how can you stand me when I cannot stand me

I wrote you a letter today

and then tore it up.

Disposited in trash cans

down the hall

like an alcoholic

disposing of bottles

(seperate or the glass clinks)

down the street

so roommate won't know.

I didn't swim to Alaska for this.

Understand I am an orca

captive-bred

I could kill my trainers 

with a flip of my tail.

But I won't.

Because I need the dead fish

they give me.

Because I don't know.

But even if you 

approached the glass

and whispered 

the secret in my ear.

I wouldn't.

My insecurity unbearable.

Better a limp fish here,

than try to hunt on my own.

diagnosis: lonely

You don't know longing like me.

A decade untouched;

a lifetime without good touch.

My loneliness a leper

contagious and consuming

clinging to all those around me.

Channel it, move it,

funnel me art, a word, hole;

an endless and infinite.

That black hole gravity

pulling colorful, satin pearls,

out my eyes and into my bed.

The void for love,

I need and need, so much 

more than I'm willing to take. 

It's that Tuck Everlasting longing.

the Office was really big then

Remember when we saw

Pam and Jim get married?

The Office episode, 

when it came out.

I wore red flats.

You said you liked my shoes.

I whispered,

"I found them in a parking lot."

It's true.

Suddenly I tumble, high from the sky

to a Wal-Mart parking lot.

And emerging from the asphalt

like Excalibur from the lake

red canvas flats.

When I was younger

I would've called them ballet flats.

Your eyes wide you reply

"I'm glad you whispered that."

Us in our bubble, the rest of the room blurred.

When we all were together

to watch a sitcom episode airing.

my therapist says

My therapist says it sounds like you like me too.

My therapist says it sounds like you like me.

My therapist says it sounds like you.

My therapist says it sounds.

My therapist says it.

dandelion

Bled thru my pants today

and it made me think of you

how you'd see it feminist

You'd yell "Fuck yeah!" 

and make it so cool.

All these years without you

I don't know what's real

between the things we did

and the things we hoped to do

and the things we never will do.

Did I imagine you curled

in the bathroom cabinet alone

or was it drunken mirage?

Were your favorite flowers dandelions

and did we read the Vagina Monologues

aloud in Chicago where we named ours-

our vaginas, Sam and Sue?

Or were you a dandelion

intrepid sunny medicinal weed, 

granting my wishes with your

dead petals, curing me with your leaf?

That's highschool sweetheart.

Did we really share that much?

I miss you,

my gorgeous Gemini girl,

two twin souls, you were both.

Yin, I see you bite into pepper green

still dirty from your mother's garden.

Yang, I watch you cock a gun,

sure and steady explaining it all.

Take charge, as I imagined you

were on the battlefield,

even if you were just just a sensitive girl

when it was just us two alone.

paternal

Are you the reason why

I fear being the older woman

but don't fear being the younger girl?

That's the unforgiving.

I know there's something in me.

That blood, my blueprint, jumbled

chromosomes and embryo.

Am I really more like you than an apeman?

Sometimes, I wake up a feral child.

Wolf orphan. Genie tied to the chair

in the attic. Mythical origins unknown.

Plucked from the river in a basket

among the snakes and reeds.

Suckling on my mom-wolfs-tit.

Greek. Roman. Celtic. Lolita.

Lore among lore; not a kernel of truth.

Except in that universal human way

how in all the millennia, I am a cliche.