The music, with sharp tongues and daggers, presses hard against me.
I have been swinging from lyrical ropes
for days. If it wasn’t for guilt!
If it wasn’t for the time I have spent
drinking cups full of guilt, with guilt, for guilt.
Guilt raises dark hands that curve into
the shoulders of undeserving men and women.
My stomach tosses me over myself
for the thirtieth time today!
I can remember all of the first times that
I laid myself down with fire, judging
the length of my hair,
or the color of my skin,
or the shape of my body.
Do you believe me?
Do you believe that I spend time
tying myself up against poisonous walls,
waiting for a soft heart to come walking in,
6 feet tall,
with a blade meant only to save me?
Do you believe that?
No matter!
It is true.
I expected you and you and you!
But, not today.
Today, I fold myself over in two.
Half of me has my hands and my voice.
The other half is walking away with my feet and
my womanhood.
I do not know which half to venture off with,
so I sit here,
on this blue couch that is not, and never will be
something that I can call mine.
I sit, without myself, here.
I have branched out, and, in the same moment,
left myself behind.
Do you believe me?
Do you believe that a girl as leathery as me
could leave without herself, or
let herself go, for that matter?
Do you believe that?
It doesn’t matter.
Not now. Not when I sit on guilt’s lap, flirting
with her for approval. Not when
I tie myself down to her, to her and this soft, blue
couch.
What matters now, is the bacon and eggs that I will make her
for breakfast. What matters now,
is the laundry in the little room,
the showers that need to be scrubbed,
and the fact that
I am still tied up here, to these poisonous walls.
