Maneater

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl Woman – Age 29

I have been accused of cutting men at the knees.  Frankly, running into a wall when you can already see it around the corner seems futile.  But maybe that’s just me…

And then there’s that whole not wanting to feel like I did at 29.  Frustrated.  Frustrated that despite the fact that I knew Dude 1 and Dude 2 might’ve been Mr. Rights but were clearly not Mr. Right For Mes and squarely cancelled each I still thought about them.  The Right part superceding the Wrong-for-you, darlene, oh -so-Wrong-for-you, girl.  Why can’t we choose what we forget?  Why can’t we select what to remember?  Erghhh.

MISSING

It is not the absence that awakes you from your sleep
to remind you of incompleteness
but the attempt to replace it with things
or no thing at all;
to pretend it was never there.

It is not the absence.

But what it leaves.

Call it empty.

Befores and whens, scents,
touches that make you flinch;

pack rat full of what will not flush,
keeps coming up because it cannot fit into the space left for it;

in this void there is not space enough.

Missing means absent.

And you’re not.

Can’t discard
or keep you tucked away neatly in a box of keepsakes under the bed.
You are new faces; bodies that creep into my sleep
I always know are you;
the rapids, a rattling train, song bird on my sill near dawn.

I don’t know what I should, if I should do anything about that.
Other than want you here.
Bad enough to believe that new moon mantras buried under

the right side of the bed will make the mountain move from between us,
will heat the ice between us, will burn the things
that have tried to replace you;
let my imagination rest from pretending that you were never here.
Because you will be. You are. Here.

###