it cripples me at time
my showy nature, my affections
blown like dandelion
tufts just any which way
but with a brooding intensity,
and only one at a time.
it’s not monogamy,
it’s a commitment to
power and chase.
what I should have said was
do you want to be licked
real slowly like
vanilla batter
or would you rather
be baked?

and they always say things like
let me out!

I’m laughing, wearing
pants, showing teeth.

“what would you say if you got them all in the room together?”

“I’d probably just laugh, say something like, sorry I don’t know how to undo any of  it. But here we are, together and with proof.”

“But this is what you want? The confession?”

“No, its not the confession I want. It’s the act. It’s to see it. I want the spell. I asked for it.”

We both pause.

“I want the room. The elevator story. The long story.”

I scratched my nose even though I was trying not to touch my face.

“I want the story.”

“The elevator story” or “The woman who walked out of walls”

I like to whittle;
I like to whittle pieces
of my life away,
discard.
I like the shaping
into nothing,
the insistent pruning.

I’ve never met a thing
I couldn’t throw away
like progression,
or finality of form.
I could erase myself.
remake myself.
outgrow myself,
come back to face
it. I never understood
why I had to repeat
nothing means a thing to
me so much
as I do now.

it’s the process I’m
obsessed with, not
the form.

this next section is called:
seditious, or the
way that words can work.

how to say
I’m sorry:
change.

“the amends”

“Do you know the difference between me
and a crusade?”

You had a war about you too.
or maybe that was all I saw suddenly.

“Nothing.”

–Responses from God during meditation, March 13 2017, 11:32 pm

“take comfort in the fact, Martha, that you are the flower crushed and not the foot that has crushed it.”

but my house is a burning building
so I better
run.

“tornado”

it wasn’t just about us,
it was about everyone.
the way I’ve touched everyone,
or better,
the way I ripped myself apart
in front of them.
to pieces.
my self deprecation intertwined
with resentment.
they say i’m bitter.

you say i’m graceful
but you have not seen me undressed.
you say I know you
but you have not seen me undressed.
you say you’re naked
but you have not seen me undressed.
not the way they have.

I always ask the same thing: will you let me enter your dreams?

it is inconsequential what they say after that.