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?