Your molecules bounced around your skin, an aura of anxiety and too much... everything. You radiated sunlight and radioactivity, lighting my world and mutating it. My Gemini dad - the Janus two-faced god of my childhood - I loved you and wanted to punch you in equal measures. You pushed me to the outer limits of myself. Made me achieve - goading, praising, berating, manipulating the best and the worst of out me. Because I am your daughter, kryptonite born of your own D.N.A. We were addicted to each other, I was your heroine and heroin. Now I'm a junkie still spiraling through withdrawal sixteen years later. My skin itches for your intense hugs, my mind crashes for one more debate, and my heart feels cut out. A cookie cutter dad shaped hole slowly bleeding out. When a star dies, it takes the universe with it. 

#challenge #fathersday #complicatedlove #grief

I write dirty broken clean and a lot of poetry about fucking, but the rules don't say poetry about fucking.

So here I am, essays and mini prose, a bit crude and sweary, while everyone else remains trying to impress, dress clothes and dress manners, hiding the stains and smiling. It's that fake smile where the eyes don't smile, because the focus is on the impression being made. 

You'll have to excuse me. I'm the girl that will not only tell you the direct honest unwanted truth in a nice way, but I'll show you the bruises under my skirt and exactly how they came to be.

Captain Mustard in the bedroom with some wooden spoons and a raging hard on. 

I digress. On to the main event. I'm content being the little circus sideshow. I'm over here, in the dark corner, waiting.

☆☆

Little Wild Girl

There once was a wild little girl who could spit fire and tame dragons. She spent most of her Itty bitty years in the company of all adults. Adults who didn't know how to be real boys, only puppets at the whims of others. Puppets don't make very good protectors and wild girl became prey to pederasty and pain. Puppets don't know how to take care of hurt little wild girls but you bet your ass hurt little wild girls know the art of self preservation.

Wild little girls are forced to go to school, to learn in the stepford kitchen rather than the hearth of baba yaga where their wild is encouraged. This wild little girl found words and nuance and expression. Her stepford world became the jungle she needed, in part and for the moment. Circumstances prevented the puppets from having any knowledge which wild girl craved with ferocity. A wild girl on her own was forced to read dictionaries to fill her head with words to describe things she knew but couldn't say. Puppets don't talk much and when they do, they parrot dumb ideas because their brains are sawdust.

The words opened her soul and her mind, gave her flight where she was earthbound, courage where she had frozen into flight. Fight became her mantra. Wild little girl had crossed over. But wild little girl found herself away from the puppets, alone barely in school. Foster they called it. Predation she called it. Ignorance and religious push she called it. Wild little girl learned to read and scan, predators who like to eat little wild girls not for food but for their fear and fright. Long nights spent, clutching covers, masking fear, being shown parts on sleeping daddies that wild little girl wanted to bite. She watched and learned to sleep light, with a scream in her throat.

They returned her to puppets, but she had already been in the jungle with the predators and scavengers. She had run with other wild girls, away from predation and away from sharp teeth. They taught her the signs and they taught her the dance to attract, and the spells to keep away. Wild little girl had returned to the puppets but she knew she wasn't one of them. She had always known her heart ran free and her soul bayed at the moon every fucking chance it got. She learned to trust other wild little girls and spot those who could spit fire and tame dragons, because those were her tribe. Not that they couldn't soothe babies and mend clothes, not that they couldn't sweep floors and make crafts, but because their wild couldn't be tamed and that was a gift to keep.

☆☆

Answer My kik, You Dik

Kik is my bitch. I fucking love it. Self deleting posts, quick easy way to send pics and group conversations, and don't even get me started on video chat. heart eyes

However, there are some major differences to kik with girls and kik with boys, barring da fucking stuff.

Women will multiple text, 4 in a row, and end that bitch up with a gif.

Men will reply lol. To a six paragraph story. If it's really really funny, all caps may be used.

LOL

ROFL

That little reply is there. But we don't always read it that way. We're used to extrapolating. Expanding upon. Communicating.

I'm working on a Hemingway thing right now. He wrote sparsely, believed in taking out the "very's." Breaking it down to basics.

Men seem to do this on the whole more than women, and it's redirected me when I speak to men. I see that response as a response, not just a mandatory response.

It's an ingrained thing, I think. It's something I don't get. But I'm trying to get it, so be patient.

Maybe this contributes to further discussion about inbox messaging. There's a philosophy that suggests we not consider the smooth, articulate one as so much better than one who has the iniative and not the communication akills.

Nervous men are invested a little. They care about the results.

Don't get me wrong though, I still love a smooth motherfucker.

OH AND NO ONE TOLD ME THAT AIRPLANE MODE STEALTH READING SHIT DOESN'T WORK ON ANDROID!!

☆☆

Newports 

I used to smoke. Maybe a pack a day. I'd quit a few times, always surprising, I guess, for the trailer trash I was. Broke and young and smoking menthols.

I quit for a long time but just as I was coming off a 7 year denial stretch, which I change all the time. Sometimes it's 6 or sometimes it's 7. 5, 8, and 9 year stretches possible also. It's like a bad dream. When you've walled yourself off enough thst that part of you is literally absent consciously.

But subconsciously it's always there. Just under the surface.lying in wait, camouflaged by your own mind. So when I started smoking again, near the end of that no smoking stretch, I'd fantasize about putting a cigarette out on my tongue.

To this day, i still inhale deeply even write that. I taught myself how to do it. The first time, I held the lit cigarette out, just a tiny butt, still lit, the smoke curled around my fingers. My eyes closed and I swallowed, hard. That breath one takes right before they undertakes something?

And I slowly let my hand down. The taste didn't come in til later but I felt the heat, the warm. I hate burns. The sizzle, the deep insistence thst stays long after, unlike impact.

I couldn't stop.

The warm ash hits my tongue and it's a tiny pssssss. I start to smile an fudge my words as I type because that's my tele, when my words a snd my punctuation s d goes.

I come back by opening my eyes. Eyes closed is sweet, but eyes open is fully grasping it. Like answering questions must be powerful and difficult while being so stimulated and yet remaining fully present? That's tapping into a well of brain chemistry right there.

I learned how to not hesitate, swift and sure. Grinding it into my tongue. Enjoying the ash in my miuth. And then I'd cum. I'd make myself cum. Repeatedly. Over and fucking over.

But I digress. I don't smoke. But I like the taste.

☆☆

WIP, public mantling

Salt in her pocket

steel in her step

jawbone of an ass hidden,

to the crossroads

She went to seek,

trade, and bargain.

Years of sin eating

finally added enough dark mass

to offset sins of omission

and negligent acts of kindness

Weighed down that soul so that

damned scale wouldn't betray

I. She tendered her request to brimstone's flunkie, first level djinn trainee. He accepted.

Over the course of a year, it happened. She knew things wouldn't move fast because she strongly suspected Hell was a bureacracy.

The first? She died of cancer. Alone. Her intro to goodly bad fun.

The second? Of a broken heart, while waiting for his 3rd kidney transplant. He ignored her requests and now she knew that he knew his limits. What he wanted from her was what she wouldn't ever give.

The third? Didn't die. He, master of the lie and dodge, was claiming homeless, jobless, and broken hearted. But when he told her, it was still all woe-is-me.

Threes. It's all in threes and monkey's paw logic. She had used her recon shot on exes, because there was no one she liked enough to spare. Win win, she thought.

II. pending.....

☆☆

The tree, the shed, and the India boy

She was a keeper of stories, blank palette, willing ears. She could blank out her eyes, make them drained of all but compassion and interest, and ever since she was small, people have been telling her their stories. She liked to talk and have the kind of conversations when you whisper and furtive glances abound

People never tell their good stories quite like their dark and deep, but not the really dark stiff stuff. That's saved for poorly lit bedrooms and basements. This is their socially acceptable but still deviant if I enjoy telling it because I should really be shamed kind of shame.

_

'So there's this boy in India whose belly button burst. They can't fit. So the blood just keeps coming out. Like in the movies, when it looks like a hose? That's what it's doing. And it's flooding where he lives. Like his house, his yard but he's poor so they don't really have a yard."

High cheekbone high bred native American living mobile home midwest. Another one that climbed under the covers to see what she could do. Stay still stay silent and let my brother. Maybe my cousin. But he wasn't as bad as the other.

He had held her smaller hand in his as he led to the shed, a small dank place where he made her do the things that made her a bad girl and not him a bad boy. He said he'd tell her mom, too prescribed and busy to care, and her dad, too angry and too gone.

She doesn't remember much of the shed. Except the back door opened up to it and rarely would one of the too two look for her. They were content to leave her, content to think she, square root of twenty-five, would be safe with the prime number.

The division became clear when she would make snowmen a la Calvin and Hobbes, using all of too prescribed's red food coloring. Too prescribed was too tired to bake much anyway.

Two weeks later, funny how cheekbones ended up in a tree. Funny how someone told her she should jump. Funny how the girl who make smowmen tragedies with food coloring should be the voice of reason when you're two stories up.

_

Too prescribed was still tired when she took all of her brother's anti seizure, too tired herself to seize anymore. Because that's when too prescribed told she that prime number had been arrested. That's when she told too prescribed.

☆☆

Real Tears

He told her he was mean

He said he was bad.

Warned her over and over and over.

She knew he had bad tastes, bad thoughts, and wanted him to show her just how bad he could be. She ached for it, yearned for it, burned passionately, tossed and turned, bit both her lips and her nails.

He pulled the choke chain tightly around her neck, like he said he would.

He forced her to her knees, like he sad he would. He did all the bad wonderful brutal violating things he said he would. Then...

Open your eyes, girl. I want to take you out. Put these on.

He made her cry, just like he said he would.

It was the crocs and blue eyeshadow that sent her over the edge though.

When Night falls, my old life calls.

Its hard not to pick up.

The street lights flicker, I know they miss us.

On a sketchy road to nowhere.

From stick ball to stick ups.

Mother prayed, then kissed us.

To no avail.

Our spirits repossessed and towed to hell.

Black hoodies covered my tingly soul.

A fast life of crime wrinkled my goals.

Dreams of a Beach home and a family dog.

Sadly, the same ones I used to rob. 

I wonder if they forgive me.

I haven’t forgave my self. 

Dreams of a four-year college degree,

Reshaped into Armed robbery First degree. 

The man who ruined your life, 

It hurts to be.

Just forgive me. 

I swallow you down

to pick myself up

Thoughts of you

are no longer recreational

I'm using without a prescription

and the side effects

are starting to show

My mind is wracked

by the pangs of your withdrawal

I long for your intoxication

So, I keep these memories of you

locked away from my heart

but like a junkie in search of a fix

the broken thing still craves your high

Destroying me again

for a moment of addled bliss

Is loveless the same as lifeless

I've been without a pulse for too long

Innocence grown back completely

Like the trees and grass

Rebounding in joy

I've forgotten

Too much

So much that I might just stay

Over here on this side

Where romance isn't known

Stress consumes any thought

Before it forms

Such a strange place to be

Where romance is foreign

I can't understand

How others lives allow it

The house was falling apart. You know,

shutters hanging, closet door off its tracks,

some wide blinking

brown eyes through the jagged hole

in the middle. Someone kicked it.

Chipping paint shaping a new Pangaea

across the walls. I got lost

peeling it like I would dead

sunburnt skin on my shoulders.

Leaks from where the roof was flat,

a crack curving down the center

of the porcelain tub that we used to

fill with hot water and soak

together in overflowing bubbles

like nothing was

wrong. The end always

us fucking on the damp blue rug

beside us. Once I tried to blame

the hurricanes, but they never came,

only some heavy rain. In truth, the wind

had been calm for a long time. Some nights

were empty, not just the lot

of empty bottles around, beer, 

some rum. Part of an old poem was taped

to the fridge. It said

the art of losing isn’t hard to master

before you ripped it down. I learned

about the difference between love

and attachment from a book first

and then from you.

If I could hate, I could hate you

for kicking the closet door 

that time you tried to kick my dog, 

for that time you kicked my dog.

Then she started hiding in the closet

every time you raised your voice.

You even kicked 

the two baby lime trees

which I bought just before you moved in

and perched with sticks until they were strong

enough to hold themselves up. You never kicked me,

because as much as it might seem like I mentioned

the lime trees to serve as a metaphor for me, they’re not.

I left the day you threw a glass jar of coconut oil

at my face, which was only a day after you started

all the kicking. I can’t say I didn’t 

cry a lot, or that it wasn’t excruciating 

to walk away and so fast.

I did, and it was. 

But the way memory works 

is not so easy.

I still remember how you'd

hold me in your metal arms

like a magnet.

My Dad is here

     I walk along the empty beach

     kicking bits of jagged shells

     grand old man lying in musk of time

     setting sun ushering the darkness

My Dad is here

     I crawl bereft into bruised dusk

     salty tears mingle with Dad’s streams

     sea of solace stretches out her arms

     still, I scream mournfully at deaf sky

My Dad is here

     balmy winds breathe his kindness

     glazed stars of his wide smile

     palms up, he waves his sweet goodbye

     my grief blends with the soft rain

My Dad is here

     I see the back of his head

     slumbering in billowing clouds

     thirsty tides have waned

     he has floated into new ripples

My Dad is here

     the crested waves swell

     forming stiff meringue peaks

     broken shells washed out to sea

     waters unassuming and deep

My Dad is here

     the peaceful sleep of angels

     on calmness of ocean floor

     casting his beloved shadow

     upon my azure memories

My Dad is here

     carving a path in the sand

     through the ups and downs of life

     surging currents to remind me

     that he is not lost in my sea

My Dad is here

     a life buoy to hold on to

     smooth water fingers

     cushioning me from grief

     the soothing sound of silence

My Dad is always here

A butterfly 

Flapped its wings

In Pasadena

And here you are, 

A Hurricane at my front door.

Your eyes, still

Like the night

We chicken danced

Barefoot in Central Park,

I laughed until

I collapsed.

You kissed my bruised knee

And made a wish. 

A million flecks of stardust

Have streaked the sky

Since I saw you last, boarding 

A plane to another life.

Sometimes, it takes more 

Than gravity to keep 

Two people

Together. 

Now we are molecules

Colliding in a bed

Where vows lay dormant, 

Dusty like the caverns of the dead.

My body a pendulum, 

Your breath 

Causing ripples

That will turn to waves.

I'm bracing for the devastation. 

Bobby Ray came home one day

To find her Momma gone

She'd never put her in harm's way

She was her number one

Momma always left a note

To tell her where she was

The situation's antidote

Was plain to see because

Momma's hat was on the rack

She always wore it out

Momma wouldn't be so slack

Left Bobby Ray no doubt

Momma's boyfriend Jonny'd left

And stolen Momma too

This was a simple case of theft

And she knew just what to do

Now Bobby Ray was a simple kind

But some things she had straight

And one thing clear in her own mind

Theft led you to hell's gate

Bobby Ray she grabbed her gun

Mounted Queen her trusted horse

Jonny was now on the run

And had Momma of course

Last week she'd caught him cheatin'

Somethin' Momma'd overlooked

But now Bobby's rage was heatin'

Revenge had her hooked

So off she rode into the night

Devils by her side

Anger gripped her stomach tight

She soon was in her stride

She hit town blazin' Queen

She knew just where to call

Whores said Jonny'd been seen

Makin' to the waterfall

She rushed to get there quick

And boy she got a shock

It made her feel real sick

They were up on the rock

Jonny had Momma drugged

About to roll her in

Bobby Ray fired and plugged

Dare tell me that's a sin!

At home they found his stash

Life insurance policies

Momma was just cash

They saw all their follies

They moved house to start again

A new place of their own

They soon got over all the pain

You never heard them moan

Sometimes in life things throw a curve

And you just gotta deal

It's what you make and how you swerve

That shows you're made of steel

Now if you take one lesson

From readin' this here poem

See change as a blessin'

And you'll always be at home

Talk to me

Like we are lovers

From a story book.

You'll be my White Rabbit,

And I'll be your Wolf

In someone else's skin.