It’s okay. These days, I don’t feel so revolutionary either. I’m content to lie on the floor and let the heat of this world ruin me. I, too, have been judged based on what I am not and contain 0% artificial preservatives. I, too, feel like an imitation of what I’m supposed to be. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get this personal. We’re all doing the best we can at any given moment. I don’t think you know what I mean. I’m not even myself.And you’re not even butter.

and the guy who raped me / left California /
moved all the way to Connecticut
afterwards / couldn’t deal with it / I guess
he deleted facebook / twitter / he got to start over /
he got a new job / lost touch with all
our mutuals / cut his curly hair / grew a beard /
he saw snow for the first time / woke early /
slept soundly / did all his dishes / folded his laundry /
‘got himself together’ / ‘made his family proud’ /
he felt entirely new after a while / and sometimes /
he even felt ok with himself / he rebuilt himself / he forgave himself
he fixed a broken chair in his apartment / he undid the damage /
drank black coffee / started to jog / took long deep breaths /
thought ‘ok, ok, not so bad’ / thought ‘I can do this’ /
he started going out / meeting people for coffee /
and beer / and only thought of me / once / or twice /
he fixed the leaky faucet / he called his mom back /
he found a routine / that actually worked /
he met a girl / who drew his profile / beside him in bed
she sketched his eyes / whiskers /
she turned the scar on his cheek into a dimple 
and she thought he was so handsome /
and he didn’t rape her / and he was proud of himself /
and he met more girls / and some of them reminded him / of me /
so he tried / to rewrite the story / by talking about me /
by saying my name / retelling only parts / the good jokes /
everything before / nothing after
and by convincing them / he convinced himself /
he was able to unwind the reel / and film again / tell it his way /
like characters in an old movie / walking backwards /
across a screen / out the door / falling in reverse
but all the actors have been dead / for years now

[i]
inimitable callow-ses 
and matchless eyes,

would you 
take time,
and paint my fingernails 
a watercolor-olive-
green with dead grass? and i’ll fill my shallow nooks with weathered soil.
and i’ll build a slight-sense of slighter-still stricture.
and i’ll scour the rough edges, rid myself of friction. 
[ii]
i’ll inscribe my spoken name 
in curative, indiscretion-al lettering,
ribbon-ing across the nape of my neck.

and i’ll wring these upper-baritones, 
and their occasional high e’s,
until they 
in-vert—

finding themselves wholly wreathed in 
near-orderly 
nigh-plastic,

with a finality sounding something like 
what Connecticut should’ve sounded like.

and i’ll seal stacks of these 
over-ink-ed sheets, 
so
Hayek 
would be 
displeased.

and dislodge my bodily scars 
to their rightful spaces—

your right, down an inch or so, 
your left, up nine, 
your right, up four.

[iii]
see, Noreen needled a snowflake 
into my reeling expose-ed skin,

and now i can finally remind myself of impermanence.

[iv]
and i can only assume it makes some kind of difference.

I hate to tell you this, 
but you’ve been obsolete for years.
Everyone knows all the numbers
to all the telephones in the world;
this knowledge is a part of breathing
now. If I wanted to, I could call 
the mother of every single man
I ever fucked or fucked
over. Operator, tell me
if blowing hot air on a mountain
can save me from the freeze or if instead
I’ll die screaming in the avalanche.
Tell me if at the end of the day, you
go home and picture your days
lying side-by-side, barely touching,
vibrating like atoms in a dark room.
It seems simple to say
that loneliness is an empty bed,
maybe it’s a hunger
that can almost fill you.
Operator, last night, I dreamt
the merry-go-round horses
in the mall came to life and stormed
the food court, ate Panda Express
from the carton. I need you
to tell me what this means.
Operator, I can’t tell if you’re a robot
or not, but if you are please come to life
like I’m the nerdy scientist 
creating a hot girl in his lab.
When you breathe your first breath,
let the moisture condense on my face
and roll off like rain.

like a murder or a bad paint job

I am cracked tiles and loud neighbors

I am the reason you stand empty,
no one looking to call you home.

I am a fixer-upper,
a project

you’ll want to fix my broken parts
but you won’t have the funds

I’m that car you take to get inspected 
knowing I won’t pass
but you can drive on a rejection sticker for 60 days
and you’ve got places to be

I am four years of college
and $30,000 of debt to show for it

I am that part-time, entry-level job
you’re overqualified for
I’ll help pay the rent, 
but not much else

being with me means
“just getting by”

I am also the sound of cars passing on a freeway
when you look at me and ask what I want
I will stare back at you with an empty mouth
because I’m made out of the words and wants of others
I only exist because of the roar of someone else’s engine

and I don’t know if these breaths are mine 
or yours 
or his
or the just exhaust from a broken muffler

and more than anything else 
I am sorry

I am so sorry
because I am all of these things,

I am every scraped knee and broken heart 
etched elaborately into my armor

there is a reason I inked 
the chambers from my chest
into the skin of my forearm

I feel everything
all at once
and it never stops

but, I’ve gotten good at hiding it

I bury this heart on my sleeve
in work,
in words,
in boys,
and beaches

I saddle on more than I can carry
and call myself strong

I’ve learned from experience
that if you lift the same weight every day
it teaches your muscles tolerance

and I grew biceps and a backbone 
under the weight of all of this

I am a lighthouse 
built strong to resist storms
but placed on crumbling cliff sides

I live on the edge of oceans
falling in love with battering ram waves
sending my light out into the darkness
as if to say
“stay away
I will sink you”

there is no home inside this harbor
I’ve been without a keeper for far too long
and my lamplight will burn out soon
ships will come crashing at my sides
splintering upon impact

don’t say I didn’t warn you
all I’ve ever done is warn you

but you still tell me I’m a cherry tree
growing out of the sidewalk

my roots grow deep into the concrete
soaking up nutrients from the soil far beneath the city

and in springtime 
my fingertips will bloom blossoms
and you’ll think I’m the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen

but my beauty only lasts a week or two at a time
only to be brought down by a strong gust or heavy rain

and even when I form pink puddles in the streets
you’ll think that’s beautiful

but a streetsweeper will come by soon
and I’ll be left bare for the rest of the seasons

but if you can count on anything
it’s the consistency of a calendar year

and if you’re willing to wait through the winter
I promise you
my thaw will be just as beautiful 
as last year

there was a violent dog rainbow the day you left. some dogs fell out of the rainbow and yipped and barked and cried real hard on their way down. a few bounced around at first because they were wearing rubber shoes. but most of the dogs had red balloons tied to their belly buttons that kept them afloat for a long time which was scary at first but they were brave, brave dogs. Some of these dogs landed in antarctica and they became scientists and studied glaciers. Some of them landed underwater and became professional jellyfish and deep sea divers. Some of the dogs landed on a mountaintop and founded a little mountain village where they studied important questions about what it means to be alive and a dog. The mountain range closed up over time and no one could get in or out although a hole opened in the rocks every one hundred years for dogs that really wanted to visit & knew the secret whistle. Some of the dogs just gave up on being dogs and became flowers. I feel that. Also on the day you left there was a tiny beetle with jet black wings that was fluttering around the house that no one could stop. It seemed so angry. It settled on the underside of a lamp & your mother and I cornered it. We cupped the lamp with our hands & brought the lamp to the door and turned it upside down and gently ushered the beetle outside. It wouldn’t move at first so we kicked and shook the lamp. I love you and I miss you.

someday when the horizon tilts to submission
and takes one final look at the earth
crumbling beneath its toes,
I will find it in this tectonic chest,
brightening without your filth to taint it,
to let you
go

i will find it
in the sponge of my rib cage
to look at you without
cringing away,
to renew my blood
excluding you.
i will find it
in the pinky birthmark
i owe you;
i will find it
in my lobed ears.
i will find
forgiveness
somewhere –

in the mango cheeks i owe
my mother,
the smile you were never behind,
the bone density she keeps
losing to aging:

i will find
hope
somewhere where you
are not

and i will scream at the end of every day,
at the start of every winter,
at the cosmic expanse
of the moment we couldn’t stop staring
till i let you
go;

someday
soon
i will learn
to let you
go.

You don’t owe it to anyone
to age gracefully. You’ve
never been good at grace,
anyway. You sucked at
ballet. What you are
good at is being a hot
mess. Like me. And if
I’ve learned anything, it’s
that you’ve gotta know
your strengths. Besides,
graceful is boring. Who
wants to go gentle into
some respectable middle
age, where you sit around
shaking your head at the
kids these days, clutching your
pearls and sighing quietly?

Oh, you can wear pearls,
girl. I’m not saying you
can’t be glamorous. You
can be glamorous and
still be a mess. You can
be an aging debutante in a
ripped dress, but there
will be no quiet sighing
for you. Rage, rage against
the dying of your youth.
Scream if you feel like it.
Cry as much as you want
to. Wear thick black eye
makeup and let your
tears make it bleed. Do
it in public. Make them
watch you fall apart.
Channel Frances Farmer.
Have your revenge on
other people’s expectations.
Being a crazy old broad is
an art.

So do it exceptionally
well. To hell with what
society says. Buy that
slip dress, even if they
say: Can you believe she’s
wearing that, at her age?
Buy those fishnet stockings,
even though you know
they’ll wind up ripped
in a day or two. Mellowing
with age is fine for booze,
but you’re a woman. When
choosing rum or whiskey,
sure, look for words like
smooth, easy on the palate,
cask-aged. When deciding
what flavor of old lady
you’ll be, think tart,
explosive, spicy. Don’t
be something just anyone
can swallow. Be an
acquired taste.

you will wake up on your 23rd birthday
humming that middle school pop-punk song 
remembering the autumn leaves crackling 
underneath your skateboard wheels.

you will insist the world will be yours someday,
the gravity of youth sending
the CD skipping in rhythm 
with the bouncing backseat of the bus,
the rhythm and chorus 
catching you in its brake.

you will be shaken something unkind and fierce
when you learn about the islands of plastic,
the shots fired into crowds,
the people who died for weekends.

you will mouth “revolution” in the mirror,
but you’ll let your friends down. 
you will learn justice first within yourself,
circling the A’s in your apologies.

you will realize this is the longest you’ve been away
from the place your skinned autumn knees called home,
far from the days you’d drop nickels into payphones or
from moments convincing friends with cell phones you’d be in deep shit.
these days the missed calls weigh like stones in your pocket.

you will eat supermarket sandwiches on your lunch break
wondering if it really does get better. 
it will ache like buyer’s remorse on the future.

you will finish your sandwich. 
optimism will be nothing more
than a losing scratcher left bookmarked
in pages you never finished.

you thought things would be different 
now that you finally did what everyone
expected of you. now you’re older and know
what makes beasts of burden is a broken spirit.

you will wake up on your 23rd birthday
humming “What’s My Age Again?”
maybe the shimmer in your eyes faded
but you’re learning love in ways 
your parents never understood.

you’re living like cackling revenge,
the fate lines in your palms tucked tight
giving a middle finger to the future.

you’re shuffling out the store 
with pieces of the world they promised you
quietly stuffed inside your jacket
as the rest steadily melts into the arctic.

you will be 23
staring in the mirror
finding happiness
in the last place they told you to look.