are
not that woman.
Not
anymore.

The woman I married
was a master of disguise.
She snuck from milestone to milestone,
creeping between each grand accomplishment and dignified honor
as though at any moment the sirens might blare
and a SWAT team might descend
to take her away
and the worldwide news outlets would all report
how this little girl of negligible talent
and marginal intellect had ever
managed to defraud so many people
so many times.

The woman I married held her opinions
tight to her chest
vetting each of her words carefully
running background checks and
compiling a thorough dossier
before granting
them access to her tongue
for fear
that the air might fill with imaginary insults
the second after she left the room
and all the smiling faces that
she called friends would agree,
Oh my Gawd. What a bitch!


You are not the woman
I fell in love with
and married.


You are a shape-shifter.
Every morning it seems
the passage of night transforms you into
Someone stronger
Someone braver
Someone more self-assured
with more confidence
who commands more respect.

Listening to you calling out hippies
for all the ridiculous shit they believe
or extolling to your prudish friends in completely
unapologetic detail the many virtues of S&M and anal sex
without the slightest bit of fear or shame
is like music to my ears.
You are a song whose sweet melody
takes years
to begin to hum along to

And while you are not 
the woman I married
I love you and
I admire you
now more than ever

And judging by the trajectory of all 
the things I can measure
I will love you more tomorrow than I do today
And next year.
And next decade.
And next century.
And if I had a billion lifetimes
I wouldn’t waste one of them

without you.

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

A Small Dark Place


You are a fifteen-year-old girl.
You are standing in a closet
with a sixteen-year-old boy
who is beautiful and perfect in every way
Unlike you.

It’s dark
and you’re glad it’s dark
because you won’t have to see
how handsome he is and he won’t
have to look at how ugly you are.

And he’s only in here with you on a dare anyway.
And it’s now minute four of your fabled
Seven Minutes in Heaven
and so far Heaven seems like a pretty big misnomer
because neither of you have done anything
yet
except share each other's oxygen.

But you are so close and the heat
from his body is so warm
it makes your knees tremble beneath
the shortest skirt that you’re
allowed to wear outside.

Then, as if cued by some silent alarm
some tiny explosion of hormones
a billion years in the making
the most perfect beautiful boy in God’s sweet earth
reaches out and touches you ever so gently
on your stomach

And without a thought
you instinctively reach out
and touch
his chest
and you’re almost surprised to find
that he is just as real as you.

And he leans forward.
And you kiss.
But this isn’t just your first kiss
--this is The Kiss--
The kiss by which you will measure all other kisses,
for as his lips meet yours and your tongue
slips heroically into his mouth
synapses all across your brain are firing off artillery
blazing a new path through the backcountry of your brain

Like an elusive flawless game of Oregon Trail where
Everybody lives
and John didn’t break his leg at all
and Becky doesn’t have dysentery at all
and the ford across the river always holds true.

And the plethora of sensory data gets compiled and
categorized and filed under a folder in your memory labeled 
THIS IS WHAT A FUCKING KISS IS, GIRLFRIEND!
And from now until the day you die
Every kiss that lands on your lips
from lovers both
GREAT and forgettable
will stroll down the same path 
that was carved out by this moment
with this perfect boy
in this small dark place
and all of your friends
murmuring
on the other side of this closet door.

You feel his hand slip
from your stomach to your
left thigh
then up up up up up up up


He does it slowly
to give you ample time to stop him
to say No.
But
You
Don’t
Want him
To stop.

And "Yes"
floats out of your mouth
almost 
on its own.

And you feel his fingers caressing
your sex before he
actually gets there and
the burning in your tummy
verges on torture

And it swells
And it aches.
And you hate it.

Then he slides his hand under your skirt and
over your sopping cotton underwear
and for the first time in your whole stupid life
you completely forget to be embarrassed by your body.
And you forget to be scared.
And time and fear and shame
have become as irrelevant to you as
The Naval War of 1812.

He has barely touched you
when you start to come.
You are coming and now and
you know why they call it coming,
Because you have arrived, Young Lady.
For the very first time your
body and your mind have aligned
to occupy the same space at the same time
without you riding on a flux capacitor to
next week’s chemistry midterm or 
last month’s birthday party.

And a rush of reward chemicals that have
evolved perfectly
over millions of years to
promote procreation
flood your brain.

And you submit
to the same biological obligation that
tethers you to the earth along
with every other living thing from
cheetahs to cockroaches.

And it’s so dazzling and repulsive,
so gorgeous and obscene,
that you start crying immediately,
drunk on the discovery of your own potent sexual power
The Girl
who can make it rain just by wetting her lips.
The Girl
whose expanding iris can summon a tidal wave.
The Girl
whose blushing cheeks could melt the polar ice caps.


And just as the last ribbon of your childhood
Snaps
Slips
And twirls to the floor
The closet door flings open
And your tiny, most private of moments
Is flooded with light and
the shrieking catcalls of everyone
you’ve known
since grade-school.

And they saw everything.
And they know nothing.
And they will call you a slut
and a skank
and a whore
to punish you
for that moment
when you forgot 
to be afraid and ashamed
like them.

And the perfect
most beautiful boy on Earth
will prove himself
desperately flawed
and ugly
and common
and that will kill you.

And it will be decades
before you can put all this
in the right place.

When your breasts hang like boxing gloves.
When your thighs no longer quiver at a stranger’s touch.
When you can talk all night about his cock
and your cunt
without the slightest bit of blood redirecting to your cheeks.

And a kiss
Will be
Just a kiss.

And you will think back
to this moment

And your heart will
soar.

And your heart will
sink.