I Feel Pressure To Act Not As A Person, But As Woman. To Fill Every Void Left By Our Absence, Too Little

These teeth of mine, that I press my tongue against, will outlast my soul. I taste death, how when I die, my crooked jaw will linger here on this earth without me. It haunts me to smile and see a glimpse of what will remain.

We see each other’s Instagram posts.

But we don’t talk much.

I know what he thinks of the current administration. He likewise knows what I think of it. We play music on the car radio and sing along, not saying the words aloud.

I hear the posts on his phone undulating like neon gelatin, sugary nothings calling to him. A mixed bag of nuts that instagram feed, one post is an ai cat driving a semi and the next a cry against the white identity under attack in America. They’re both for my father. The algorithm knows him better than I do, he listens to it more than his own daughter. Our conversations are rarely in words.

He has women up in his garage, I covered them with grumpy cat pictures when I was only a girl. Make it lighthearted, make it fun, my objection to his sexualization of women. Why am I so eager to cater? I am a woman now. He has maga hats now, Trump ornaments up when it isn’t even Christmas. On the other side of the ornament is a mirror. It’s poetic. I keep turning it around, putting Trump’s face toward the wall and the mirror toward my father begging him to look. He turns it back around. How can I look at someone when they cannot look at themselves? How can I speak to him when we never have?

My skin prickles with heat,

Dropping doves on laundry lines

My heart leaps hard against my ribs,

Shelving sonograms in my mind,

Oh dear. I am in love.

The truth is I have nothing worth writing about in me. I don’t connect with other people and that’s where good writing happens. I’m often in other people’s arms, I’m enwrapped in their laughter, but I don’t let them anywhere near me. I want so desparately to be loved as the mangled creature that I am but I’m too ashamed to show anybody my real face. So I hide it. And I make people laugh, I make them laugh so hard their sides hurt. And I feel the closest thing to love that someone like me can have. And I hope it is enough, because I don’t know how to have more than that and still feel safe. Maybe there isn’t a way. Maybe truly being loved is supposed to be scary. And I’m just a coward.

What softness could I find for myself, if I allowed it. I feel a tightness in my chest every time I love myself or forgive my failures as if it is a betrayal of who I am. Maybe some people are meant to hurt. Maybe love smothers some fires that are born to burn.

What is there to do but wait for everything to come crashing down in a sudden cold splendor, and remove the sand from beneath my feet.

The Dog’s Way

I do wish I could be gentle with myself. I really do. But my way is the dog’s way, anything I don’t like on me I chew up and swallow. I carry everything I hate in my gut because it is all I have to take. And I cannot bear to live hungry.

The Girl who Cried Wolf

Was never met with hurried steps coming to her aid in the dead of night. The first night she watched for the beast, his golden eyes burned from a breath beyond the treeline. She shouted out for pitchforks, torches, and only felt wind and moonlight rushing to her side. Nobody believed her the first time.

There was a worse fate than death, I found, as the god I once worshipped laid his hands on my very soul.

To be unmade.

I just want to paint and forget a while;

Yes just a drop of wine, and a fan brush for blusher,

And my portrait will smile as wide as I do.