Grey Rock.

A rock  

      Any shape, any size

Kick it a little  

          Every day  

And it may take many days,  

But it will become a perfect               

         sphere.

I want to be like that:  

            Smooth and round,  

  Ground into a pleasing  

        Hand-feel.

And the Internet will say,  

           No matter the problem,  

                   That you or your spouse is the issue,  

                      Depending on how you skewed the story,  

     And the only solution is to leave.

But maybe we’re just too bumpy,  

             Too lumpy, too misshapen,  

    And we need a little conflict  

          To wear down

   the sharp edges.

Is leaving and moving on to the next guy  

       Really the only option?

Someone commented:  

“Why ex-husband-shaped if not ex-husband?”

What shape is the next guy, ma’am?  

        So perfect and polished—  

     A cushion-cut diamond?  

          A god among men,  

            Jesus in Carhartts?

    Buddha with an ironic hipster moustache?

     Nay, probably some broken boy  

      Wanting love, because if he didn’t,  

He wouldn’t be on the apps.  

      She could ask her  

Baby daddies,  

    But they wouldn’t admit it.

       Just like she's a broken girl—

Wanting love, because if she didn't,

         She wouldn't be on the apps.

   We are all broken people. 

        Mere 

               mortals. 

And it was naive of me to believe  

      That a woman was different by default.

           My friend keeps saying,  

        “I wish I was a lesbian,”  

 After each new man,  

                       And I go, “Ha-ha,”  

                                 And say, “I hear you.”

Because I don’t really know  

              What the fuck I am  

                  Or even what I want to be.

Strangely, it might just be this:  

You know, my life as it is.

                Is this contentment?  

   Like a perfectly balanced,  

             Nourishing meal  

   With not a dab of spice.

I shall live long and be strong.  

          Is that not enough?

My ancestors were wise  

       Not to want more:  

       Food and roof,  

    And they praised God.

  Praise be! Lord up in heaven!

     We awake another day to toil

  And eat and sleep            and awake another day! 

Now Hinge is advertising:                   Double-date options.

How many minutes until that feature  

          Was used for orgies?

          I’m guessing five.

The news is always claiming  

      AI is going to kill humanity,  

      Comparing it to

                        the Terminator,  

And I joke with my husband,  

     “AI should shut up and nut up.”

We both agree AI should be  

         Less talk and more action.

If you’re going to kill us,  

                  Do it soon.

Swift—     Taylor Swift

                        —Swift.

Kick the rock down the road  

     And let the rough edges smooth.  

Sandpaper—  

       Rough against rough makes smooth.

   Make me smooth enough

         To grace a lover cheek.

And we can roll down hills  

      And get stuck in ditches  

       And rest for a minute,  

    Not wanting a fucking thing  

                     For five minutes.

Not a man,  

                Not a like,  

       Not a comment,  

                        Not advice,  

                    Not another kick,  

               Not a Hinge orgy,

   Not even a dash of Mrs. Dash.

                   Just rest.

 If I had known it would be like this, I wouldn't have done it at all.

somebody somewhere

4th

After my mom died, I read every journal and planner she left behind. There weren’t many. The entries were sporadic, sometimes leaping a year—or even five—with little information and a lot of space devoted to her weight and what she was going to do about it. Haha. We weren’t so different, me and this woman who shared half my DNA.

In one of the planners, I found an incomplete Fourth Step. My mom had been sober my entire life—she got sober before I was born—and by the time I was twelve or thirteen when she had started this Fourth Step, she had already been sober for fifteen or sixteen years. The Fourth Step is the part of Alcoholics Anonymous where you make “a searching and fearless moral inventory” of yourself: your wrongs, fears, resentments, and the damage you’ve done. A lot of people get stuck there. They write down what they can and then stop.

My mom had stopped, too.

That was where I learned she had slept with her younger sister’s college boyfriend—the sister who didn’t like my mom and thought she was much prettier because she was blonde. Which is funny, because I had also heard my aunt’s version: that my mom only claimed she’d slept with him to hurt her. After all, he only liked blondes like my aunt. He couldn’t have done it. He just wouldn't have slept with a brunette like my mom.

I never learned which version was true. But I believe my mom.

I also learned that, in her early twenties, my mom had worked in a nursing-home kitchen. One of the residents died after choking on a piece of hot dog. Almost two decades later, my mom still believed it was her fault because she hadn’t cut the hot dog into small enough pieces, even though she knew the resident was at risk of choking.

There was other stuff too, but the inventory felt awfully incomplete. She didn’t get into half the things I had seen.

Maybe that was the point. Maybe no one can make a complete inventory of a life—not even a person trying to account for all the ways she had failed.

Still, it was through the worst choices of my mother’s life that I grew to respect her. I learned to cheer for her—not because she had been innocent, and not because sobriety erased what came before, but because she kept going while carrying everything she believed she had done.

And somewhere in all that unfinished writing, I began to understand her: not as the mother I had needed her to be, but as the woman she had been trying, imperfectly, to become.

I forgot how nice it was to get lost in the crevices of my own mind.

not so b.a.m.f.

I cannot care ...to this level ...for another day.

Like, genuinely, I need to care at least 20% less by tomorrow.

You know that general sentiment that we’re all here to learn a lesson?

That each lifetime, we’re put on Earth to “learn a lesson”?

Well, I’m pretty certain mine is that old adage: “You made your bed. Now it’s time to lie in it.” Maybe that’s why my bed was never made until I was in my thirties. I was avoiding the consequences of my actions.

And maybe I’m a little too bratty, too defiant, too obstinate, too… I don’t know—too authority-figure-hating—to really buy into all that life-lesson bullshit. Most of my lessons were learned at the will of another, and now the sound of my name gives me the same dread as being called into the principal’s office.

But I guess some people love their names. Some even get off on them—literally. “Oh, baby, say my name!” That’s a thing, right?

And I guess there’s some world where lying in bed—bed-rotting—is so nice, so lovely. But for me, it’s just time-out and shame: the things I never felt I deserved when I was doing my best with the information available at the time.