Rumpus

I am not an innocent flower.
I have never been.
My audition for that part
Left me stuffed in a box of pain with a lid that refused to close completely.
A limb hanging out here or there: dangling -
And I did my best to shave them or chop them off so that I would fit inside that carton of shame
And yet...

[bleeding]

When I released myself not so many years in the past I felt enormous pain:

The pain of oxygen entering the lungs of a newborn for the first time...

And sometimes that oxygen still makes me weep,
Makes me scream,
Makes me long for the enclosure that kept me wrapped up like a mummified corpse without water,
Without whiskey,
Without wild sex that included all the holes in my body,

Without pansexuality
or politics
or supporting my friend who just had an abortion -

No.

I will not re-enter the box for you.

For anyone.

You can look askance and wish you could go back in time to something "pure",
But I will continue to be wild
And I will continue to dance with sweat lining the stretch marks on my stomach;

I will eat chocolate covered almonds
And attend films by my lonesome
And drink an entire pot of coffee
And shake down the street in my Anxiety
And I will pack my pills in a plastic baggie to toss in the backpack I drop at the door to my lover's apartment.

I will embrace my dog and my children and my instruments and my poetry and my career building resume reel that I paid extra for on Actors Access.

I burned the fucking box.

And you cannot contain me.

Alternate Dimensions

This morning I woke up to a barrage of photographs from 8 years ago
when you were still together: divorced now
And I think about how nothing is permanent
It is a constant reminder: a photo of you playing bumper cars
And for all the world you look rapturous and joyful as though
This is all you could ever want: one another

Today she is marrying someone else
And you are on a road trip to the ocean with your own new love
And I don't fit into this picture
But I am effected by it
Staring at roaring colors of our two families at an amusement park
My daughter, ten now, two then squealing in delight with your daughter
Ten then, Eighteen now and headed to college in the autumn

I pour black coffee over chocolate almond milk in my Cancer sign white mug from Target
Everything is normal
And digital photographs don't fade.