Monday, February 23, 2015

Demons

Most people's demons are metaphorical.
Mine is real
and I happen to be sleeping with him.

Thursday, February 19, 2015

Firefight

"Is it still betrayal if you knew it was coming?" I asked.
"Have you ever looked directly at the sun and tried to close your eyes against the light?
Have you felt your eyelids betray you; feel them try to fight the fire and give up their opacity? Did your skin heat up despite you willing it cold? Did you become paper over candlelight, thin-screen clear and suddenly naked?
That's what it means to hold back from love. You thought you could swallow the fire instead of letting it consume you.
Well, dear. All you managed to do was to burn from the inside out.

Friday, February 6, 2015

inadequate

I had never felt like this, so hopelessly inadequate--
he was holding a glass of whiskey older than I was, wearing cufflinks that could pay my entire tuition.
And here I was, hemming apologies with smiles and tears with apologies; my god, could you imagine coming undone next to a man in a hand-tailored suit?

moon

If you look at her in the moonlight, you can see blue river ribbons under her skin.
she had gnarled hands, like I did, but mine were hard and brown and sun worn tree bark...hers were crumpled paper and blue-pulse pounding. There is not the smoothness of youth in her face, nor the wisdom-laden parchment wrinkles of the old. Only the gaunt craters of her cheekbones, the valleys of her eyes--she was the moon, this woman. Plain and white and inoffensive, until you got close; and then suddenly she was a conquest to be made, cratered and valleyed and virgin. She was the moon, and men fell over themselves to touch her, to be the first man to mine her, and to say that for one glorious moment, he walked all over her.