Friday, December 26, 2014

Not Sinking





“Have you seen Mouse?” I could just make out the shape of her shoes. The woven slightly darker than tan braided leather slip on dress moccasins, the shimmery knee highs that encased her regularly bare skin. Her voice dripping with longing as she searched for the one other person in the room that knew how badly she wanted to rip those leggings and fancy shoes off. The daughter that knew her in ways that both placated and terrified her.



“She’s around here somewhere Nance.” My mother’s mother being anything but mothering, so everything she’d known her to be. I sat there beneath the gauzy red organza that draped the Christmas serving table. The smell of rye crisps, pickled fish, salmon loaves, briny olives and gingery, molasses cookies, big plump black olives impaled on each of my digits, my white blonde hair in a swatch over one of my green eyes as I bent my fingers and choreographed the greatest all olive musical, of all time.





Mouse. Her name for me. She called me that for how quietly I moved, how gently I spoke, how afraid I was when people moved close to me. Mouse. That was me. A five year old hiding under a holiday table, olive show at my fingertips, intoxicating aromas of caraway, and powdered sugar coated cookies, too much scotch and the stench of expensive perfume. Those braided shoes slipped beneath my hiding table as my mother picked at the smorgasbord of her family’s Swedish delights and sweat the truth. The truth of how we didn’t belong but had to be brought in to make for a proper holiday show.



I could smell her fear and how it was woven into bits of her history that had her standing as tall as her broken frame would allow, searching for me as I hid from the life she spent years running from. Her mouse stealing bits of food and watching from under a table as she stumbled around in awkward shoes and fake smiles. My hiding another punishment for her. Her parents frowning and shaking their judgment filled heads as their disappointment of an eldest daughter searched for her second child, from her second marriage, alone. Her mouse. The girl she built. The girl she dug her heels into. The girl that would never scurry under a table again…





I think of her today

The clink of peaty saturated ice cubes

The smell of hope I get with each whiff of cheap leather, sweaty nylon and tuffs of exhaled anxiety…

I can only hope she can see and find me now

Hear me over the rumble of what should have been.




Thank you Mom

Thank you for being so fearful that you inspired me to run…

Come out from the cover of what should have been

Sink my teeth into the flesh of what comes next

Thursday, December 11, 2014

Can You Be Here With Me, Just For Tonight






Deep breaths

I find myself trying to collect my thoughts, plan my next move and pull myself together in between a series of increasingly deep breaths. 


Almost like in those seconds when I’m standing still, that warm bubble of air stretching my chest, all the noise around me is hushed by the sucking in and letting go and that’s my time to steady my legs, hear myself…try and feel like myself until I have to exhale and react to the next thing that needs me.

Deep breaths…






Fuck.

I’m tired of thinking

Tired of over thinking

Tired of feeling like if I just did a little more thinking I could figure it all out….

Tired of waiting

Tired of wanting

Tired, really fucking tired of the sound of my own breath…




Can you, be here with me tonight?

Just tonight

Lead me

Take me

Make me

Let me….



I’m aching to let myself slip just a little. Feel the rush as my feet stumble from the tightrope. Lose my breath as I twist in the splendor of heart racing, exhilaration, anticipation and probable regret. Hear only the thump of my own wildly beating heart in my ears as I try to balance again. Feel the fleshy bits of my face pull high and tight as my eyes settle in on you, hone in on you and the buried scraps of my own personal wicked, the way both cause the sides of my mouth to turn up and pry all my bits apart. Ask myself what a good girl would do and wait for that hissing voice with its forked tongue to whisper, “Who the fuck cares?”






Touch me

Hold me too tight

Show me

Correct me

Force me

Punish me

Forgive me....



I’m ready, tonight. Ready to meet you. Meet you in that place that you and I go. Away from the stage we are asked to preform upon. Away from the eyes and expectations. Hours away from the accusations and guilt.  Ready to feel your curious hands and fingertips. Ready to have you hold me down and make me hear and feel you….only you. Your power pressed against my chest, the most captivating and riveting quiet there is. Ready to fold into your palms, have the air sucked from my lungs, the power of my limbs surrender and succumb to the weight of Us.




Can you quiet me

Make me scream

Cause me to rethink my position

Make me crave a new one

Inspire me to not give a shit….



My mouth sweet and ready. Lips like my desire, swollen and open. Skin exposed and aching. Head too fractured to fight, until you need or want me to. Soul pliable, craving, cavernous, longing to be spread and exposed even further. My eyes looking to you for the next slide of a player across the board…






Are you ready to check me? Study my game, my next move…do you understand that the deep grooves imbedded in my bottom lip are my tell? My readiness to let myself get lost in your touch causing my teeth to bare down and try to restrain the tongue that craves exploring you, discovering us…



Can you be here, with me tonight?





Can you hear my breath calling you

Begging you

Blaming you

Taunting you 



I’m diving in

Head first into a night of my own blissful destruction 

You coming with me?

You ready to tell me where to go next

Take my hand

Take both of them 
Make me

Shake me

Just for tonight, break me

I’m Yours….





I need this

Need you...

Now

Please….