My greatest aspiration, when I was five,
was to grow up and be a dog.
Your faithfulest companion.

I walked everywhere on all fours
no matter the location.
Ballet practice, kindergarten, grocery stores,
Sunday school, the pumpkin patch, Goodwill.
I made my parents call me
Lady, Wishbone, Lassie, Porkchop.
The life of a dog is easy, after all,
so why not?

I was nineteen the first time I was ever called
a bitch.

It was said to me at 2am over Facebook messenger
when I told a guy that I did not return
his desperate sentiment.
His vocabulary was the cliché rhetoric
of those who believe in the mythical “friend zone” :

How dare you not like me back?
You are a tease.
You are a lead on.
You are a bitch.

But all I could hear was:

You are a dog.
You are a very bad dog.
You have forgotten your training.
Learn to take commands.
Stay. Obey. Lay yourself down.
Do whatever it is that I say.

You think that all I should be capable of
is to be told when to roll over?
You think you can command me
to come?
Tell me that I’m your “good girl”.

Look, you Robin Thicke glorifier,
let me make this crystal clear:
I would rather be a bitch
than your lovesick puppy.

I am a Greyhound outrunning
prejudice, intolerance, sexism.
I am a Saint Bernard barreling
through frozen tundra in search of victimized women to assist.
I am a Black Lab helping
the blind who cannot see that misogyny kills.
I am a Blue Healer pissing
inside your favorite fedora.
I am a Dalmatian bearing
my fangs at unwanted creeps in my life.
I am a Doberman mauling
anyone who lays a nonconsensual finger on me or my friends.
I am a Chihuahua readying
to rip out your throat.

I am a Pit Bull receiving
stereotyped judgment when all I want to do
is shake.

I am a Great Dane,
giant but gentle.
I am a Yorkie,
little but fierce.
I am a Corgi frolicking
through life in the pursuit of happiness.
I am a German Shepherd
loyal to a fault.

I was wrong when I was five.
A dog’s life is not easy,
yet I know a destiny when I see one.
I know what my life has and will become,

and you cannot put me to sleep
just because I do not please.

Like a dog,
once I am kicked

I do not forget.

My friend Larry Poodle gets out of jail
so we throw a “Poodle Broke out of Jail Party.”

Just another party at the dump—our duplex—
joined at the porch and the tank of oil that warms us in January.

A few kegs, and blenders, and late into the evening
bodies fall asleep against anything that doesn’t move—
floors, speaker boxes, furniture.

I hardly speak, and I’m too shy to look at anyone,
and now a faint snoring comes from my right armpit.
Bomba’s face there, and someone else’s hand grasping my foot.

All the nightmares lay beside all the dreams.

Larry shuffles from ash tray to ash tray, emptying smaller ones
into larger ones. He has a thing about fire. It’s a new thing.
He never empties an ash tray directly into the trash can.

He is otherwise very smooth, with chuckling eyes,
and known for having the best Quaaludes in Tidewater.

About life, Larry and I have nothing to say.

It’s the quiet hour that makes me so anxious.

---

This poem originally appeared on Everyday Genius.

HELP
I lost my virginity.
No, I mean I really lost it and
I can’t find it anywhere because
I don’t have it and I don’t
actually remember ever having it
because
I was never taught that sharing the
flesh and sweat of another
meant that I would lose
something of myself
HELP
because
I have embraced as many lovers
as I have years and
not once did any of them say
“don’t you feel empty
without your virginity?”
HELP
because
allowing myself to be vulnerable and
to communicate and
to touch and
to feel and
to love the way my dark curls form
a canopy over your eyes
so that for a moment
nothing else exists except
the smiles on our lips
is seen as a character flaw
HELP
Have you seen my virginity?
Because if you do, please
say hello to
my I-don’t-know-how-to-swim and
my I-haven’t-flown-on-a-plane and
my I-haven’t-made-a-snow-angel
because that is where it must be:
with all the other experiences
that I am now more whole
for having had.

I tried to make a home
Out of you. I tried
but I didn’t realize
I’d have to gut you first

Out of you, I tried
To build a house
I’d have. To gut you first
Would take more time than I took

To build a house
Takes patience and planning, it
Would take more time than I took
To see at what was in me

It takes patience and planning
I tried to make a home
To see what was in me
But I didn’t realize

Every morning it’s hard. This part 
makes me think of India, cardamom 
cracked. I grind the beans, grind my teeth 
down to nothing, wait. Sometimes 
it takes so long. When day old, flush 
down the toilet. Mud or lightning
bugs. So much stronger when he makes it. Hot 
water on a cold March morning. Single 
origin. Not your Folgers 
or whatever. I couldn’t stomach 
for years. I’m still not old enough, she says. 
These days, I’m forgetting everything. & my dad 
stopped drinking. Oh! I guess I should’ve 
turned it on. I treasure this routine, 
even if it’s bad. The oils, the rumbling! 
My dad says addiction, says something
to watch. Take it off just before. So much 
stronger that way. Measure carefully. Yes,
with the side of the knife. I realize
I’m going to be late. Unrecognizable.
You want three (or five) tablespoons. 
I bring the cup to bed. Always, 
the whole thing. Stir. This is called 
blooming. How much is 
enough? Take the small machine 
apart. You must find something wooden. 
Bottomless. Now I understand
& begin to float, becoming useful.

As an artist, when you stare at something blank and think ‘I don’t know what to do’ it’s to hide from the
terrifying answer

‘whatever the fuck you want’

Boom bang nada boom

Going to see the eye doctor

Cause this cigarette means I’m supposed to see better than this

Something that ratatatats transcendence

Not ears, not an abstract painting of fireflies shimmering over water

Not the trees fallen in the river, nor the insects living in their corpses

Neither the hues of sunsets or runt raccoons hit dead on roadsides

Not trespassing, not panicking

Not lonely, something like friends

& being lonely

or being lonely among police lines and guns

and cartels and mothers working 60 hour weeks to feed her kids, terrorism and freedom fighters, something that incorporates all that jazz, ya know?

Something to hold onto the wings of crows in night,

filing memories with finger prints.

Meandering away from crows and ratatatats towards a glowing screen

Tums for rationalizing the emotions chortling chemicals in brain

Following the white light like they do in the movies,

the moon looks up & away

Eyes not there to hold her

An average flesh vehicle
spends (3.2) hours a day on social media

News Feeds verify it’s okay to go to the doctor or eat vegan

An astronaut looks down at the storm from the moon

& giggles as he spray paints the inside of a crater

for no one to see

for no one to love

for the moon looking up.

The fact that tequila sunrises exist
Reminds me of the time when we were in Miami
And I was scared that we would fuck
Because I wanted to

I haven’t spoken to you since
But I’ve drafted emails
I’ve even checked your Google+
And no one fucking uses Google+

I guess what I’m trying to say is
I’m glad we didn’t fuck
Because I didn’t love you
And your wife does
And I knew it even back then

But I will think of you
When I am near tequila sunrises
Or if I ever watch that documentary you mentioned
Or if I hear Will Smith’s song “Welcome to Miami”

Or if I ever
Think
I love
A married man
Again

i remember laying on the ground
by my apartment, your
mouth stirring the spiders
each one of these memories
manifests itself as a quick
breath or a clenched fist
you broke a bottle
in my kitchen and 
the spiders moved at the sound. now it all feels
like a dream, we were drunk 
and i picked the glass out of my feet
each time i go into the 
woods i’m not alone. i’m
moving backwards. i let
them crawl over my hands
in reverse i am putting them

back in their webs and you are
opening your eyes.
taylor and i sat around and
discussed our new friends while
our new friends destroyed one another
(what did they know about friends)
this summer i looked up
they blacked out the sky and my fear
was like milk, i wanted to
hang you by a thread and sometimes
in the evenings i really do
mean it because i’m so good at 
meaning things 
after we fucked i wished that i were a black widow
but after my cigarette i was still human,
stomach empty.
and you alive on the bed.
in an orphanage i lay under the netting and counted 21
a spider for each year
we pulled their legs off for class
and i smoked behind the building
and wept (for myself)
you’d call for me, frightened
and i’d ferry them out on my hands
and you watched me like i wanted you to
sometimes i want the thought of me 
to slip into your mouth while you sleep
i am going to forget the novelty of legs
sticky with resin, all eyes moving at once
i was happy on the phone and you told me
“it won’t last”
sometimes i am not sad. 
sometimes i just exist

Everyone is naked 
In my dreams.

Not the variety of naked 
You are while having sex 
On a park bench.

The kind of nude you become when 
Someone decodes the invisible braille of every injury 
Your body has ever known.

A bloodhound that recovers a missing 
Person is fluent in that language—
The peace of home is theirs tonight.

It’s the kind of information survivors
From the Titanic discovered when they 
Were rescued from the Atlantic—
There will be no more sinking.

It’s more than what the Beatles meant
When they sang “I want to hold your hand.”

It’s the type of secret that was revealed to the Buddha 
When he attained Nirvana under the Bodhi Tree—
There is a path that leads away from all this suffering.

Michelangelo deciphered that sensation
When his brush grazed the ceiling of the 
Sistine Chapel for the first time—
Just because no one else has seen 
The masterpiece on your flesh, 
Doesn’t mean it’s less captivating.

I promise you will always be 
This shade of naked in my dreams.