just don't make me wait forever

She began to ask, as the drinks set in, for us all to recall the first time someone leaned in and pretended affection in a way our grandmothers, parents, siblings and dogs could not project.  No one asks about the first time it felt real, just the first time it happened.  The kiss.  "I was ten," I told her, and laughing gaily she says, "Slut!"  My head tilts, having temporarily forgotten the meaning of words like this, or that, just memories which I've gathered and sorted into precious or restricted.  She asks the others and I sit quiet, dizzy, pleased.  Thinking of affection and of what boys mean when they say "love".  It made me nothing less and nothing more to have lips press to mine one summer afternoon.  She turns to me again, and I'm alert, ready.
"Tell me about sex with --" and she says his name.
"You've had sex with ---?" the boy behind me says, leaning over my shoulder since I'm at his feet, my back pressed into his knees.  My mouth gapes open in shock.  That she'd ask.  That she'd tell.  That I don't just shrug and say, "it is what it is."
And I'm thinking about affection, and what boys mean when they say "love."  I'm thinking about what it means that I lay there, beside him, sometimes, after.  I'm thinking about knowing all the places the sun does not shine.  Like, when he shakes and cannot release a roar, but hits the fridge instead.  Because, he cannot have me, because he does not want me.  I'm thinking about how he presses his face against my cheek after he's been out with the girls, and how this feeling in my stomach should never be jealousy.  To just take the affection as it's offered.  I'm thinking, how much longer can I do this, really?  I'm thinking -- "Hey," and I get her attention, "I need to be outside.  Show me?"
When the air hits me, and I'm free of the confines of ceilings and false lighting, I let the poison up.
What's sex with him like?
It's like the first time a boy leaned in and pressed his mouth to my mouth and pretended it meant something.  
It's like being lied to.  Or dreaming. It's like missing the first train and wondering if you can afford to wait for the next.  And if you do wait, will it be able to let you on?

Transitions

Most of the time, I don't feel anything.

Sometimes, I can't breathe.

But, when I asked how you were, you said "I'm good" so I said "I'm glad," and tried to fill my lungs.

Placated

He says, "maybe you're looking in the wrong place."
And I don't understand.
I don't understand: place.

so just tell me  
how I should erase 
that I found this tiny space
where a birthmark rests 
just below his abdomen
To the left, there

that I felt a 
certain sort of safe
in his arms 
with my head just where
he breathes in the air 
that I've breathed out

that I sleep in this place
where our hands fall between us 
and grip interlaced as we drift 
to another place
apart

and our eyes open to another day
where I am not his
and he has never been mine
so, then, how do I face
his face to my face
and not reach
to close distance in this space

because it may not be my place
because he says I'm looking in the wrong place

Clenched Fists Can't Type

2014.

There's so much I need to say, so very much dancing on the edge of my fingertips and my hands tremble, ready to say them.  Maybe this is the build up.  Maybe others hit and I write.
"Tell me what you've done," a lyric chimes as I pace around the empty house, all three roommates at work on a Saturday morning.  Seth follows my pacing.  Back and forth, up and down.  We sit.  We recline.  He barks at the neighbor who crosses through our yard once, twice, enough to rile my dog in the sort of way that makes me want to set him loose to attack.  I calm him instead.  I calm me.  Lower blinds, lower pulse, lower Seth's legs to the couch and pet him.  Still.
I reach out to Nick to tell him what I've been thinking a while now.  School beckons me back, but the field I want to get into, I'm nearly certain, does not exist.  Women's Studies is everywhere, and so I say to Nick, "What about Men's Studies?" and he jokes that he'd be glad to attend that class with me.  On a more serious note he says, "But, you already do that.  All the time.  It's how you date."
And he's right.  It hits me hard, pulses on the surface and sinks like something I've known well and for a while.  Setting my phone aside I stand to pace again.  There's always laundry.  Stairs, up and down.  Dust something.  Lay in my bed, alone, a moment.  Up again, a little folding.  And I collect my journals from shelves and tables and corners and bags and stack them at the computer desk in front of two open windows.  Have I forgotten how to write, I wonder.  Have I forgotten how to hit, to let this all out?  Did I ever, really?  Had I ever known how to release?  What's keeping me so quiet?  Where did this shame come from? 

The Sound

"It's glaring at you," he says when I point out the owl on the vanity plate of the car we are behind. 

Challenges.

And I get it, I do.  But, oh, I really don't.

Then this:

There was once a sound so achingly loud that all the people of the known world had to develop a system to protect themselves from it. Scientists and biologists and geologists and architects were all called upon to aid in what was destroying the world as they knew it. Eventually, devices were proposed, constructed, and inserted into the ears of every living domesticated creature. At last, the noise stopped. There was silence. The Sound had been so violent that this silence was welcomed and considered blissful. Like music. The silence was a new kind of music. Scientists wrote extravagant papers and lectured about developing a new frequency to combat The Sound.
They say it's why a newborn cries.
They say it's something in human, or maybe it's animal, nature. Something that makes us scream right back at The Sound.
Every now and then, I think my device - the collection of everything I've been told through the years - I think it breaks.
And I hear The Sound.
And it aches.
And I just want to scream.
But, the device is switched back on.
Temporary repairs. And I remember not to scream. Because no one else can hear it. The Sound. The so loud sound.
Maybe you hear it?

And:
I've started and finished one of the first books I've read in a long time.  Too long.  It was The Sound.  It's what I heard.  It's what heard me.  Maybe I'm begging him to be the one that stills me.  Yes, that's it.  But, the thing is - I know he can't.  I know.  Maybe that's why I ask him.

A Broken Vessel

Sometimes this feeling comes in violent crushing waves---  I love you, don't leave me --- and I press my forehead to that place on your back between your shoulder blades. 

And as I'm collapsed there, immobile, I find a freckle here or there, or I would, I realize with broken vessel horror, if I had not forgotten where to expect a freckle a mole that I once knew exactly.  And I'm by fireside, fireplace too hot, bonfire too cold.  And I am biking on forest paths, rain starts, trail jagged.  A dance floor of awkward strangers.  A familiar face I cannot meet the eyes of, for what does "like" mean anyway?  And I am feeling pavement beneath foot -- closer, closer still, to forest entrance -- a glance behind shows no one knows I've slipped away.

And I am sinking against door, sob breaking.

And I am pulling at hand to sit with me on bench.  

And masks.

And candles.

And I let go.

And I press into friend's arms.  And he holds me.  And vessels heal.  And heart stills.  And I breathe in trees and grass and peace.

And you're always just right there over my shoulder, aren't you?

Against Odds

The purpose of the (H)owl is to combine thought and reason with the animal nature and instinct at such odds within me.  I know the rational thought.  I know the instinct.  I just don't know how to make them hear one another and come to a conclusion.  I have watched with grief as those around me gave up on their animal nature in favor of surviving with some semblance of happiness.  What is happiness anyway?  Each their own, yes?  And mine is the howl.  Mine is the animal within that just wants to dance and move and run and scream and love with all of the passion built up within me.
Rational thought only wants held now and then.  To know it is wanted.
But I, I am a wolf.  I am passion and animal and instinct intuition and energy so violent, so chaotic, so tense in its calm, that I shake from it. 

It has not escaped my notice that these hunters see a wolf, admire a beauty they see in it, and invite it inside for a while.  Eventually, they recognize with rational mind that they have invited a wolf inside, and they apologize to it and ask it to leave.  When the wolf goes outside and heads for the forest line and beyond (where it belongs!), the hunter begs the wolf to return, perhaps as a dog, and lay at the foot of their bed so that the hunter might pet it now and then.  The wolf is tempted to agree, if only for some warmth.  After all, their more domesticated kind seems so happy in this sort of being.

But the wolf.  I can't help but howl for the wolf.