Tag: poetry

There are worse things to want

RachelLeave a comment

i can do everything a normal girl can do except shut the fuck up

there’s a part of me that thought it would end up correcting itself you know like somehow things would settle and my stupid heart would listen to my stupid brain and just this once for once in my stupid life i could love the right person

but i couldn’t even manage that

i don’t think i can say this
i don’t think it works like this
i don’t think this is something i should want
there are worse things to want but not like this

you called me important and the realization of what that meant startled me more than anything else
you told me once that we were a matched set and if people didn’t see that they were blind
no one else ever wanted to duet in my car no one else got my stupid references no one else ever wanted to commit to the bit and it felt like building a scene it felt like improv it felt like yes and yes and yes and and and 

and god who wants to hear about this
i already spend so much time sifting through old hurts and new pain unearthing all these old traumas like some sort of emotional paleontologist excavating wounds from the mesozoic era
who in their right mind wants to hear about all the black spots on the map of the life i used to share with you

maybe i could pretend i have a brain injury
maybe i could actually give myself a brain injury
maybe i could drive my car straight into a ravine
maybe i could lay down in the street
maybe i’ll get lucky and get struck by lightning and the resulting injury will give me the type of amnesia that erases you completely from my memory

i wish one of us had the courage to say what really happened
i wish i could tell you
i wish

something fun that i do is make bad choices

i am no longer looking for an exit sign but god the worst parts of you made me want one
choking on the laugh caught in my throat because it was so much easier to be compliant than it was to lose
our song was a one-hit wonder about a woman loving a man who could never ever love her back and jesus fucking christ that is way too on the nose even for me
your wife came around the corner and when she introduced herself i have never in my life wished harder for the earth to just open up and swallow me whole

you look like a young richard dreyfuss which weirdly kind of does it for me
you look like winona ryder if she was caught in a wind tunnel
you look like a young david duchovny if i squint and tilt my head to the side
you look
you look like
you look like every boy who ignored me in high school
you look like you listen exclusively to the arcade fire and have extremely strong opinions about neon bible

another fun thing that i do is never learn from my mistakes

i looked at you and thought who the fuck is this clown
i looked at you and a wave of affection hit me so hard i felt like i was getting a nosebleed
i looked at you and i realized that there are worse things to want

you know that sort of glow you feel when you’re driving back from a really great time with people you care about and who care about you

i just

i thought you had taken that from me and i thought it would never happen again
but the feeling settled into me on the way home last night and it was like i had the sunset in my veins

and it was the closest i’ve felt to poetry in so goddamn long

mellie

RachelLeave a comment

Mellie used to say don’t put all your eggs in baskets,
which made no sense ‘cause her baskets were always
full of needles and yarn and blackberries, that one time
out on the Cape. Mellie didn’t have a mother, just a
daughter in Boise and a sister in Indiana who I spoke to
on the phone once, her tinny voice whirring through the
wires like something distant, imaginary. She might as
well have been living on a cloud, maybe under the sea,
even, for all we saw of her. Mellie didn’t like men or tight
spaces, cliffside roadstops or fences or blood. She hid in
the kitchen the one time my father picked me up – I could
see her through the window, her face shaded, turned down.
She always let me lick the spoon. Mellie slept on the porch
one winter. She said it was because she needed the air.

On the Art of Returning

RachelLeave a comment

Hark! What monstrous beast, what wailing newborn,
What fresh new hell approaches in my line?
Is there something there, curtains lightly worn,
Perhaps an old coffeepot wrapped in twine?
Have you your card, good ma’am, or your receipt?
Anything I could use to lend you aid?
There’s no need to shout, ma’am, nor use deceit,
It is not for this shit that I get paid.
Do you not realize I am human, too,
Not some peon meant to simper and bag?
Is that too difficult for you –
Beyond your limited nature, you hag?
Quitting this job will be scratching an itch:
I’ll tell you how I feel, you giant bitch.

falling in, falling out

RachelLeave a comment

(the pros and cons of being without you)

 

in

 

  • There’s a part of me that feels like I’m suffering from the emotional equivalent of minor brain damage: I’m dizzy, I can’t concentrate, I’m getting dehydrated. I’m relearning how to do all sorts of small things over again that I’d never thought twice about before – making phone calls, dining at restaurants, going to the movies alone – but I can still add and subtract and recite the Pledge of Allegiance, I’m managing to tie my shoes just fine. 
  • I met your mother in the grocery store and even if her words were polite and pleasant I still felt like I was chewing on glass throughout the whole conversation, walking in bare feet over nine yards of glowing coals without any end in sight. I was like her daughter, she told me once, the hidden favorite, the lost child she raised in the basement; I could always turn to her for help if I needed it. So much for that. 
  • Austin was supposed to be cowboy boots and whiskey, horror movies and indie bookstores and a tiny apartment in the middle of the city, close to a new favorite restaurant, the library, my school. Austin was supposed to be a fresh start and trips to the Gulf, driving backcountry roads under an enormous starlit sky. I shouldn’t miss what never was, but there you are. 
  • Last night there was a Deadly Women marathon on one channel and three Jean-Claude Van Damme movies in a row on another and I hate that I made it six digits into your phone number before I even realized what I was doing. 
  • I know that love is not an accountant’s ledger of favors and promises, but it’s hard to not look back and tally up our profits, sort through the files and split our history between the neatness of numbers, even columns adding up to zero. I put more in than I ever received and it’s hard not to be bitter, pushing through the paperwork to find this was just a Ponzi scheme, a two-bit scam run by an experienced crook. Like a fool I signed over my life’s savings without reading the fine print, ignored the suspicious feeling in my gut and let myself be blinded by a white-toothed smile, the promise of a solid future. It is hard, knowing the truth: that this was all a long con, that I am just another mark, crying over an emptied account.

 

out

 

  • I don’t have to pretend to like modern art anymore – you might think a fifteen-minute video of a man staring at a camera, covered in bees, is “a visionary approach to the genre,” but I certainly don’t. The same for plain white canvases the size of houses, spider-prints on woodblocks, the poor man’s Andy Warhol etching dented soup cans with Orwell quotes and nautical stars. Have fun trolling through endless rooms of ridiculous industrial light installations without me – I’ll be at the bar. 
  • There is a moment where my aunt asks me how you are doing and it feels nice, not having to lie and say that you are thinking of going back to school, that you are working on a novel, that you are looking to leave your dead-end job and find another with better pay, reasonable hours. It feels good not having to make excuses. 
  • Our mutual friends like me better. It’s petty, but it’s true. 
  • If I want to go to bars alone and kiss attractive strangers without guilt, I can. If I want to spend my evening hours writing and doing laundry instead of sleeping, I can. If I want to ugly cry while watching The Goodbye Girl after a long day at work, I can. If I want to play Jefferson Starship’s “We Built This City” on a continuous two-hour loop, you can roll your eyes and fake-strangle yourself all you want but I will never have to justify my inexplicable love of this terrible song – my love of anything – to you again. 
  • My love is not afraid of fire, your sad rustic rabble gathering in the town square. My love snaps and sparks like a livewire, my love is a hissing, screaming monster rising from a laboratory slab and one day I will find someone who will appreciate the black-and-white beehive of my hair, my fragile, electrified heart. I will find someone with a square jaw, maybe, bolts screwed into his neck, a limited vocabulary, I will find someone who will love me in all my fanged glory, whose scars of creation will rightly match mine. My love will burn villages, peasant. You’d best find a priest, or a pitchfork.

ten honest thoughts

RachelLeave a comment

1.

The first thing I ever shoplift is lipstick. I do not know how old I am, only that I am old enough to walk to the Rite Aid at the corner unattended, flanked on either side of the wide blacktop shoulder by Alicia and Jeila – fifth grade, I think. Fourth at the earliest. Alicia is tall and athletic and Jeila is red-haired and skinny; both of my hands could completely circle her waist if she let me, and I feel like a small hippopotamus walking between them, two sets of hands on my coat collar like fingers wrapped around the hook of a leash. Alicia likes to steal and Jeila likes to egg her on and I am caught in the middle, torn between wanting to be good and wanting to join in, and Jeila watches the register while Alicia nudges me closer to the rack, looming high up before me like a wall ready to be scaled.

I take the one closest to me: deep red, dark red. Revlon, I think. $9.95 in a gold and black tube.

We go home. We do not get caught, not that day. My mother drives me to my grandmother’s afterward, and I play with the lipstick in the pocket of my coat the whole drive over, sequester myself away in the downstairs bathroom once I’m left alone. I’ve never put on makeup before: it’s been warmed by my pocket and smears across my face like thick, waxy paint, sticks to my teeth like bloody meat. Women in the movies have red lips, perfect hair, they have hearts that turn either black or bleeding depending on the music swell and this is the first moment where I see myself reflected in them: there, in the tiny, wood-paneled bathroom with the oil portrait of my aunt on the wall, I can see myself years ahead in a desert, in a laboratory, in a film noir bar with my hair loose and legs for days, smoky eyes and lips like spades split in half while I tell some gun-toting scoundrel where he could find the diamonds, the kidnapped ambassador’s daughter. I am not a girl, here, but a woman: a woman with weight, a woman with power.

I stare in the mirror for what feels like hours imagining an impossible future, fraught with danger, intrigue, romance. My grandmother finds me there and sighs, her whole body sagging with the weight of unshed disappointment as she breaks the spell the mirror has set over me, sets to cleaning the whole mess off; she swipes dry tissues over my mouth and my face is pink from nose to chin, the nails of her free hand dig into my jaw as she turns my head this way and that, looking for traces she might have missed. My throat is dry. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.

“I wanted –” I start, unsure of how to finish, “I wanted to look like –”

My grandmother shakes her head. “Oh, honey, don’t,” she says, “Men don’t want girls who look like this.”

 

Continue reading “ten honest thoughts” →

Exit Strategies for the Perpetually Lost and Lonely:

RachelLeave a comment

Move to Boston. Date a Patriots fan and work in a Chilean restaurant. Don’t be offended when the wait staff speaks to you in Spanish; they’re teasing, and don’t know you wasted four years of high school doodling in your French notebook. Pretend you’re a med student and wander the Harvard campus, find anatomy books left behind on study tables and try to find the place for pain, the impossible cracks that hurt can fill. Your Pats fan will break up with you when they lose to the Bills, and you will laugh and toast to him as he storms out, the dumb fuck.

Move to San Francisco. Become a flight attendant and live in the Tenderloin. Have a boyfriend who writes freelance and buys cheap wine on Thursdays from your neighbor, who gets it off a truck from a friend of a friend near a vineyard. Your calves will look great, but the steep constant walk won’t get rid of that muffin top, or the loneliness. When your boyfriend leaves you for a drag queen, throw his laptop off the roof and relish in the sound it makes when it finally hits the ground.

Move to Miami. Swim with dolphins and make fun of the tourists and flirt openly with the waiters in the Greek restaurant you go to with your grandmother every Monday afternoon. She will want you to take diet pills, the hag, and you will lie face-down on the shag carpet afterwards with a mimosa hangover, tongue sticking to your teeth and wishing for death to just come and claim you, already. Get up and shower. Go to Disney World. I hear that in all the Magic Kingdom, Captain Hook gives out the best hugs.

Move to Austin. Wear cowboy boots unironically and hide in the public library, the movie house with a bar in the lobby. Listen to Dolly Parton and let your heart break all over again. Drive to the Gulf and wade in the water – let this be your belated baptism, your last-ditch strike at holiness. Sink. It is too shallow to drown you, and you won’t die in Texas.

Keep losing yourself in distance, in lines on maps – there are thousands of roads, here, and your story has no fixed end point.

Remember: if all else fails, you could always try to swallow yourself whole.